ALTERNATIVE FINANCING FORMS
FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND INVESTORS

Author: Tatjana Anderer

Gründerin des FYB-Verlag
News

Colo­gne — With Eneco Ventures and Sparta Capi­tal, two estab­lished funds from the rene­wa­ble energy sector are inves­t­ing in Sunvi­go’s revo­lu­tio­nary busi­ness model. Sparta and Eneco, which are provi­ding the bulk of the new finan­cing, are inves­t­ing a total of €10 million toge­ther with exis­ting inves­tors such as Ecosum­mit, High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) and Über­mor­gen Ventures. Deut­sche Kredit­bank AG (DKB) is provi­ding a further 5 million euros in debt capi­tal to finance the PV systems. While the current energy crisis has driven both young and estab­lished compa­nies into insol­vency, Sunvigo has been able to secure new invest­ments and even protect its custo­mers from rising elec­tri­city prices.

Since its foun­ding in 2020, Sunvigo has alre­ady provi­ded hundreds of custo­mers with easy access to afforda­ble solar power. In the first year after its foun­da­tion, the custo­mer base increased more than tenfold.

Entry of two renow­ned inves­tors sets the course for strong growth

Eneco Ventures and Sparta Capi­tal are now inves­t­ing in Sunvi­go’s contin­ued growth and vision. “We believe there is a large market for Sunvi­go’s product. We also see many poten­tial syner­gies, for exam­ple with Eneco’s subsi­diary Licht­Blick, the largest green power provi­der in Germany,” said Hans W. Cool, Invest­ment Direc­tor of Eneco Ventures.

“Sunvigo offers a trus­ted solu­tion for the tran­si­tion to a low-carbon world. This part­ner­ship is an important mile­stone for Sparta and we look forward to support­ing Sunvi­go’s manage­ment team in the years to come,” said Guil­laume Sarlat, Head of Sustaina­bi­lity Invest­ment at Sparta Capital

“Through Sparta, we are able to work with one of the leading inves­tors in this field and gain access to inter­na­tio­nal capi­tal markets to expand finan­cing for our solar systems,” on the inves­tor selec­tion Dr. Michael Peters, foun­der of Sunvigo and solar expert (center photo).

In addi­tion, exis­ting inves­tors Ecosum­mit, HTGF, Über­mor­gen Ventures and a family office are again parti­ci­pa­ting in the finan­cing round, thus confir­ming their confi­dence in the solar energy provi­der. DKB is also incre­asing the finan­cing volume for the solar plants by a further 5 million euros in borro­wed capital.

Digi­tiza­tion, expan­sion of the Green Power Commu­nity and streng­thening of the Sunvigo team

Foun­ders Bastian Bauwens, Dr. Michael Peters and Dr. Vigen Niko­gos­ian will use the fresh capi­tal to further expand the Green Power Commu­nity, improve the custo­mer expe­ri­ence, espe­ci­ally through digi­ta­liza­tion, and further opti­mize inter­nal proces­ses. Sunvigo also wants to expand in terms of person­nel. The company now employs over 50 people and plans to grow stron­gly in all areas this year. In the future, Sunvigo will network its plants in virtual power plants, making solar power from the Sunvigo Commu­nity available to all elec­tri­city custo­mers. The team can make good use of the rein­force­ment, because the demand for solar energy is huge.

“In recent months, demand has increased rapidly. Many people are over­whel­med by the current sharp rise in elec­tri­city prices and are wonde­ring what they can do about the rising costs. Swit­ching to solar energy provi­des a hedge against rising prices. But until now, you had to put up with a lot of comple­xity for that. With Sunvigo one can have now finally both — protec­tion against rising prices by the solar plant on the own roof and nevert­hel­ess the power supply remains as simple as with a clas­si­cal elec­tri­city contract, explains Dr. Michael Peters, foun­der of Sunvigo and solar expert.

About Sunvigo

Sunvigo is revo­lu­tio­ni­zing the use of solar power for homeow­ners. Unlike PV system sellers or renters, the company is an energy provi­der and offers homeow­ners a power contract that includes solar. This means: Sunvigo installs and opera­tes the solar system. The custo­mer only pays for the elec­tri­city consu­med and does not have to worry about the costly opera­tion and finan­cing of the solar system. If desi­red, solu­ti­ons for battery storage and char­ging devices for elec­tric cars can be inte­gra­ted into the elec­tri­city contract. For more info, visit www.sunvigo.de. Sunvigo is funded by leading inves­tors, inclu­ding High-Tech Grün­der­fonds, Über­mor­gen Ventures, Eneco Ventures and Sparta Capital.

About DKB

Deut­sche Kredit­bank AG (DKB), head­quar­te­red in Berlin, is part of the BayernLB Group and serves busi­ness and private custo­mers with its more than 4,500 employees. With total assets of 126.9 billion euros, it is one of the top 20 banks in Germany. More than 4.8 million people are DKB custo­mers. They conduct their banking tran­sac­tions conve­ni­ently and secu­rely online. DKB indus­try experts provide perso­nal support to busi­ness custo­mers at 25 DKB loca­ti­ons throug­hout Germany. As a part­ner to compa­nies and muni­ci­pa­li­ties, the bank specia­li­zed early on in promi­sing sectors in Germany: Housing, health­care, care, educa­tion, agri­cul­ture, infra­struc­ture and rene­wa­ble ener­gies. DKB is one of the market leaders in many of these sectors. DKB atta­ches great importance to sustainable action: As a #geld­ver­bes­se­rer, it ther­e­fore focu­ses on a sustainable lending busi­ness. www.dkb.de

About Eneco Ventures

Eneco is a leading energy supplier in Europe and consists of a group of compa­nies opera­ting mainly in the field of rene­wa­ble energy and inno­va­tion. Toge­ther with its custo­mers, part­ners and more than 3,000 employees, Eneco is pursuing the goal of provi­ding sustainable energy for all and beco­ming climate neutral as early as 2035. Eneco Ventures is the invest­ment arm of Eneco that invests in promi­sing young compa­nies driving the energy transition.

About Sparta Capi­tal Management

Sparta Capi­tal Manage­ment Ltd. was foun­ded by Franck Tuil, a former mana­ger at Elliott Manage­ment Corpo­ra­tion. The first fund was laun­ched in Septem­ber 2021 with initial capi­tal commit­ments of over $500 million. It is a global multi-stra­tegy fund that invests in both public and private markets and across the capi­tal struc­ture, with a focus on finan­cing the energy transition.

About About Tomor­row Ventures

Über­mor­gen Ventures is a Swiss invest­ment company that supports early-stage start­ups in climate tech and decar­bo­niza­tion across Europe. The firm’s funda­men­tal invest­ment hypo­the­sis is that there is an urgent need to deve­lop solu­ti­ons to the climate crisis and that this repres­ents a tremen­dous busi­ness oppor­tu­nity for start­ups through the decar­bo­niza­tion of products, proces­ses, services or busi­ness models. Über­mor­gen Ventures is led by four Mana­ging Part­ners with a strong back­ground and track record in early-stage startup finan­cing and aims to build a port­fo­lio of compa­nies that save more than one million tons of CO2 annually.

About High-Tech Gründerfonds

The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start-ups with growth poten­tial. With a volume of around EUR 900 million spread across three funds and an inter­na­tio­nal part­ner network, HTGF has supported more than 650 start-ups since 2005. His team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and start-up experts supports the young compa­nies with know-how, entre­pre­neu­rial spirit and passion. The focus is on high-tech start-ups in the fields of digi­tal tech, indus­trial tech, life scien­ces, chemis­try and rela­ted busi­ness areas. More than €4 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in more than 1,800 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. In addi­tion, the fund has alre­ady successfully sold shares in more than 150 companies.

News

Amster­dam / Munich / Rosen­heim — Egeria acqui­res Isoplus, a leading manu­fac­tu­rer of pre-insu­la­ted pipe systems for district heating supply. Egeria, a family-owned, pan-Euro­pean invest­ment company, will acquire 100% of the shares in Isoplus, based in Germany. Isoplus is a leading Euro­pean supplier of pre-insu­la­ted pipe systems with an outstan­ding market posi­tion in the district heating supply sector. In the future, the exis­ting manage­ment will run the company as co-owners and imple­ment the growth stra­tegy toge­ther with Egeria. The acqui­si­tion is subject to custo­mary closing condi­ti­ons and is expec­ted to close in the first quar­ter of 2022. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose details of the transaction.

Isoplus was foun­ded in 1974 and has become a leader in the Euro­pean district heating market. The company opera­tes 8 produc­tion sites, employs appro­xi­m­ately 1,200 people and is active in over 30 countries.

Isoplus’ main market, district heating, is conside­red a key element in the tran­si­tion to CO2-neutral heat gene­ra­tion. With many years of expe­ri­ence and a complete product port­fo­lio, as well as a broad Euro­pean market posi­tion, Isoplus is excel­lently posi­tio­ned to bene­fit from this attrac­tive and dyna­mic market, which is driven by a clear need for the expan­sion of envi­ron­men­tally friendly heat. Egeria’s invest­ment provi­des the company with the finan­cial back­ing and opera­tio­nal support to further acce­le­rate growth and deve­lop the company into a leading provi­der of sustainable, envi­ron­men­tally friendly heating services throug­hout Europe.

Hannes Rumer (photo), Mana­ging Part­ner DACH at Egeria in Munich: “We are impres­sed by Isoplus’ growth story. Through conti­nuous entre­pre­neur­ship, Isoplus has estab­lished a leading posi­tion in an attrac­tive market. The company is a great plat­form for future growth, and we want to further streng­then its posi­tion as a leading provi­der of sustainable, envi­ron­men­tally friendly heating solu­ti­ons. We look forward to working with manage­ment and support­ing the company in its next phase of growth.”

Wolf­gang Blum­schein, Roland Hirner and Jörg Kauschat, Isoplus Manage­ment: “We are deligh­ted to have Egeria as a new main share­hol­der of Isoplus. In recent years, we have conti­nuously deve­lo­ped Isoplus into one of the market leaders for district heating pipes. We are convin­ced that Isoplus is ready to acce­le­rate its growth as a provi­der of sustainable heating services and see Egeria as the ideal part­ner to realize the next phase of growth.”

Advi­sor to Egeria: Clif­ford Chance
Led by part­ner Dr. Nicole Englisch and senior asso­ciate Sina Schwirz (both Corporate/ M&A/ Private Equity, Munich).

About Isoplus Group
Isoplus is a leading supplier of ther­mally insu­la­ted pipe systems, mainly for district heating. In addi­tion to ther­mally insu­la­ted pipes, Isoplus also offers joint instal­la­tion services and coating services for other indus­trial pipes and products. Isoplus’ services include design, project manage­ment, produc­tion, cons­truc­tion super­vi­sion, instal­la­tion, docu­men­ta­tion and network moni­to­ring. The company has a broad custo­mer base of local utili­ties, muni­ci­pa­li­ties and contrac­tors served through a direct sales force. www.isoplus.de/home.html

About Egeria
Egeria is an inde­pen­dent pan-Euro­pean invest­ment company foun­ded in 1997 and focu­sed on medium-sized compa­nies. Egeria invests in healthy compa­nies with growth poten­tial. Egeria belie­ves in buil­ding great compa­nies toge­ther with entre­pre­neu­rial manage­ment teams (Boldly Buil­ding Together).

Egeria Private Equity Funds holds invest­ments in 13 compa­nies in the Nether­lands and the DACH region, while Egeria Ever­green holds invest­ments in 7 compa­nies. Egeria’s port­fo­lio compa­nies gene­rate combi­ned sales of more than EUR 2.4 billion and employ around 12,500 people. Other acti­vi­ties of the Egeria Group are Egeria Real Estate Invest­ments, Egeria Real Estate Deve­lo­p­ment and Egeria Listed Invest­ments. In 2018, Egeria laun­ched “Egeriado,” a corpo­rate giving program that supports projects in the fields of art, culture and social welfare. www.egeriagroup.com

About Clif­ford Chance

Clif­ford Chance, one of the worl­d’s leading law firms, is present for its clients with around 3,400 legal advi­sors in all major busi­ness centers around the world. In Germany, Clif­ford Chance is repre­sen­ted by around 300 lawy­ers, audi­tors, tax advi­sors and soli­ci­tors in Düssel­dorf, Frank­furt am Main and Munich.

News

Munich, Germany — Curtiss-Wright Corpo­ra­tion (Curtiss-Wright) has sold CWFC Phoe­nix Group (Phoe­nix) to Liberta Part­ners. Curtis-Wright was advi­sed on this tran­sac­tion by the inter­na­tio­nal law firm Reed Smith.

Phönix, based in Volk­mar­sen, Germany, is a leading manu­fac­tu­rer of high-quality valves for chemi­cal, petro­che­mi­cal, nuclear and conven­tio­nal power plants as well as for the oil and gas industry.

Liberta Part­ners, a Munich-based multi-family holding company, acqui­red Curtiss-Wrigh­t’s shares in a corpo­rate carve-out follo­wing Curtiss-Wrigh­t’s stra­te­gic decis­ion to focus on the defense sector.

The Reed Smith team that advi­sed on the tran­sac­tion was led by Constan­tin Conrads, Part­ner in the Munich Global Corpo­rate Group, who was the lead advi­sor on the sale of the company and nego­tia­ted the purchase agree­ment, Peter Teare, Part­ner in the London Global Corpo­rate Group, and Rita Gnoth-Novak, Senior Associate.
The entire Reed Smith team in Munich, Frank­furt and London included part­ners David Ashmore, William Sutton, Dr. Martin Bünning, Jan Weiss­ger­ber and Dr. Anette Gärt­ner as well as asso­cia­tes Phil­ipp Berg­mann, Heidi Paget-Brown and Frie­de­rike Wilde-Detmering.

Advi­sor Liberta Part­ners: Arqis in Munich
Dr. Mauritz von Einem, Benja­min Bandur and Rolf Tichy.

In-house Liberta:
Chris­tian Szczesny (Gene­ral Cousel). EC M&A from Frank­furt was invol­ved as M&A advisor.

About Liberta Partners

Liberta Part­ners is a multi-family holding company based in Munich. Liberta Part­ners invests in compa­nies predo­mi­nantly based in German-spea­king count­ries with clear opera­tio­nal and stra­te­gic deve­lo­p­ment poten­tial, in parti­cu­lar in corpo­rate spin-offs and succes­si­ons. The company actively deve­lops invest­ments as part of its long-term “100% Core & Care” concept. The port­fo­lio compa­nies bene­fit from Liberta Part­ners’ inno­va­tive entre­pre­neu­rial expe­ri­ence. Liberta Part­ners’ team consists of M&A, corpo­rate deve­lo­p­ment and legal profes­sio­nals as well as an active advi­sory board. www.liberta-partners.com

About Curtiss-Wright

Curtiss-Wright Corpo­ra­tion is an inno­va­tive engi­nee­ring company provi­ding advan­ced products, systems and services in flow control, motion control and surface treat­ment tech­no­lo­gies for the defense, energy and commercial/industrial markets. As the succes­sor company to Glenn Curtiss and the Wright Brot­hers, Curtiss-Wright has a long tradi­tion of desig­ning and manu­fac­tu­ring inno­va­tions and prides itself on its long-stan­ding custo­mer rela­ti­onships. The company employs around 9,700 people world­wide. www.curtisswright.com.

About Phoe­nix Group

The Phönix Group supplies the chemi­cal indus­try, refi­ne­ries and conven­tio­nal power plants world­wide with high-quality special valves in all stan­dards (DIN, ANSI, ASME, etc.). Nume­rous product and system certi­fi­ca­ti­ons ensure opti­mum safety and relia­bi­lity of Phoe­nix valves. The Phoe­nix Group is the worl­d’s tech­no­lo­gi­cal leader in the field of bellows valves. The product range also includes globe valves, gate valves, control valves, meter­ing line valves, change-over valves, check valves, strai­ner basket filters, high-pres­sure valves, and a wide range of special valves such as alky­la­tion valves and safety valves for the aero­space indus­try. State-of-the-art proces­sing tech­no­logy, highly quali­fied employees, constant coope­ra­tion with inter­na­tio­nal stan­dards orga­niza­ti­ons, sales offices in important markets and subsi­dia­ries in France and the USA ensure a high level of custo­mer service. www.cw-valvegroup.com/About/phonix

About Reed Smith

Reed Smith is one of the leading inter­na­tio­nal law firms with more than 1,700 lawy­ers in 30 offices in Europe, the United States, the Middle East and Asia. For more infor­ma­tion, visit www.reedsmith.com.

 

 

News

Munich — ARQIS advi­sed Dr. Simon Consul­ting GmbH on the sale of its subsi­dia­ries FuG Elek­tro­nik GmbH (Schechen/Rosenheim) and Guth High Voltage GmbH (Salach/ Göppin­gen) as part of a succes­sion plan. Both compa­nies, which curr­ently have a combi­ned work­force of around 170, will be taken over by Singa­pore-based XP POWER LTD. from Febru­ary 1, 2022.

FuG deve­lops and distri­bu­tes DC low, medium and high voltage power supplies. Guth deve­lops and distri­bu­tes DC high voltage power supplies and compon­ents. Both compa­nies have been successfully active in their respec­tive indus­tries for many years, have estab­lished a market-rele­vant posi­tion with conti­nuous growth and most recently gene­ra­ted sales of approx. 18 million euros. The sale to XP Power opens up far-reaching oppor­tu­ni­ties for the compa­nies to expand their inter­na­tio­nal presence and conti­nue their sustainable growth path, while finding a solu­tion for share­hol­der succes­sion and secu­ring both sites.

The ARQIS team around Prof. Dr. Chris­toph von Einem (photo) and Dr. Mauritz von Einem advi­sed Dr. Simon Consul­ting GmbH not only on all aspects of the company sale and the reor­ga­niza­tion of service rela­ti­onships, but also in the area of real estate.

Consul­tant Dr. Simon Consul­ting GmbH: ARQIS 
Prof. Dr. Chris­toph von Einem and Dr. Mauritz von Einem (both Lead; M&A); Part­ners: Marcus Noth­hel­fer (IP), Dr. Chris­tof Alex­an­der Schnei­der (M&A), Dr. Ulrich Lien­hard (Real Estate); Coun­sel: Jens Knip­ping (Tax); Mana­ging Asso­ciate: Benja­min Bandur (M&A); Associates:

Anselm Graf (Corpo­rate), Fran­ziska Resch (Real Estate)

News

Munich/Amsterdam — Amadys, a leading provi­der of passive network compo­nent solu­ti­ons for utility infra­struc­ture in the Bene­lux region and port­fo­lio company of Equis­tone Part­ners Europe, is acqui­ring the two sales specia­lists SKG Netz­werk­tech­nik GmbH and Muth Kommu­ni­ka­ti­ons­tech­nik GmbH. Follo­wing the market entry in Germany through the acqui­si­tion of tso GmbH in early 2021, the two acqui­si­ti­ons mark the next important mile­stone in Amadys’ buy & build stra­tegy. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose details of the transaction.

Amadys, head­quar­te­red in Belgium, offers a wide range of solu­ti­ons in the field of passive network compon­ents for utility networks — with a focus on tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons, water, gas and elec­tri­city — as well as for indus­trial appli­ca­ti­ons. Funds advi­sed by Equis­tone, toge­ther with the manage­ment team, acqui­red the Belgian end-to-end systems inte­gra­tor in Decem­ber 2019; since then, Amadys has been conti­nuously expan­ding and deve­lo­ping its market posi­tion with a targe­ted buy-&-build stra­tegy. The acqui­si­ti­ons of SKG and Muth repre­sent another important mile­stone for Amadys, follo­wing the market entry in Germany in 2021 — both in the expan­sion of its DACH presence and in its stra­tegy to become a leading pan-Euro­pean full-service provi­der for connec­ti­vity solutions.

SKG Netz­werk­tech­nik was foun­ded in 1978 as part of the SKB-GROUP and is one of the leading Austrian suppli­ers of active and passive products for tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons and data­com networks. Head­quar­te­red in Schwe­chat, Austria, the company, toge­ther with its Slova­kian subsi­diary FCS Fiber Compon­ents Slova­kia, serves a broad custo­mer base with a focus on the digi­tal infra­struc­ture, energy, and tech­no­logy and cons­truc­tion sectors. Thanks to its many years of exper­tise in the fiber optics sector, SKG and its solu­ti­ons have estab­lished them­sel­ves as a relia­ble part­ner for their customers.

Muth Kommu­ni­ka­ti­ons­tech­nik GmbH, based in Kabel­s­ke­tal near Leip­zig, is one of Germany’s leading specia­list whole­sa­lers for elec­tri­cal and commu­ni­ca­ti­ons tech­no­logy. The company was foun­ded in 1991 and focu­ses on the distri­bu­tion of antenna tech­no­logy for satel­lite and broad­band cable systems as well as products for data and network tech­no­logy — espe­ci­ally from the copper and fiber optic sector. The distri­bu­tion specia­list offers its custo­mers a broad product port­fo­lio from well-known manu­fac­tu­r­ers and in some cases acts as an exclu­sive logi­stics part­ner. With more than 1900 m² of warehouse space, Muth guaran­tees its custo­mers a high deli­very capa­city as well as fast deli­very times and, toge­ther with its exten­sive product know-how, has estab­lished itself as a well-known and relia­ble part­ner for its customers.

With the acqui­si­tion of the two compa­nies, which are excel­lently posi­tio­ned in their count­ries, Amadys reali­zes another mile­stone on its way to beco­ming a pan-Euro­pean full-service provi­der for connec­ti­vity solu­ti­ons: “The acqui­si­ti­ons of SKG and Muth mark an important step in the joint buy & build stra­tegy. Amadys has signi­fi­cantly expan­ded its geogra­phic foot­print over the past two years with loca­ti­ons in the Bene­lux, Germany, Denmark, Austria and Slova­kia — ideal condi­ti­ons to further drive the inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion of the group with the support of strong market dyna­mics”, comm­ents Tanja Berg, Invest­ment Direc­tor in Equis­to­ne’s Munich office (photo), the transaction.

“I am very plea­sed that SKG will become part of the Amadys Group,” adds Alex­an­der Trem­mel, mana­ging part­ner at SKB Indus­trie­hol­ding GmbH. “SKG serves an attrac­tive market that is poised to grow signi­fi­cantly due to increased data traf­fic and explo­ding demand for high-speed band­width. Toge­ther with Amadys, SKG will be able to further expand its market position.”

About Equis­tone Part­ners Europe

Equis­tone Part­ners Europe is one of the most active Euro­pean equity inves­tors with a team of more than 40 invest­ment specia­lists in seven offices in Germany, Switz­er­land, the Nether­lands, France and the UK. Equis­tone prima­rily invests in estab­lished medium-sized compa­nies with a good market posi­tion, above-average growth poten­tial and an enter­prise value of between EUR 50 and 500 million. Since incep­tion, equity has been inves­ted in more than 170 tran­sac­tions. The port­fo­lio curr­ently compri­ses over 50 compa­nies across Europe, inclu­ding around 20 active holdings in Germany, Switz­er­land, the Nether­lands and Belgium. Equis­tone is curr­ently inves­t­ing from its sixth fund, which closed in March 2018 with €2.8 billion. www.equistone.de

About Amadys
For more infor­ma­tion, visit www.amadys.be.

About SKG
For more infor­ma­tion, visit www.skg.at

About Muth GmbH
For more infor­ma­tion, visit www.muth.kt.de

News

Frank­furt — Eight Advi­sory, the Euro­pean tran­sac­tion and trans­for­ma­tion advi­sory firm, conti­nues its inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion with the opening of its fourth office in Germany, adding further exper­tise in carve-outs and trans­for­ma­tion proces­ses to its service port­fo­lio in Germany.

Eight Advi­so­ry’s pan-Euro­pean network with offices in France, Germany, the UK, Belgium, Switz­er­land and the Nether­lands will thus be further expan­ded to provide compre­hen­sive support to corpo­rate and private equity clients in complex cross-border tran­sac­tions. The DACH region is now the company’s second largest market after France, with addi­tio­nal offices in Frank­furt am Main, Munich, Hamburg and Zurich. In 2021 alone, the region advi­sed nume­rous well-known clients from the private equity and corpo­rate sectors on over 70 tran­sac­tions and projects. The steadily growing team of curr­ently 45 consul­tants — inclu­ding eight part­ners — demons­tra­tes the strong presence in the German-spea­king markets and covers the stra­te­gi­cally important busi­ness areas of Tran­sac­tion Advi­sory, M&A Tax, Trans­for­ma­tion, Infra­struc­ture and Project Finance as well as Restruc­tu­ring and Perfor­mance Improvement.

The Colo­gne office of Eight Advi­sory is headed by Curt-Oliver Luch­ten­berg, who has joined Eight Advi­sory toge­ther with other highly expe­ri­en­ced colle­agues. Curt-Oliver will lead the trans­for­ma­tion prac­tice in Germany. The local team can draw on the consul­ting and sector exper­tise of the 600 experts in Eight Advi­so­ry’s inter­na­tio­nal network.

Curt-Oliver Luch­ten­berg, 50, has dedi­ca­ted hims­elf to stra­tegy, trans­for­ma­tion and restruc­tu­ring consul­ting since his studies at the Euro­pean Busi­ness School in Oestrich-Winkel. After his early years on the stra­tegy team at Mitchell Madi­son Group and the restruc­tu­ring team at Roland Berger, he contin­ued his career at two Big Four consul­ting firms, first in the Opera­tio­nal Tran­sac­tion Services Prac­tice and later in the Stra­tegy Group of another Big Four firm.

From an opera­tio­nal perspec­tive, Curt-Oliver Luch­ten­berg has led major spin-offs, carve-outs, inte­gra­ti­ons and stra­tegy projects for well-known clients such as Siemens Energy, E.ON, Liberty Global, Lanxess, Heidel­berg­Ce­ment and Deut­sche Bahn, as well as assis­ting medium-sized compa­nies and private equity clients with complex transformations.

Curt-Oliver Luch­ten­berg: “No other tran­sac­tion advi­sory firm has such a broad and deep spec­trum of solu­ti­ons and services to offer and is as expe­ri­en­ced, inde­pen­dent, focu­sed and flexi­ble as Eight Advi­sory. It has always been my central guiding prin­ci­ple to support my custo­mers only to the extent that they really need it — without, of course, disre­gar­ding the tech­ni­cal and content-rela­ted necessities.”

“We are very plea­sed to have Curt-Oliver join us as a Trans­for­ma­tion Part­ner in Germany. His proven expe­ri­ence in hand­ling signi­fi­cant tran­sac­tions will streng­then our team and enhance our market coverage,” said Michael Wahl, Mana­ging Part­ner of Eight Advi­sory in Germany.

About Eight Advisory

Eight Advi­sory advi­ses entre­pre­neurs, CEOs, inves­tors and banks on tran­sac­tions, trans­for­ma­ti­ons, infra­struc­ture projects and project finan­cings as well as restruc­tu­rings and perfor­mance impro­ve­ment. Eight Advi­sory is a Euro­pean group with 600 employees, inclu­ding 74 part­ners, and with offices in Germany, France, the UK, Belgium, Switz­er­land and the Nether­lands. As a foun­ding member of Eight Inter­na­tio­nal, the company can draw on a global network of more than 3,600 specia­lists in over 30 count­ries in Europe, America, Asia and Ocea­nia. https://de.8advisory.com

News

Munich — The funds advi­sed by Equis­tone Part­ners Europe (“Equis­tone”) and the port­fo­lio company TIMETOACT GROUP, a leading provi­der of IT services for medium-sized compa­nies, corpo­ra­ti­ons and public insti­tu­ti­ons in Germany, Austria and Switz­er­land, have acqui­red the soft­ware trans­for­ma­tion expert PKS Soft­ware GmbH. Shear­man & Ster­ling advi­sed funds advi­sed by Equis­tone Part­ners Europe (“Equis­tone”) and TIMETOACT GROUP on the finan­cing of the add-on acqui­si­tion of PKS Soft­ware GmbH.

The long-stan­ding part­ner­ship between the two compa­nies will now be contin­ued and expan­ded under the umbrella of the TIMETOACT GROUP. The current PKS mana­ging direc­tors Heidi Schmidt and Roland Zurawka will conti­nue to manage the company. In addi­tion, Heidi Schmidt will become a share­hol­der in TIMETOACT GROUP.

The TIMETOACT GROUP, head­quar­te­red in Colo­gne, Germany, curr­ently compri­ses eight specia­li­zed corpo­rate brands at 16 loca­ti­ons in Germany, Austria and Switz­er­land: ARS, CLOUDPILOTS, edcom, IPG, nova­Capta, synaigy, TIMETOACT and X‑INTEGRATE.

Foun­ded in 1991, PKS specia­li­zes in the custo­mer-speci­fic further deve­lo­p­ment of busi­ness-criti­cal indi­vi­dual soft­ware. The focus is on support­ing compa­nies in opti­mi­zing grown soft­ware land­scapes in such a way that they can colla­bo­rate with their custo­mers and suppli­ers effi­ci­ently, in line with the times and without errors.

The Shear­man & Ster­ling team included part­ner Winfried M. Carli and asso­ciate Daniel Wagner (both Munich-Finance).

Respon­si­ble for the tran­sac­tion on the part of TIMETOACT are Frank Fuchs and Chris­tian Koch. TIMETOACT was advi­sed on the tran­sac­tion by AC CHRISTES & PARTNER (Finan­cial & Tax) and de Ange­lis Attor­neys at Law (Legal).

The PKS share­hol­ders were advi­sed on the tran­sac­tion by Steu­er­erkanz­lei Sera­fini (Finan­cial & Tax) and Geiß­ler Rechts­an­wälte (Legal).

About Shear­man & Sterling
Shear­man & Ster­ling is an inter­na­tio­nal law firm with 25 offices in 13 count­ries and appro­xi­m­ately 850 lawy­ers. In Germany, Shear­man & Ster­ling has offices in Frank­furt and Munich. The firm is one of the inter­na­tio­nal market leaders in advi­sing on complex cross-border tran­sac­tions. World­wide, Shear­man & Ster­ling prima­rily advi­ses inter­na­tio­nal corpo­ra­ti­ons and large natio­nal compa­nies, finan­cial insti­tu­ti­ons, and large mid-sized compa­nies. www.shearman.com.

News

Berlin — Circula GmbH (www.circula.com) successfully closed a EUR 12 million Series A finan­cing round. The VC fund Alstin Capi­tal, which is backed by entre­pre­neur Cars­ten Maschmeyer, as well as the VC funds Peak (Nether­lands) and Storm Ventures (USA) joined the finan­cing round. Invest­ments were also made by exis­ting share­hol­ders, inclu­ding Capna­mic, WenVest Capi­tal and Personio.

The Berlin-based soft­ware-as-a-service fintech is the first to combine fully digi­tal employee expense reports, digi­tal employee bene­fits and a smart corpo­rate credit card into one product.

Circula is deve­lo­ping a compre­hen­sive Employee Finance App that allows employees to digi­tally process expen­ses, such as out-of-pocket expen­ses and travel expen­ses, and employee bene­fits in a tax-compli­ant manner. In addi­tion, employees receive corpo­rate credit cards with real credit lines, cash backs and real-time state­ments that are fully inte­gra­ted with Circula work­flows. Circula soft­ware is opti­mi­zed for seam­less inte­gra­tion into accoun­ting proces­ses and complies with Euro­pean tax standards.

Thanks to the conti­nuous expan­sion of the product, the start-up run by the two foun­ders Niko­lai Skatch­kov and Roman Leicht has recently been able to signi­fi­cantly increase its custo­mer and reve­nue base. Circu­la’s appro­xi­m­ately 1,000 custo­mers include Ebner Stolz, DFL, McMak­ler, Infarm and Orthomol.

Consul­tant Circula : LUTZ | ABEL
The team consis­ted of Dr. Lorenz Jelling­haus, photo © LUTZ | ABEL (lead), Constanze Hach­mann and Maxi­mi­lian Franz (all VC, Hamburg).

News

Frank­furt a. M. — commerce­tools GmbH, a port­fo­lio company of Insight Part­ners, has acqui­red the composable front-end provi­der Fron­ta­stic GmbH. Foun­ded in 2017, Fron­ta­stic is a composable front-end plat­form that enables busi­ness and deve­lo­p­ment teams to create unique commerce sites. Within a short time Fron­ta­stic has successfully estab­lished itself as the new stan­dard for commerce frontends. Will­kie Farr & Gallag­her LLP advi­sed commerce­tools GmbH on this transaction.

Foun­ded in Munich, commerce­tools is a leading plat­form for next-gene­ra­tion B2C and B2B commerce, offe­ring advan­ced tech­no­logy that enables compa­nies to over­come the limi­ta­ti­ons of tradi­tio­nal commerce plat­forms. commerce­tools has intro­du­ced a modu­lar, API and cloud-based commerce plat­form that lever­a­ges micro­ser­vices to give busi­nesses the flexi­bi­lity and speed they need to deli­ver excep­tio­nal digi­tal commerce expe­ri­en­ces. This solu­tion, now known as “head­less commerce,” is the foun­da­tion for modern tech­no­logy systems. commerce­tools has offices in the US, Europe and Asia Paci­fic and employs over 300 people. commerce­tools’ soft­ware has been imple­men­ted by compa­nies in a variety of indus­tries, from retail and manu­fac­tu­ring to tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons and fashion.

Advi­sor commerce­tools GmbH: Will­kie advi­sed on all aspects of the transaction

The Will­kie team was led by the part­ners Dr. Kamyar Abrar (photo ) and Miriam Steets (both Corporate/M&A, Frank­furt) and included part­ner Dr. Bettina Bokeloh (Tax, Frank­furt), coun­sel Wulf Kring (Tax) and Wolf­gang Münchow (Corporate/M&A, both Frank­furt) and asso­cia­tes Sebas­tian Bren­ner, Nils Bock, Phil­ipp Oehler­king (all Corporate/M&A) and Dr. Nadine Kramer (Labor Law, all Frankfurt).

Advi­sor commerce­tools GmbH: KNPZ Rechts­an­wälte advi­sed on IP issues

The KNPZ team was led by part­ner Dr. Kai-Uwe Plath and included asso­cia­tes Jan Schä­fer, Matthias Struck and Dr. Enno ter Haze­borg (all Hamburg).

About Will­kie Farr & Gallag­her LLP

Will­kie Farr & Gallag­her LLP is an inter­na­tio­nal law firm of more than 1,000 lawy­ers with offices in Brussels, Chicago, Frank­furt, Hous­ton, London, Los Ange­les, Milan, New York, Palo Alto, Paris, Rome, San Fran­cisco and Washing­ton. www.willkie.com

News

Colo­gne, Germany — Global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright has advi­sed Modern Times Group MTG AB (MTG) on the sale of ESL Gaming to Savvy Gaming Group (SGG). ESL Gaming is valued at an enter­prise value of $1.05 billion. MTG holds 91.46 percent of ESL Gaming.

ESL Gaming is the worl­d’s largest inde­pen­dent esports company (Photo © ESL Gaming). Follo­wing the tran­sac­tion, MTG will fully focus on acce­le­ra­ting the growth of its pure-play gaming busi­ness. MTG intends to distri­bute at least 40 percent of the net proceeds to its share­hol­ders, while the rema­in­der of the proceeds will be used to streng­then MTG’s posi­tion in the global gaming market and to further imple­ment its buy-and-build strategy.

SGG also acqui­res FACEIT at the same time and will merge the two compa­nies into the leading global plat­form in the compe­ti­tive gaming sector — the ESL FACEIT Group. The tran­sac­tion is subject to regu­la­tory appr­oval, which includes an anti­trust and foreign trade review.

The Norton Rose Fulbright team was led by London part­ners Sean Murphy and Clemen­tine Hogarth and Frank­furt part­ner Nils Rahlf.

“The sale of ESL will enable MTG to focus on its gaming busi­ness and we are plea­sed to have successfully part­ne­red with MTG on this exci­ting tran­sac­tion. Norton Rose Fulbrigh­t’s M&A prac­tice has had a dyna­mic start to 2022, and we expect this to conti­nue,” says Nils Rahlf.

The Norton Rose Fulbright team also included senior asso­cia­tes Victo­ria Scopes and Jan-Peter Heise and asso­cia­tes Jessica Berke­ley and Rebecca Lander.

Addi­tio­nal support was provi­ded by London part­ners Michael Black, Mike Knap­per, Domi­nic Stut­taford and Michael Allis­ton, Frank­furt part­ner Tino Duttiné and Hamburg part­ner Tim Scha­per, as well as senior asso­cia­tes Kyle Rains­ford and Alex Redbourne.

The law firm has alre­ady advi­sed MTG on the acqui­si­tion of shares in Inno­Ga­mes GmbH (Inno­Ga­mes) and on the acqui­si­tion of Hutch Games Ltd (Hutch).

About ESL Gaming

Colo­gne — ESL Gaming is the worl­d’s leading esports company. For more than two deca­des, we have been shaping the indus­try and leading esports and gaming inno­va­tion globally across the most popu­lar video games, crea­ting a compre­hen­sive ecosys­tem with oppor­tu­ni­ties for play­ers to go from zero to hero, and for fans to witness the best stories esports has to offer.

About MTG

Stock­holm — MTG is a pure-play esport and gaming invest­ment company. We have a port­fo­lio of compa­nies in two verti­cals, esport and gaming, compri­sing some of the stron­gest brands in the indus­try. MTG stri­ves to be the part­ner of choice for esport and gaming entre­pre­neurs, brin­ging indus­trial exper­tise, know-how and finan­cial flexi­bi­lity. We have an active owner­ship approach, working in close colla­bo­ra­tion with our port­fo­lio compa­nies to drive long-term profi­ta­bi­lity and sustainable growth. www.mtg.com

About Norton Rose Fulbright

Norton Rose Fulbright is a global busi­ness law firm. With more than 4,000 lawy­ers in over 50 offices world­wide in Europe, the United States, Canada, Latin America, Asia, Austra­lia, Africa and the Middle East, we advise leading natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal companies.

We offer our clients compre­hen­sive advice in all major indus­tries. These include Finan­cial Insti­tu­ti­ons; Energy; Infra­struc­ture, Mining and Commo­di­ties; Trans­por­ta­tion; Tech­no­logy and Inno­va­tion; and Life Scien­ces and Health­care. Our global Risk Advi­sory Group combi­nes this exten­sive indus­try expe­ri­ence with its exper­tise in legal, regu­la­tory, compli­ance and gover­nance matters. This enables us to provide our clients with prac­ti­cal solu­ti­ons to the legal and regu­la­tory risks they face.

The Swiss asso­cia­tion Norton Rose Fulbright helps to coor­di­nate the acti­vi­ties of Norton Rose Fulbright members, but does not provide legal advice to clients. Norton Rose Fulbright has offices in more than 50 cities world­wide, inclu­ding London, Hous­ton, New York, Toronto, Mexico City, Hong Kong, Sydney and Johan­nes­burg. For more infor­ma­tion, visit nortonrosefulbright.com/legal-notices.

 

News

Nurem­berg — At the begin­ning of the new finan­cial year 2022, the Max Bögl Group has streng­the­ned its posi­tion in the field of hori­zon­tal dril­ling tech­no­logy by acqui­ring the renow­ned company BFT Bohr- und Fräs­tech­nik GmbH from Saal an der Saale from its sole share­hol­der Dipl.-Ing. Uwe Hey. Max Bögl thus expands its service port­fo­lio by an important compo­nent. BFT GmbH has more than thirty years of expe­ri­ence in tren­chl­ess pipe­line cons­truc­tion. In addi­tion to press dril­ling and pilot pipe jack­ing, hori­zon­tal direc­tional dril­ling (HDD) will in future also be ancho­red in Max Bögl’s exten­sive range of services.

Under the manage­ment of Dipl.-Ing. Uwe Hey and his twenty-strong team, as well as the exis­ting modern equip­ment pool, BFT GmbH ideally comple­ments the port­fo­lio of Max Bögl’s Pipe Jacking/HDD divi­sion in the Infra­struc­ture busi­ness unit with its exper­tise. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price.

During the acqui­si­tion of BFT GmbH, Max Bögl was accom­pa­nied throug­hout the entire process and provi­ded with compre­hen­sive legal advice by a team of law firm THEOPARK in Nurem­berg specia­li­zing in M&A tran­sac­tions under the leader­ship of part­ner Gernot Gies­ecke (photo). THEOPARK has been working for the Max Bögl group of compa­nies in the field of commer­cial law, in parti­cu­lar in the areas of M&A as well as corpo­rate law, since its foundation.

Consul­tant Max Bögl Group: THEOPARK, Nuremberg
Gernot Gies­ecke, Part­ner (Lead Part­ner, Corpo­rate Law, M&A)
Rainer Schaaf, LL.M., Part­ner (M&A)

About THEOPARK

THEOPARK is a commer­cial law firm specia­li­zing in corpo­rate law, M&A, insol­vency law and tax law, based in Nurem­berg. The 6 foun­ding part­ners advise natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal compa­nies, inves­tors and insol­vency admi­nis­tra­tors on all commer­cial law issues. www.theopark.com.

 

News

Wend­lin­gen — Crédit Mutuel Equity, the inter­na­tio­nal direct invest­ment company of Crédit Mutuel Alli­ance Fédé­rale, is inves­t­ing addi­tio­nal capi­tal in CF Group, incre­asing its mino­rity stake in the company. The CF Group is loca­ted in Wend­lin­gen am Neckar and is one of the two largest compa­nies in Europe for the produc­tion and equip­ment of swim­ming pools. Crédit Mutuel Equity has held a stake in the company since the end of 2019. Finan­cial details of the tran­sac­tion were not disclosed.

Sébas­tien Neiss (photo), Mana­ging Direc­tor of Crédit Mutuel Equity in Germany, said: “We only invest equity from the Crédit Mutuel Alli­ance Fédé­rale balance sheet, so we have a free hand in how we use the proceeds from dispo­sals of port­fo­lio compa­nies. Each year, we reinvest around one-third of these proceeds in the exis­ting port­fo­lio of more than 330 compa­nies around the world in which we have a stake. We use the remai­ning two-thirds for new invest­ments. The advan­tage of our ‘pati­ent capi­tal’ is its great flexi­bi­lity: We are able to accom­pany compa­nies over time hori­zons that are tail­o­red to their respec­tive projects and thus enable us to create value for all stake­hol­ders — manage­ment, share­hol­ders and employees. Ther­e­fore, it is wort­hwhile for us to increase our invest­ments both in chal­len­ging phases and when growth pros­pects are parti­cu­larly posi­tive, e.g. through exter­nal growth projects. CF Group has deve­lo­ped extra­or­di­na­rily successfully since our invest­ment and the further pros­pects are also very good. With addi­tio­nal capi­tal, we want to do our part to leverage the company’s long-term deve­lo­p­ment potential.”

CF Group was formed from the 2019 merger of Germany’s Chemo­form AG and Fran­ce’s FIJA Group. The tran­sac­tion took place with the support of Crédit Mutuel Equity, which also acqui­red a stake in the newly crea­ted company. Since then, CF Group has acqui­red three more compa­nies, inclu­ding the acqui­si­tion of a majo­rity stake in Dr. Nüsken Chemie GmbH, in which it alre­ady held a mino­rity stake.

Cedrik Mayer-Klenk, CEO of Chemo­form AG, added: “For many years now, we have been pursuing a growth stra­tegy in which we open up new markets or addi­tio­nal distri­bu­tion chan­nels by acqui­ring comple­men­tary compa­nies or long-stan­ding coope­ra­tion part­ners. Having the finan­cial strength and M&A exper­tise of an active mino­rity share­hol­der expe­ri­en­ced in such proces­ses in the back­ground helps us a lot. We have become faster in decis­ion-making and more profes­sio­nal in the execu­tion of acqui­si­ti­ons and can main­tain a very solid equity ratio even with ambi­tious growth.”

Advi­sor to the tran­sac­tion: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek
Dr. Rainer Hersch­lein, Bene­dikt Raisch

About CF Group

CF Group is a leading Euro­pean company for swim­ming pool tech­no­logy, main­ten­ance and water treat­ment. The company was formed by the merger of Chemo­form AG, foun­ded in Wend­lin­gen (Germany) in 1962, and the FIJA Group, foun­ded in Brécé (France) in 1975. With its multi-brand port­fo­lio, CF Group covers the entire spec­trum from cons­truc­tion, equip­ment and main­ten­ance to clean­li­ness, hygiene and care of private and public pools. The group employs more than 1,000 people, opera­tes in more than 40 count­ries world­wide and gene­ra­tes sales of more than 300 million euros annu­ally. www.chemoform.com

About Crédit Mutuel Equity

Crédit Mutuel Equity bund­les the inter­na­tio­nal direct invest­ment busi­ness of the French banking group Crédit Mutuel Alli­ance Fédé­rale. The subsi­diary offers medium-sized compa­nies solu­ti­ons in all areas of equity financing.

At Crédit Mutuel Equity, the focus is on the rela­ti­onship and close coope­ra­tion between the expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment team and the execu­ti­ves in the port­fo­lio compa­nies. With the long-term perspec­tive of a fund-inde­pen­dent “ever­green” approach, the company has alre­ady been successful for 40 years.

Crédit Mutuel Equity curr­ently has around 3.5 billion euros of equity inves­ted, and its port­fo­lio consists of more than 330 compa­nies. Since 2016, the company has expan­ded its acti­vi­ties to Canada (Mont­real and Toronto), USA (New York and Boston), Germany (Frank­furt) and Switz­er­land (Geneva and Zurich). www.creditmutuel-equity.eu

About Crédit Mutuel Alli­ance Fédérale

Crédit Mutuel Alli­ance Fédé­rale is one of Fran­ce’s leading banks, with more than 75,000 employees1 serving over 29 million customers1. With a network of around 4,500 branches1, Crédit Mutuel Alli­ance Fédé­rale offers a compre­hen­sive range of services for private custo­mers, the self-employed and compa­nies of all sizes. With equity of EUR 51.8 billion2 and a CET1 ratio of 18.3%2 , the Group is one of the best-capi­ta­li­zed banks in Europe.

The Crédit Mutuel Alli­ance Fédé­rale is compo­sed of the Crédit Mutuel sub-asso­cia­ti­ons Centre Est Europe (Stras­bourg), Sud-Est (Lyon), Ile-de-France (Paris), Savoie-Mont Blanc (Annecy), Midi-Atlan­tique (Toulouse), Loire-Atlan­tique and Centre Ouest (Nantes), Centre (Orlé­ans), Normandy (Caen), Dauphiné-Viva­rais (Valence), Médi­ter­ra­néen (Marseille), Anjou (Angers), Massif Central (Cler­mont-Ferrand), Antil­les-Guyane (Fort-de-France) and Nord Europe (Lille).

Crédit Mutuel Alli­ance Fédé­rale also includes Caisse Fédé­rale de Crédit Mutuel, Banque Fédé­ra­tive du Crédit Mutuel (BFCM) and all its subsi­dia­ries, inclu­ding CIC, Euro-Infor­ma­tion, Assu­ran­ces du Crédit Mutuel (ACM), Targ­obank, Cofi­dis, Banque Euro­pé­enne du Crédit Mutuel (BECM), Banque de Luxem­bourg, Banque Trans­at­lan­tique and Homiris.

News

Dresden/ Berlin — The Series C finan­cing of Dres­den-based robo­tics soft­ware company Wandel­bots has a total volume of $84 million. This brings Wandel­bots’ total funding to $123 million. The New York-based venture capi­tal and private equity firm Insight Part­ners, which holds stakes in compa­nies such as Blin­kist, N26, HelloFresh, BlaB­la­Car, Twit­ter and Shop­ify, has joined as a new inves­tor. In addi­tion, exis­ting inves­tors 83North, Micro­soft, Next47, Paua, Atlan­tic Labs and EQT also parti­ci­pa­ted in the finan­cing round. — A YPOG team co-led by Benja­min Ullrich and Emma Peters provi­ded compre­hen­sive legal advice to Wandel­bots on its latest finan­cing round.

The no-code approach of Wandel­bots allows appli­ca­tion experts to teach their robots inde­pendently without having to have programming know­ledge. An initial product, Wandel­bots Teaching, is based on agno­stic soft­ware with an easy-to-use inter­face that works the same for every robot — regard­less of manu­fac­tu­rer or appli­ca­tion. Wandel­bots Teaching enables compa­nies of all sizes to advance their auto­ma­tion with indus­trial robots.

The solu­tion is expec­ted to be used in all robots world­wide in the near future and will be available for every poten­tial use case. To this end, the robo­tics soft­ware company is inves­t­ing in acce­le­ra­ted product deve­lo­p­ment. In addi­tion to buil­ding new go-to-market orga­niza­ti­ons in North America and Asia, Wandel­bots is also aiming for global expan­sion. As a next step, Wandel­bots plans to expand and open up its robo­tics soft­ware plat­form. Provi­ders of auto­ma­tion solu­ti­ons and soft­ware deve­lo­pers can then use the tech­no­logy to deve­lop their own solu­ti­ons in the shor­test possi­ble time without being tied to a speci­fic manufacturer.

Consul­tant Wandel­bots: YPOG

Dr. Benja­min Ullrich (Co-Lead, Corporate/Transactions), Partner
Emma Peters (Co-Lead, Corporate/Transactions), Senior Associate
Dr. Bene­dikt Flöter (IP/IT), Asso­cia­ted Partner

About Wandel­bots

Wandel­bots belie­ves that the world will be a better place if people can focus on their crea­ti­vity and hand over mono­to­nous work to robots. ‘Robots for the people’ — that is the company’s motto. It repres­ents the mission to empower every human to work with robots. For this, Wandel­bots offers the simp­lest solu­tion for robot programming ‘Wandel­bots Teaching’ and an over­ar­ching deve­lo­per plat­form for robo­tics. Curr­ently, robots from Univer­sal Robots & Yaskawa are being used with Wandel­bots tech­no­logy at compa­nies such as BMW, Bayer, VW, Fraun­ho­fer, Schaeff­ler, Rotop and Vitesco. Wandel­bots has part­ner­ships with leading OT system inte­gra­tors in Europe such as Gibas, Alumo­tion, Heiden­bluth and Sojka. Wandel­bots employs more than 140 people from 17 count­ries — its head­quar­ters are in Dres­den, Germany.

About Insight Partners

Insight Part­ners is a leading global venture capi­tal and private equity firm that invests in high-growth tech­no­logy and soft­ware scale-up compa­nies driving trans­for­ma­tive change in their indus­tries. Insight Part­ners, foun­ded in 2005, has inves­ted in more than 400 compa­nies world­wide and has recei­ved more than $30 billion in capi­tal commit­ments through a number of funds. Insigh­t’s mission is to find, fund and successfully part­ner with visio­nary leaders by provi­ding them with prac­ti­cal, real-world soft­ware exper­tise to drive their long-term success. Through its people and port­fo­lio, Insight fosters a culture based on the belief that ScaleUp compa­nies and growth create oppor­tu­ni­ties for all.

About YPOG
YPOG is a specia­list tax and commer­cial law firm, opera­ting in the core areas of corpo­rate, funds, liti­ga­tion, tax, tran­sac­tions, IP/IT and nota­rial services. The YPOG team advi­ses a wide variety of clients. These include emer­ging tech­no­logy compa­nies and family-run medium-sized enter­pri­ses as well as corpo­ra­ti­ons and private equity/venture capi­tal funds. YPOG is one of the leading addres­ses for venture capi­tal, private equity and fund struc­tu­ring in Germany. The firm and its part­ners are natio­nally and inter­na­tio­nally ranked by JUVE, Best Lawy­ers, Legal 500, Focus, and Cham­bers and Part­ners. www.ypog.law

News

Karls­ruhe — HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons raises €12 million in Series A. Quan­to­na­tion, a VC fund specia­li­zing in quan­tum compu­ting, leads the funding round. The alre­ady invol­ved inves­tors UVC Part­ners, btov Indus­trial Tech­no­lo­gies and High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) invest again.

HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons is a spin-off of the Karls­ruhe Insti­tute of Tech­no­logy (KIT) and, as part of the Q‑Exa consor­tium, provi­des the soft­ware for the first quan­tum compu­ter manu­fac­tu­red in Germany.

With the new capi­tal, HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons intends to streng­then its cloud plat­form HQS Quan­tum Assis­ted Design as well as expand its open source library Active Space Finder.

HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons, Euro­pe’s leading startup for complex quan­tum simu­la­ti­ons, closes a Series A funding round. Toge­ther with new rese­arch funding, HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons is thus raising over 12 million euros. French quan­tum VC fund Quan­to­na­tion leads the finan­cing round as a new inves­tor. The alre­ady parti­ci­pa­ting VC funds UVC Part­ners, btov Indus­trial Tech­no­lo­gies and HTGF reaf­firm their commit­ment through rene­wed investments.

The market for quan­tum tech­no­logy has been growing rapidly for seve­ral years and reached a new record high last year. In Germany, HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons is driving the key tech­no­logy forward as part of the Q‑Exa consor­tium, among others. The inter­di­sci­pli­nary project aims to install the first German-made quan­tum compu­ter at the Leib­nitz Compu­ting Center before the end of this year. Like most large-scale compu­ting centers, the High Perfor­mance Compu­ting Center of the Bava­rian Academy of Scien­ces uses signi­fi­cant porti­ons of its compu­ting power to solve quan­tum mecha­ni­cal problems. HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons provi­des the neces­sary software.

With the capi­tal from the new finan­cing round, HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons intends to further streng­then its posi­tion as a leading Euro­pean soft­ware provi­der in the field of quan­tum simu­la­tion. Foun­ded by four quan­tum physi­cists, the startup has been deve­lo­ping effi­ci­ent quan­tum algo­rithms for mate­ri­als, chemi­cal and phar­maceu­ti­cal rese­arch since 2017. The new round of funding will enable HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons to further deve­lop its Quan­tum Assis­ted Design cloud plat­form and expand its open-source Active Space Finder library.

For its Quan­tum Assis­ted Design cloud plat­form, HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons is deve­lo­ping unique soft­ware opti­mi­zed for use on current quan­tum compu­ters. In the near future, it will enable rese­arch groups and compa­nies without access to their own quan­tum hard­ware to perform the same quan­tum simu­la­ti­ons that HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons enables with its soft­ware at the Leib­niz Compu­ting Center. With the open source library Active Space Finder, HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons is the only company in the world working on a solu­tion to the so-called Active Space Problem. Only the solu­tion of this problem enables prac­ti­cal use of quan­tum compu­ters for mate­rial simulation.

“The new round of finan­cing gives us the boost we need to further expand our team, streng­then our foun­da­tion and serve our custo­mers’ needs even more effi­ci­ently. The fact that our inves­tors have reaf­firmed their trust in us and that Quan­to­na­tion, the most renow­ned VC fund in the indus­try, has joined us shows that we are on the right track,” says Michael Martha­ler, Mana­ging Direc­tor of HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons.

The enorm­ous poten­tial as well as the recent advan­ces in tech­no­logy are attrac­ting more and more capital.

“Quan­tum simu­la­tion is on the verge of brin­ging signi­fi­cant commer­cial value to indus­trial appli­ca­ti­ons and we believe HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons is best posi­tio­ned to deli­ver on this promise,” Yann Fiebig, Prin­ci­pal at HTGF.

Benja­min Erhart of UVC Part­ners also assu­mes this: “We believe that HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons will become the leading Euro­pean player in quan­tum simu­la­tion and bring great bene­fits to our society.”

Quan­to­na­tion, the worl­d’s first VC fund specia­li­zing in quan­tum tech­no­logy, leads the finan­cing round.

“We want to advance the deve­lo­p­ment of quan­tum tech­no­lo­gies and their use in commer­cial products. High perfor­mance compu­ting is an exci­ting market for this and we are confi­dent that HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons is deve­lo­ping the right products for quan­tum-level chemi­cal and physi­cal simu­la­ti­ons to make a huge impact in these indus­tries,” Chris­to­phe Jurc­zak of Quan­to­na­tion.

btov Indus­trial Tech­no­lo­gies remains invested.

“We look forward to helping the HQS team bring available quan­tum compu­ting to the mate­ri­als science and phar­maceu­ti­cal indus­tries,” said Chris­tian Reit­ber­ger, part­ner btov.

Co-foun­der and COO of HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons Iris Schwenk is convin­ced that this goal is within reach with the new round of funding: “When we star­ted in 2017, we were four scien­tists who wanted to build a bridge between acade­mia and indus­try in quan­tum compu­ting. Today, with more than 30 talen­ted scien­tists from a wide range of disci­pli­nes, we are the leading quan­tum startup in Europe — and we’re just getting started.”

About HQS Quan­tum Simulations
HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons was foun­ded in 2017 as a spin-off of the Karls­ruhe Insti­tute of Tech­no­logy (KIT) and deve­lops soft­ware for the simu­la­tion of quan­tum systems. The star­tup’s soft­ware works on conven­tio­nal compu­ters, but can be easily trans­fer­red to quan­tum compu­ters. HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons’ goal with this approach is to enable compa­nies and rese­ar­chers to quickly and effi­ci­ently tran­si­tion their simu­la­tion work­flow to quan­tum compu­ting as it beco­mes available.

About High-Tech Gründerfonds
The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start-ups with growth poten­tial. With a volume of around EUR 900 million spread across three funds and an inter­na­tio­nal part­ner network, HTGF has supported more than 650 start-ups since 2005. His team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and start-up experts supports the young compa­nies with know-how, entre­pre­neu­rial spirit and passion. The focus is on high-tech start-ups in the fields of digi­tal tech, indus­trial tech, life scien­ces, chemis­try and rela­ted busi­ness areas. More than EUR 3.5 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in more than 1,800 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. In addi­tion, the fund has alre­ady successfully sold shares in more than 150 companies.

Inves­tors in the public-private part­ner­ship include the German Fede­ral Minis­try of Econo­mics and Climate Protec­tion, KfW Capi­tal, the Fraun­ho­fer-Gesell­schaft and the compa­nies ALTANA, BASF, Bayer, Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim, B.Braun, Robert Bosch, BÜFA, CEWE, Deut­sche Bank, Deut­sche Post DHL, Dräger, 1+1 AG, EVONIK, EWE AG, FOND OF, Haniel, Hettich, Knauf, Körber, LANXESS, media + more venture Betei­li­gungs GmbH & Co. KG, PHOENIX CONTACT, QIAGEN, RWE Gene­ra­tion SE, SAP, Schufa, Schwarz Gruppe, STIHL, Thüga, Vector Infor­ma­tik, WACKER and Wilh. Werhahn KG.

 

News

Freiburg/Berlin/Paris — INERATEC wins stra­te­gic inves­tors to increase produc­tion capa­city for synthe­tic fuels from CO2 and green hydro­gen into the mega­ton range. With the new share­hol­ders from the energy, avia­tion and ship­ping indus­tries, INERATEC is crea­ting the frame­work for signi­fi­cant corpo­rate growth.

The law firm Fried­rich Graf von West­pha­len & Part­ner (FGvW) advi­sed the French groups ENGIE and SAFRAN on the 20 million Euro Series A finan­cing round of Inera­tec GmbH. ENGIE and SAFRAN have each inves­ted in Inera­tec through their invest­ment compa­nies ENGIE New Ventures (ENV) and Safran Corpo­rate Ventures. In addi­tion to ENGIE and SAFRAN, five other inves­tors, inclu­ding the German MPC Group, parti­ci­pa­ted in the financing.

The finan­cing consor­tium consists of the current inves­tors High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF), Extan­tia Capi­tal, FO Holding and Planet A as well as the new part­ners Engie, Safran and MPC.

The growth capi­tal will enable Inera­tec to further expand the produc­tion of carbon-neutral synthe­tic fuels and plan a pionee­ring indus­trial plant in Frank­furt Höchst.

Inera­tec GmbH, foun­ded in 2014 out of KIT and head­quar­te­red in Karls­ruhe, is a leading manu­fac­tu­rer of modu­lar chemi­cal plants for the produc­tion of synthe­tic fuels, which are used in avia­tion, among other appli­ca­ti­ons. In addi­tion, the plants can produce synthe­tic natu­ral gas, chemi­cal feedstocks and methanol.

INERATEC has alre­ady opened the worl­d’s largest pilot plant for the produc­tion of sustainable e‑kerosene in Emsland, Lower Saxony, in 2021. Now the company is plan­ning an indus­trial pionee­ring plant for the produc­tion of sustainable synthe­tic fuels near Frank­furt Airport start­ing in 2022. Up to 4.6 million liters of INERATEC e‑Fuels are to be produ­ced annu­ally from up to 10,000 tons of bioge­nic CO2 and rene­wa­ble elec­tri­city. The company will further expand its leading posi­tion in the field of power-to-liquid.

ENGIE, head­quar­te­red in La Défense in the French capi­tal Paris, is a listed energy group with over 150,000 employees and around 60 billion euros in annual sales. ENV is an ENGIE invest­ment fund endo­wed with 180 million euros that invests in start-ups rele­vant to the energy transition.

The Safran tech­no­logy group, also listed on the stock exch­ange and head­quar­te­red in Paris, is a leading supplier to the inter­na­tio­nal aero­space indus­try and gene­ra­tes annual sales of around 16.5 billion euros with appro­xi­m­ately 80,000 employees.

Engie and Safran were advi­sed by a cross-office M&A team of Fried­rich Graf von West­pha­len & Part­ner led by Dr. Barbara Mayer (photo). CMS was active on the oppo­site side.

Advi­sors to Engie & Safran: Fried­rich Graf von West­pha­len & Part­ner, Freiburg
Dr. Barbara Mayer, Part­ner (Lead Part­ner, Corpo­rate, M&A, Freiburg)
Chris­tian Burmeis­ter, Senior Asso­ciate (Corpo­rate, M&A, Berlin)

Advi­sors to Inera­tec: CMS, Berlin

About INERATEC

INERA­TEC’s tech­no­logy is making a signi­fi­cant contri­bu­tion to achie­ving the Paris climate targets by provi­ding a sustainable solu­tion for the avia­tion, marine, auto­mo­tive and chemi­cal indus­tries. Sustainable e‑fuels can defos­si­lize these sectors. To turn this vision into reality, produc­tion capa­ci­ties for CO2-neutral fuels and chemi­cals must be expan­ded rapidly.

INERATEC was awarded the Next Economy Award of the German Sustaina­bi­lity Award. The award reco­gni­zes foun­ders whose inno­va­tive busi­ness models are actively shaping the tran­si­tion to a more sustainable economy.

News

Munich / Mülheim an der Ruhr / Nurem­berg — The multi family holding company Liberta Part­ners announ­ces that it has ente­red into an agree­ment to acquire ght GmbH Elek­tro­nik im Verkehr (“ght”) through Liberta Part­ners Fund II (“Liberta”). The tran­sac­tion is expec­ted to close in the first quar­ter of 2022. ght will be inte­gra­ted into a holding struc­ture toge­ther with Kienzle Auto­mo­tive GmbH (“Kienzle”), which has alre­ady been part of Liber­ta’s port­fo­lio since 2020.

The service port­fo­lio of Kienzle and ght includes products and services for all aspects of digi­tal and analog tacho­graphs. The two compa­nies, with a total of 13 loca­ti­ons in Germany and 186 employees, are the largest VDO sales compa­nies and thus market leaders. At the same time, ght Mana­ging Direc­tor Herbert Wert­h­ner will become the new CEO and share­hol­der of Kienzle Betei­li­gungs GmbH (“Holding”). Corne­lius von Ples­sen, CFO of Kienzle Auto­mo­tive, will serve as CFO of the holding company in the future. Liberta Part­ners will support the Group with its opera­tio­nal and stra­te­gic know-how and, toge­ther with the manage­ment, will invest speci­fi­cally in future tech­no­lo­gies in order to realize further growth potential.

Kienzle and ght offer complex tele­ma­tics systems and services for control­ling vehicle fleets. The mutual service port­fo­lio also includes services rela­ted to the digi­tal tacho­graph, the archi­ving of tacho­graph data, the retro­fit­ting of assis­tance systems for commer­cial vehic­les, and services for cab compa­nies. In addi­tion, ght is estab­lished in the southern German market as a system house for cash regis­ter systems, parking tech­no­logy and parking space manage­ment, tank tech­no­logy and access systems.

Further inter­nal growth and acqui­si­ti­ons planned

Nils von Wietz­low, Part­ner at Liberta and respon­si­ble for succes­sion solu­ti­ons, said: “We are deligh­ted to have been able to bring toge­ther two market leaders in auto­mo­tive services, ght and Kienzle. The two compa­nies also comple­ment each other excel­lently in the tele­ma­tics and systems tech­no­logy busi­ness areas, and we see concrete expan­sion and cross-selling poten­tial in all segments. We will actively support Kienzle and ght in their inter­nal and exter­nal growth plans.”

Herbert Wert­h­ner, CEO of Kienzle Betei­li­gungs GmbH, empha­si­zed: “The inno­va­tive cultures of ght and Kienzle Auto­mo­tive are an excel­lent fit. With Liberta Part­ners, we also have an owner at our side who supports us stra­te­gi­cally and makes it easier for us to invest in future technologies.”

This is the fifth invest­ment of Liberta Part­ners Fund II, which closed in Octo­ber 2019. The fund invests in group spin-offs and succes­sion situa­tions of family busi­nesses with a strong focus on support­ing the opera­tio­nal deve­lo­p­ment of its port­fo­lio companies.

About KIENZLE Auto­mo­tive GmbH
KIENZLE Auto­mo­tive GmbH (“Kienzle”) is the leading German provi­der for sales and service of networked devices and systems in the auto­mo­tive after­mar­ket envi­ron­ment. From 6 of its own commer­cial vehicle work­shops (5 in North Rhine-West­pha­lia and 1 in Baden-Würt­tem­berg), Kienzle, as the largest VDO system part­ner within Germany, serves around 770 contrac­tually bound service part­ners and a total of over 10,000 commer­cial custo­mers. In the area of data manage­ment and fleet tele­ma­tics, Kienzle works with estab­lished soft­ware deve­lo­pers to create custo­mer-speci­fic evalua­tions and readout opti­ons. This has enab­led Kienzle to estab­lish itself in the public trans­port sector, for exam­ple. For more infor­ma­tion, please visit: www.kienzle.de

About ght GmbH Elec­tro­nics in traffic
Based in Bava­ria, ght GmbH | Elek­tro­nik im Verkehr (“ght”) is a future-orien­ted trading and service company offe­ring appli­ca­ti­ons and systems in the auto­mo­tive and systems engi­nee­ring sectors. As VDO’s specia­list dealer part­ner, around 500 certi­fied § 57b specia­list work­shops are affi­lia­ted with ght in Bava­ria. More than 10,000 custo­mers have an active busi­ness rela­ti­onship with ght. Espe­ci­ally in the field of archi­ving and tele­ma­tics solu­ti­ons for commer­cial fleets, ght is the leading provi­der in Bava­ria. In addi­tion, ght is also a system house for cash regis­ter systems, parking tech­no­logy, parking space manage­ment, tank tech­no­logy, access systems and access control systems and is an estab­lished player in the southern German market. For more infor­ma­tion, please visit: www.ght.de

About Liberta Partners
Liberta Part­ners was foun­ded in 2016 and is a multi-family holding company based in Munich. Liberta Part­ners invests in compa­nies in German-spea­king count­ries with clear opera­tio­nal and stra­te­gic deve­lo­p­ment poten­tial, espe­ci­ally in succes­sion situa­tions and corpo­rate spin-offs. These are actively deve­lo­ped as part of the long-term “100% Core & Care” concept and bene­fit from Liberta Part­ners’ inno­va­tive entre­pre­neu­rial under­stan­ding. Liberta Part­ners’ team curr­ently consists of 14 employees working in M&A, corpo­rate deve­lo­p­ment and legal, as well as an active indus­try advi­sory board. www.liberta-partners.com

News

Stutt­gart — A team led by Stutt­gart-based part­ner Dr. Hermann Ali Hinde­rer provi­ded legal advice to Stor­sko­gen Deutsch­land GmbH on the acqui­si­tion of A & K — Die frische Küche GmbH, a leading manu­fac­tu­rer of ultra-fresh ready meals, which also opera­tes a deli­very service (meals-on-wheels) through its subsi­diary Casino Services. The company will be inte­gra­ted into Stor­sko­gen’s Products busi­ness area in the Indus­try segment.

Follo­wing the acqui­si­tion of SF Tooling Group at the end of 2021, this is alre­ady the second tran­sac­tion within a short period of time in which Heuking has advi­sed Storskogen.

Stor­sko­gen acqui­res and opera­tes well-mana­ged and profi­ta­ble medium-sized compa­nies in the busi­ness areas of indus­try, trade and services in Nort­hern Europe, the DACH region and the UK. As of Septem­ber 30, 2021, Stor­sko­gen consis­ted of 94 busi­ness units with a total of around 7,000 employees and annual sales of appro­xi­m­ately 1.8 billion euros.

A & K — Die frische Küche GmbH, head­quar­te­red in Reck­ling­hau­sen and with loca­ti­ons in Wupper­tal and Alsdorf, employs around 150 people and gene­ra­ted sales of 16 million euros in 2021. Every day, around 20,000 meals are cooked in the company’s own Cook & Chill kitchen with ten produc­tion lines. Meals are deli­vered to various insti­tu­ti­ons and house­holds around the sites via the subsi­diary Casino Service, a meals-on-wheels company.

Advi­sors to Stor­sko­gen Deutsch­land GmbH: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek

Dr. Hermann Ali Hinde­rer, LL.M. (Lead Part­ner, Corporate/M&A), Stuttgart
Dr. Alex­an­der Schott, Anika Lisa Dasch­mann (both Corporate/M&A), both Stuttgart
Dr. Juliane Reichelt, Ferhat Kayhan (both Real Estate), both Stuttgart
Antje Münch, LL.M. (IP, Media & Tech­no­logy), Stuttgart
Chris­toph Hexel, Laura-Feli­cia Bokranz, LL.M (both Labor Law), both Düsseldorf

News

Karls­ruhe — Menold Bezler has advi­sed Jacob Elek­tro­nik GmbH, based in Karls­ruhe, on the regu­la­tion of the company’s succes­sion via a manage­ment buy-out. The busi­ness shares of the foun­ding family have been taken over by the exis­ting manage­ment team.

Jacob Elek­tro­nik GmbH is a leading online retailer for IT and consu­mer elec­tro­nics with a turno­ver of over 350 million euros in 2021 and around 400 employees. The family busi­ness was foun­ded in 1990 by Thomas Jacob.

Menold Bezler advi­sed the manage­ment of Jacob Elek­tro­nik GmbH on the legal and tax aspects of the MBO. M&A and finan­cing advice was covered by Winter­gerst Socie­tät für Unternehmer-Beratung.

Advi­sors Jacob Elek­tro­nik GmbH: Menold Bezler (Stutt­gart)
Vladi­mir Cutura, Foto (Part­ner), Thomas Futte­rer (both Corporate/M&A), Albrecht Bacher (Part­ner, Audit) Nico Haldy (Part­ner), Clemens Mauch (both Tax), Roman Becker (Part­ner, Banking & Finance)

Winter­gerst Socie­tät für Unter­neh­mer-Bera­tung: Bernd Grupp (Part­ner), Chris­tian Schar­fen­ber­ger (Direc­tor), Nico Weber (Analyst)

About Menold Bezler
Menold Bezler is a part­ner­ship-struc­tu­red commer­cial law firm based in Stutt­gart. More than 120 profes­sio­nals offer legal advice, tax advice, audi­ting and busi­ness manage­ment advice from a single source. Our clients include well-known medium-sized compa­nies, listed corpo­ra­ti­ons, the public sector and its compa­nies as well as non-profit orga­niza­ti­ons. More at www.menoldbezler.de.

News

Munich — © GFJ ESG Acqui­si­tion I SE (GFJ), the first German listed SPAC (Special Purpose Acqui­si­tion Company) speci­fi­cally for sustainable tech­no­lo­gies, and tado GmbH (tado), a Euro­pean market leader for intel­li­gent indoor climate manage­ment, have signed a mutually exclu­sive letter of intent and agreed on the terms of a merger. tado GmbH is being fully advi­sed by Allen & Overy LLP.

The stock market vehicle under the name GFJ ESG Akqui­si­tion I SE was laun­ched by ex-Klöck­ner mana­ger Gisbert Rühl toge­ther with inves­tor Florian Frit­sch and former Relayr CEO Josef Brun­ner. The focus of the shell company is on Euro­pean green­tech compa­nies. — At the launch of their GFJ-Spacs, the trio of foun­ders stated that they wanted to raise a sum of between 125 and 150 million euros with the acqui­si­tion. It is unknown how much it should be in the case of Tado.

Follo­wing the successful comple­tion of the busi­ness combi­na­tion, tado will be listed on the Frank­furt Stock Exch­ange and is expec­ted to trade as tado SE. In connec­tion with the merger, GFJ will raise addi­tio­nal capi­tal in a private invest­ment in public equity (PIPE) tran­sac­tion. It is curr­ently assu­med that tado will be valued at an enter­prise value of around EUR 450 million as part of the transaction.

tado is a Euro­pean market leader for intel­li­gent indoor climate manage­ment based in Munich. As the only multi-vendor plat­form, its smart ther­mo­stats and services are compa­ti­ble with any type of heating or cooling system. Custo­mers bene­fit from energy-saving tech­no­lo­gies such as geofen­cing and window-open detec­tion, as well as time-varia­ble rates. The company was foun­ded in 2011, curr­ently employs 180 people and opera­tes in more than 20 count­ries. The merger with GFJ will enable tado to further acce­le­rate its growth plans and invest massi­vely in its product and tech­no­logy development.

Advi­sor tado: Allen & Overy
Jointly led by part­ner Dr. Astrid Krüger and part­ner Dr. Hendrik Röhricht (both Private Equity/M&A, Munich). It also includes part­ner Dr. Heike Weber (tax law), part­ners Dr. Michael Weiß (corporate/M&A), Dr. Knut Sauer (capi­tal markets law) and Dr. Udo H. Olgem­öl­ler (public law). The team also includes Coun­sel Peter Wehner (Labor Law) and Dr. Andre Wandt (Corporate/M&A), Senior Asso­cia­tes Dr. Thomas Dieker (Tax Law), Nadine Kämper (Capi­tal Markets Law, all Frank­furt) and Heiner Meck­len­burg (Anti­trust Law, Hamburg) as well as Asso­cia­tes Corne­lia Tu, Frank Weiss (both Munich), Alan James-Schulz, Vero­nika Gaile (all Corporate/M&A), Dr. Stephan Bühner (Public Law) and Anne Pelzer (Labor Law, all Frank­furt). On Luxem­bourg law, part­ners Jacques Graas (Corporate/M&A) and Gilles Dall’A­gnol (Labor Law), senior asso­ciate Victo­ria Woest­mann and junior asso­ciate Jacques Hoff­mann (both Corporate/M&A, all Luxem­bourg) advise.

GFJ’s advi­sors include Sulli­van & Crom­well LLP, Eight Advi­sory, Flick Gocke Schaum­burg, Boston Consul­ting Group and Maxi­mi­lian Mayer.

About Allen & Overy

Allen & Overy is an inter­na­tio­nal law firm with appro­xi­m­ately 5,500 employees, inclu­ding appro­xi­m­ately 550 part­ners, in more than 40 loca­ti­ons world­wide. allenovery.com/locations.

News

Munich, Germany — The River­side Company, the global private equity firm focu­sed on middle-market growth compa­nies, has sold its port­fo­lio company REPA to PT Holdings, a U.S. distri­bu­tor of restau­rant repair and repla­ce­ment parts, which is owned by private equity firm Berkshire Partners.

River­side had acqui­red a stake in REPA in Octo­ber 2016, a leading spare parts distri­bu­tor for profes­sio­nal kitchens and for coffee and vending machi­nes, today with over 700 employees in 13 inter­na­tio­nal loca­ti­ons. — During his holding period, River­side built REPA into a Euro­pean market leader with a growing inter­na­tio­nal presence. In addi­tion to conti­nuous orga­nic growth, REPA was able to make six acqui­si­ti­ons in Italy, Spain, Great Britain, Austria and Austra­lia and successfully inte­grate them into the Group.

River­side part­ner Peter Scha­ber­ger was respon­si­ble for the invest­ment in REPA for River­side Europe and says: “I am proud of our long and successful part­ner­ship with the REPA team. In addi­tion to imple­men­ting a pan-Euro­pean acqui­si­tion stra­tegy, estab­li­shing new product cate­go­ries and streng­thening OEM part­ner­ships, we have conti­nuously worked to profes­sio­na­lize the orga­niza­tion, expand warehouse capa­city, auto­mate proces­ses and lay the ground­work for a group-wide imple­men­ta­tion of an ERP system.”

In addi­tion, REPA contin­ued to expand its presence in Europe while further impro­ving its excel­lent custo­mer service, fast deli­very times and regio­nal coverage. River­side drove REPA’s stra­te­gic evolu­tion from an inde­pen­dent specia­li­zed distri­bu­tor at the time of acqui­si­tion, to a relia­ble and holi­stic outsour­cing part­ner for the after­mar­ket busi­ness of manu­fac­tu­r­ers around the world.

“Once again, we are demons­t­ra­ting our ability to profes­sio­na­lize and inter­na­tio­na­lize leading mid-market compa­nies through orga­nic as well as inor­ga­nic growth initia­ti­ves,” added Kars­ten Langer, Mana­ging Part­ner of River­side Europe.

“We thank River­side for the excel­lent coope­ra­tion over the past five years. This tran­sac­tion is the next logi­cal step in REPA’s evolu­tion and is in line with our own growth aspi­ra­ti­ons. We have always expan­ded our port­fo­lio of parts and now, with PT Holdings, we are even better posi­tio­ned to provide our custo­mers with outstan­ding service in all aspects of spare parts,” said Alex­an­der Wiegand, CEO of REPA.

In addi­tion to Peter Scha­ber­ger, River­si­de’s invest­ment in REPA Group was mana­ged by Prin­ci­pal Till­mann Immisch, Asso­ciate Nicola Tomaschko and Senior Opera­ting Part­ner Fabio Pesiri.

About River­side Company

The River­side Company is a global private equity firm focu­sed on invest­ments in middle-market growth compa­nies valued at up to $400 million. Since its foun­ding in 1988, River­side has made over 800 invest­ments. River­si­de’s inter­na­tio­nal private equity and struc­tu­red capi­tal port­fo­lios include over 140 compa­nies. River­side Europe is an inte­gral part of the company’s global network and has been inves­t­ing in Europe since 1989. River­side belie­ves this global presence provi­des excep­tio­nal insight into local condi­ti­ons, culture and busi­ness prac­ti­ces, making the River­side team better inves­tors and busi­ness part­ners. www.riversidecompany.com

REPA — The Spare Parts Group

REPA is a leading distri­bu­tor of spare parts for profes­sio­nal kitchens and for coffee and vending machi­nes in Europe. We offer the largest selec­tion of high quality spare parts and the best service. With over 700 employees at 13 inter­na­tio­nal loca­ti­ons and seve­ral auto­ma­ted warehou­ses, we can deli­ver all spare parts quickly and effi­ci­ently. Orde­red today, deli­vered tomor­row. The REPA Group includes LF (Italy), GEV (Germany), EPGC (France), Atel (Italy) and CCS (UK). www.repagroup.com

News

Frank­furt, Frank­fut a. M. — Global law firm Good­win has announ­ced that it is further expan­ding its private equity plat­form in Germany with the addi­tion of part­ner Florian Hirsch­mann. He will be joined by other members of his team at Good­win, inclu­ding Coun­sel Silvio McMiken.

Erik Dahl, a part­ner in Good­win’s private equity prac­tice, says, “Our private equity plat­form now includes over 110 lawy­ers across our Euro­pean offices. Florian Hirsch­mann has exten­sive expe­ri­ence in working with private equity inves­tors on both dome­stic and complex cross-border tran­sac­tions, making him the ideal addi­tion to our exis­ting team.”

Hirsch­mann, who will be based in Munich, advi­ses clients prima­rily on complex, cross-border private equity, M&A and venture capi­tal tran­sac­tions as well as joint ventures. He also has exten­sive exper­tise in German-Chinese invest­ments. This exper­tise is comple­men­ted by McMi­ken, who has exten­sive tran­sac­tional and corpo­rate expe­ri­ence, with a parti­cu­lar focus on advi­sing on dome­stic or inter­na­tio­nal M&A, joint ventures, and restructurings.

“Florian is another high-profile addi­tion to our German private equity team and unders­cores our commit­ment to being a leader in the indus­tries in which our clients operate,” said Dr. Stephan Kock, head of Good­win’s Frank­furt office. “We look forward to working with Florian to shape our clients’ success and conti­nue to drive Good­win’s ‘capi­tal meets inno­va­tion’ strategy.”

Hirsch­mann is the latest addi­tion to Good­win’s fast-growing Germany plat­form. In 2021, part­ner Dr. Anke Johann (Real Estate Finance), as well as part­ners Dr. Oded Schein (Tax), Dr. Jan Schin­köth (Private Equity), Dr. Markus Käpplin­ger (Corpo­rate Real Estate), and Dr. Joachim Kayser and Sebas­tian Bruch­witz (Private Invest­ment Funds) alre­ady joined the firm. This brings Good­win’s Germany team to over 40 lawy­ers since the firm’s launch in Frank­furt in 2016.

Hirsch­mann has advi­sed private equity clients for more than 15 years and is widely reco­gni­zed as an indus­try leader in Germany. Most recently, he was named as a “Frequently Recom­men­ded Lawyer” for M&A and Private Equity in the JUVE Hand­book and was reco­gni­zed by both JUVE and Legal 500 as a market leader for China deals in Germany.

About Good­win Proc­ter LLP
Good­win is a global law firm head­quar­te­red in Boston with more than 1,600 attor­neys in 13 offices world­wide. Foun­ded in 1912, the firm is one of the top 50 law firms in the world and focu­ses on clients in the finan­cial, private equity, real estate, tech­no­logy and biotech industries.
In Germany, Good­win has been repre­sen­ted by an office in Frank­furt since 2016 and advi­ses Euro­pean and inter­na­tio­nal clients in cross-coun­try and cross-juris­dic­tional teams, in parti­cu­lar in the areas of real estate, private equity, venture capi­tal, finan­cing and tax law.
Good­win’s goal is to be among the top 30 law firms in the coming years and to actively shape the legal market. www.goodwinlaw.com.

News

Copen­ha­gen / Berlin — Verdane, a Euro­pean private equity firm specia­li­zing in growth capi­tal, today announ­ced the final closing of the Verdane Idun I Fund (“Idun” or “the Fund”) at the hard cap of €300 million. The fund is thus above the origi­nal target fund volume of 225 million euros. Idun is an impact fund compli­ant with Article 9 of the EU Disclo­sure Regu­la­tion that invests in tech­no­logy-based compa­nies in Europe. With the launch of Idun, Verdane under­pins its ambi­ti­ons in the field of sustaina­bi­lity and aims to achieve posi­tive sustainable effects through its invest­ments in fast-growing companies.

The fund has alre­ady made three invest­ments: in Auntie (www.auntie.io), a digi­tal provi­der of work­place mental well­be­ing services, in Spond (www.spond.com), a digi­tal plat­form for grass­roots sports and physi­cal health promo­tion, and in a third company to be announ­ced at a later date.

Bjarne Kveim Lie (Photo © Verdane), Co-Foun­der and Mana­ging Part­ner of Verdane.We would like to thank both our exis­ting and new inves­tors for the trust they have placed in us. Their encou­ra­ge­ment of Idun rein­forces our approach of focu­sing on tech­no­logy as a key driver of more sustainable deve­lo­p­ment. We believe that inves­tors like Verdane should take a leading role in this deve­lo­p­ment and support foun­ders and manage­ment teams in inte­gra­ting sustaina­bi­lity into their busi­ness models, ther­eby crea­ting value with a posi­tive impact. The success of Idun’s fund­rai­sing also reflects the contin­ued deve­lo­p­ment of our company and we look forward to inves­t­ing the commit­ted capi­tal in a way that makes a posi­tive contri­bu­tion to the world we live in.”

Inves­tors in the fund include leading insti­tu­ti­ons such as Nysnø, the Norwe­gian sove­reign wealth fund for invest­ments to address climate change, and AP3, one of Sweden’s largest public pension funds.

As with Verda­ne’s previous invest­ments, Idun will focus on tech­no­logy-based solu­ti­ons in the core areas of energy tran­si­tion, sustainable consump­tion, and resi­li­ent socie­ties. Verdane bene­fits from its many years of expe­ri­ence as a growth inves­tor in sustainable busi­ness models.

All of Idun’s invest­ments must meet both finan­cial and tangi­ble sustaina­bi­lity crite­ria. Verdane under­stands this to mean contri­bu­ting to the imple­men­ta­tion of at least one of the UN Sustainable Deve­lo­p­ment Goals (SDGs), as well as quali­fy­ing invest­ments accor­ding to an “Impact Frame­work” deve­lo­ped speci­fi­cally by Verdane and based on the Impact Manage­ment Project. Each port­fo­lio company of the Idun Fund will regu­larly report on defi­ned sustaina­bi­lity metrics. Both the carried inte­rest and the loan terms of the fund are linked to the achie­ve­ment of the asso­cia­ted sustaina­bi­lity targets.

Idun has recei­ved strong support from exis­ting inves­tors, most of whom are insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors, inclu­ding foun­da­ti­ons, family offices and pension funds.

Idun’s manage­ment team has both signi­fi­cant entre­pre­neu­rial expe­ri­ence and exten­sive exper­tise in impact inves­t­ing. The Idun team is part of the Verdane plat­form with its more than 90 invest­ment experts, as well as the Verdane Elevate team, which consists of experts with parti­cu­lar opera­tio­nal know-how. With this approach, Verdane can opti­mally support compa­nies in reali­zing their full value crea­tion poten­tial and making a posi­tive contri­bu­tion to a more sustainable world. The fund will be mana­ged by part­ners Chris­tian Jebsen and Erik Osmund­sen, supported by direc­tors Reed Snyder and Karin Kans and sustaina­bi­lity lead Axel Elmqvist.

Chris­tian Jebsen, Part­ner at Verdane, said, “Coupled with the announce­ment of the Idun closing at the begin­ning of the year, we see a strong pipe­line of poten­tial invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties across Northwest Europe, as eviden­ced by the fund’s first invest­ments in three promi­sing new port­fo­lio compa­nies. We believe that sustaina­bi­lity will play an incre­asingly important role as a dedi­ca­ted stra­tegy for growth and private equity invest­ments. The entire indus­try is just evol­ving stron­gly towards a more sustainable and respon­si­ble mind­set. As an estab­lished part­ner for growth in tech­no­logy and sustaina­bi­lity, Verdane crea­tes value and helps its port­fo­lio compa­nies scale their busi­ness models. We look forward to working with their manage­ment teams to make a posi­tive impact.”

Verdane is one of the most active growth equity inves­tors in Northwest Europe, having made 17 invest­ments in 2021, inclu­ding four port­fo­lio tran­sac­tions. Idun will comple­ment the exis­ting Capi­tal and Edda fund stra­te­gies, adding an important invest­ment area to Verdane. The fund aims to deve­lop a frame­work and tools for impact inves­t­ing that will set bench­marks and be available to the rest of the invest­ment company’s teams as they refine and add value to their invest­ment strategies.

About Verdane

Verdane is an invest­ment company specia­li­zing in growth capi­tal that supports compa­nies with sustainable and tech­no­logy-based busi­ness models in their inter­na­tio­nal growth. Verdane parti­ci­pa­tes as a mino­rity or majo­rity inves­tor in indi­vi­dual compa­nies or port­fo­lios of compa­nies, focu­sing on three core themes:
Digi­tal Consu­mer, Soft­ware and Sustainable Society. Verda­ne’s funds have capi­tal commit­ments of €3.6 billion. Since 2003, the company has inves­ted in more than 135 fast-growing companies.
Verda­ne’s team of more than 90 employees, with offices in Berlin, Copen­ha­gen, Helsinki, London, Oslo and Stock­holm, is commit­ted to being the best part­ner for growth capi­tal in Europe.

News

Frank­furt a. M. — Will­kie Farr & Gallag­her LLP advi­sed Insight Part­ners on the USD 40 million Series B finan­cing round of Alasco GmbH (“Alasco”) led by Insight Part­ners. Light­rock, an inves­tor from the UK, and other exis­ting share­hol­ders also parti­ci­pa­ted in the round.

Foun­ded in 2018 by Benja­min Günther, Anselm Bauer-Wohl and Sebas­tian Schuonl (Photo © Alasco), Alasco is a cloud-based finan­cial manage­ment plat­form for real estate projects that offers real-time plan­ning, colla­bo­ra­tion and control. Alas­co’s Real Estate Success soft­ware enables clients to connect all sources of ESG and finan­cial data — from projec­ted costs to reve­nues and budgets to ESG crite­ria — and lever­a­ges cutting-edge tech­no­logy to auto­mate and support finan­cial and sustaina­bi­lity decision-making.

Insight Part­ners is a leading global venture capi­tal and private equity firm that invests in high-growth tech­no­logy and soft­ware scale-up compa­nies driving trans­for­ma­tive change in their indus­tries. Foun­ded in 1995, Insight Part­ners has inves­ted in more than 400 compa­nies world­wide and raised more than $30 billion in capi­tal commit­ments through a series of funds.

Advi­sor Insight Ventures: WILLKIE
The Will­kie team was led by part­ners Dr. Axel Wahl and Miriam Steets (both Corporate/M&A, Frank­furt) and included coun­sel Svenja Wach­tel (Liti­ga­tion) and Wulf Kring (Tax, both Frank­furt) as well as asso­cia­tes Tobias Gerigk, Denise Kamme­rer (both Corporate/M&A) and Dr. Nadine Kramer (Labor Law, all Frankfurt).

Will­kie Farr & Gallag­her LLP is an inter­na­tio­nal law firm of more than 1,000 lawy­ers with offices in Brussels, Chicago, Frank­furt, Hous­ton, London, Los Ange­les, Milan, New York, Palo Alto, Paris, Rome, San Fran­cisco and Washington.

News

Berlin — Berlin-based fintech company Banx­ware has raised €10 million in a seed expan­sion round led by Element Ventures. D4 Ventures, FinVC and Varen­gold Bank AG parti­ci­pate as co-inves­tors. All three VC firms have exten­sive port­fo­lios of fintech companies.

Banx­wa­re’s exis­ting inves­tors Force over Mass, VR Ventures and High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) have signi­fi­cantly increased their invest­ments as part of this round. This also applies to the indus­try experts who have alre­ady inves­ted. They are Jan Kaniess and Carl Frede­ric Zitscher, foun­ders of Payone; Alex Urdea, former prin­ci­pal at Upper90, a New York City-based debt and equity fund; and Paula Blaz­quez Solano, part­ner and co-foun­der of Credo Capi­tal Part­ners. The current funding round is the second that the fintech company has under­ta­ken in 2021.

In the course of the finan­cing round, Banx­ware also restruc­tu­red its advi­sory board. New advi­sory board members from the inves­tor side are Mike McFag­den, Filip Coen, Timo Fleig and Jakob Schreyer. The chair­man­ship of the advi­sory board was filled by Chris­toph Bornschein.

Banx­ware will use the invest­ment to further deve­lop its embedded finan­cial services offe­ring, grow its team and expand product deve­lo­p­ment, sales and marke­ting to digi­tal plat­forms across Europe. In the last 12 months, Banx­ware has mana­ged to inte­grate its solu­tion with major plat­forms such as Penta, Takeaway.com (Lieferando) and Prestashop. In Q1 2022, Banx­ware will inte­grate embedded finan­cing solu­ti­ons with 3 leading payment service provi­ders and seve­ral other plat­forms in Germany, and plans to expand its reach to key Euro­pean markets.

Banx­wa­re’s tech­no­logy enables any company to offer embedded finan­cing products to SME custo­mers. Banx­ware thus crea­tes the link between banks, digi­tal plat­forms and merchants, all of whom bene­fit from Open Banking and the latest technologies.

Plat­forms: Plat­forms can enhance their current merchant offe­ring with reve­nue-based finan­cing products to streng­then both custo­mer loyalty and their own compe­ti­tive posi­tion in the market­place — all without compro­mi­sing their plat­for­m’s user inter­face. This will create an addi­tio­nal reve­nue stream, enab­ling the plat­form to offer more compe­ti­tive prices for its core products.

SMEs: SME custo­mers bene­fit from a fast, conve­ni­ent and fully digi­tal finan­cing appr­oval process that allows them to access finan­cing within minutes.

Banks: Banx­ware offers banks access to a new set of custo­mers and acce­le­ra­ted, digi­ti­zed risk assess­ment to digi­tize lending and target under­ser­ved and digi­tally savvy custo­mers that tradi­tio­nal banks would not other­wise reach.

Unlike other finan­cial solu­ti­ons on the market, Banx­ware stands out because of its fully digi­tal, embedded approach:

Last Decem­ber, Banx­ware laun­ched its first embedded product, a white-label SME finan­cing solu­tion that is fully inte­gra­ted into the look and feel of the plat­form and allows plat­forms to offer liqui­dity to their merchants based on future reve­nue. The finan­cing decis­ion is made in real time and the disbur­se­ment is imme­diate. For this product, Banx­ware secu­red an initial loan volume of 100 million euros from Verei­nigte Volks­bank Raiff­ei­sen­bank eG.

The foun­ding team
Banx­ware was foun­ded in Septem­ber 2020 by Miriam Wohlf­arth (photo from Banx­ware) and Jens Roehr­born, both of whom are well-known in the indus­try. Miriam Wohlf­arth is proba­bly the best-known fintech foun­der in Germany. In 2009, she foun­ded Rate­pay, a leading payment provi­der for white-label buy-now-pay-later solu­ti­ons, which is part of the Nets‑A/S group, employs over 300 people* and is fully profitable.

Jens Roehr­born, CEO of Banx­ware, is a lawyer with more than 20 years of expe­ri­ence in the payments and banking indus­try. Jens has been a board member and/or consul­tant at PPRO, Deut­sche Handels­bank, Order­bird, Stocard, Lieferando, Rails­bank and many others.

Toge­ther with Fabian Heiß, former Head of Busi­ness Unit at Finleap, Nico­las Kipp, ex-Chief Risk Offi­cer at Rate­pay and Diogo Simoes, former Head of Engi­nee­ring at Klarna, Banx­ware is well equip­ped to shape the future of finan­cing solutions.

About Element Ventures
Element Ventures is a global venture capi­tal fund that invests in B2B finan­cial tech­no­logy compa­nies. Elemen­t’s part­ners are proud to have supported some of the best foun­ders and compa­nies in the indus­try. Elemen­t’s mission is to support bold foun­ders who are deve­lo­ping the finan­cial tech­no­logy of tomorrow.

About Force over Mass
Force Over Mass Capi­tal is an FCA-regu­la­ted venture capi­tal firm focu­sed on early-stage tech­no­logy invest­ments in the UK and Europe. The company invests in B2B inno­va­tions in four verti­cals: Fintech, Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence, SaaS and Indus­try 4.0. Force Over Mass opera­tes both seed and scale-up funds to support early-stage compa­nies on their growth journey.

About VR Ventures
The venture capi­tal fund was estab­lished to drive inno­va­tion in the finan­cial indus­try. VR Ventures invests in early-stage start­ups in the Euro­pean FinTech and PropTech sectors, as well as in inno­va­tive digi­tal solu­ti­ons for small and medium-sized enter­pri­ses. Many of VR Ventures’ inves­tors are part of the Volks­ban­ken Group. VR Ventures lever­a­ges this unique network and exper­tise to support its port­fo­lio compa­nies beyond the finan­cial. The fund manage­ment of VR Ventures and the VC firm Reds­tone work toge­ther as one team.

About High-Tech Gründerfonds
The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start-ups with growth poten­tial. With a volume of around EUR 900 million spread across three funds and an inter­na­tio­nal part­ner network, HTGF has supported more than 650 start-ups since 2005. His team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and start-up experts supports the young compa­nies with know-how, entre­pre­neu­rial spirit and passion. The focus is on high-tech start-ups in the fields of digi­tal tech, indus­trial tech, life scien­ces, chemis­try and rela­ted busi­ness areas. More than EUR 3.5 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in more than 1,800 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. In addi­tion, the fund has alre­ady successfully sold shares in more than 150 companies.

News

Frank­furt a.M. — McDer­mott Will & Emery advi­sed soft­ware inves­tor Main Capi­tal Part­ners on the acqui­si­tion of Form-Solu­ti­ons GmbH by mach­gruppe. The mach­gruppe was formed in 2021 through the merger of MACH AG with DATA-PLAN Compu­ter Consul­ting GmbH. MACH AG, an e‑government soft­ware and consul­ting company based in Lübeck, has been one of Main Capi­tal’s port­fo­lio compa­nies since 2020.

Form-Solu­ti­ons GmbH, based in Karls­ruhe, Germany, has been helping German govern­ment agen­cies digi­tize their appli­ca­tion proces­ses for more than 20 years.

Main Capi­tal Part­ners is a leading soft­ware inves­tor in Bene­lux, DACH and Scan­di­na­via with over €2.2 billion in assets under manage­ment (as of Octo­ber 2021). Main has inves­ted in more than 120 soft­ware compa­nies to date.

The McDer­mott team led by part­ner Norman Wasse is parti­cu­larly expe­ri­en­ced with soft­ware and tech tran­sac­tions and had alre­ady advi­sed Main Capi­tal on both the acqui­si­tion of MACH AG and its acqui­si­tion of DATA-PLAN Compu­ter Consul­ting GmbH.

The McDer­mott team led by part­ner Dustin Schwerdt­fe­ger advi­sed Main Capi­tal in paral­lel in connec­tion with the acqui­si­tion financing.

Advi­sor Main Capi­tal Part­ners: McDer­mott Will & Emery, FFM

Norman Wasse, LL.M. (Corporate/M&A), Dustin Schwerdt­fe­ger (Finan­cing, Düssel­dorf; both Lead), Dr. Maxi­mi­lian Clos­ter­meyer (Real Estate), Marcus Fischer (Coun­sel; Tax), Dr. Gudrun Germa­kow­ski (Labor Law, Düssel­dorf), Dr. Chris­tian L. Masch (IT/IP, Munich), Dr. Alexa Ningel­gen (Public Law, Düssel­dorf); Asso­cia­tes: Dr. Marion von Grön­heim, Lisa Schick­ling, Elena Platte, LL.M., Elif Sultan Üzüm­ovali (Düssel­dorf; all Corporate/M&A), Lukas Deutz­mann (Labor Law, Düssel­dorf), Markus Hunken­schrö­der (Finan­cing, Düssel­dorf), Isabella Kätzl­meier (IT/IP, Munich)

News

Hano­ver — NORD Holding Unter­neh­mens­be­tei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft mbH (“NORD Holding”) has sold its shares in the RUF Group (“the Company”), one of the leading German suppli­ers of high-quality uphols­te­red and box-spring beds. The buyer is the invest­ment company Water­land Private Equity (“Water­land”). Details of the tran­sac­tion were not disclosed.

The RUF Group, based in Rastatt (RUF Betten) and Berlin (BRUNO Inte­rior), is a leading supplier of high-quality uphols­te­red and box-spring beds with a history span­ning almost 100 years. The company designs and manu­fac­tures uphols­te­red and box-spring beds, mattres­ses and access­ories, which are sold both in direct eCom­merce trade with its own online store and through statio­nary furni­ture stores or online stores of retail­ers in Germany and other EU count­ries. The products are marke­ted under two successful brands RUF Betten and BRUNO, each cove­ring diffe­rent custo­mer groups and price segments. With its 200 well-trai­ned employees, the RUF Group gene­ra­ted sales of appro­xi­m­ately EUR 60 million in 2020.

NORD Holding iden­ti­fied the RUF Group as a compel­ling invest­ment oppor­tu­nity and acqui­red the company in 2016 as part of a carve-out from the family-run Hüls Group. NORD Holding was able to build on its strong track record as a private equity inves­tor in succes­sion situa­tions and carve-outs.

In close coope­ra­tion with the commit­ted manage­ment team of the company, important deve­lo­p­ment steps of the RUF Group could be initia­ted and accom­pa­nied by NORD Holding:
Estab­lish a multi-brand stra­tegy to diver­sify custo­mer groups and price segments. Expan­sion of the supply chain, Targe­ted acqui­si­tion of the eCom­merce company BRUNO Inte­rior to build a multi-chan­nel stra­tegy. Prio­ri­tiza­tion of the digi­tiza­tion of the RUF Group in order to be able to offer digi­tal product support with the product confi­gu­ra­tor, among other things, and to better accom­pany the custo­mer jour­ney. Inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion by exten­ding geogra­phi­cal presence and licen­sing in Asian markets.

Ronald Grott, Member of the Execu­tive Board of NORD Holding:
“We are very proud of the growth and success that RUF Group has achie­ved over the last five years. This invest­ment is a great exam­ple of NORD Holdin­g’s stra­tegy to support high quality compa­nies from the DACH region and manage­ment teams to expand inter­na­tio­nally and drive growth through trans­for­ma­tive M&A. We have no doubt that the RUF Group and its nearly 200 employees will conti­nue to deve­lop posi­tively under Water­lan­d’s leader­ship. We would like to thank them all for their achie­ve­ments and wish them every success in the future.”

“Thanks to support from NORD Holding, we have been able to deve­lop excel­lently in recent years. Toge­ther with Water­land, we want to take this deve­lo­p­ment to the next level. We are looking forward to the coope­ra­tion and new, inno­va­tive ways,” says Heiner Goos­sens, Mana­ging Direc­tor of RUF Betten.

“Through the new part­ner­ship, we see even more value levers, espe­ci­ally in the area of D2C, also inter­na­tio­nally. We look forward to further streng­thening the BRUNO and RUF brands toge­ther with Water­land in the coming years,” adds Dr. Felix Baer, Mana­ging Direc­tor of BRUNO.

“RUF Betten has a broad, loyal custo­mer base, an ambi­tious work­force and expe­ri­en­ced manage­ment. With BRUNO, the group is also excel­lently posi­tio­ned in the direct-to-consu­mer segment and has been able to steadily gain market share in recent years,” explains Dr. Cars­ten Rahlfs, Mana­ging Part­ner at Water­land. “We intend to expand this growth path through orga­nic momen­tum and further acqui­si­ti­ons in the coming years. We look forward to a successful partnership.”

NORD Holding (repre­sen­ted by Ronald Grott and Moritz Stolp) was advi­sed on the tran­sac­tion by IMAP (M&A); CMS (Legal); KPMG (Finan­cial and Tax) and ERM (ESG).

About Water­land
Water­land is an inde­pen­dent private equity invest­ment firm that helps compa­nies realize their growth plans. With substan­tial finan­cial support and indus­try exper­tise, Water­land enables its port­fo­lio compa­nies to achieve acce­le­ra­ted growth both orga­ni­cally and through acqui­si­ti­ons. Water­land has offices in the Nether­lands (Bussum), Belgium (Antwerp), France (Paris), Germany (Hamburg, Munich), Poland (Warsaw), the UK (London, Manches­ter), Ireland (Dublin), Denmark (Copen­ha­gen), Spain (Barce­lona) and Switz­er­land (Zurich). Curr­ently, over nine billion euros in equity funds are under management.

Water­land has consis­t­ently outper­for­med with its invest­ments since its incep­tion in 1999. The firm ranks fifth globally in the 2020 HEC/Dow Jones Private Equity Perfor­mance Rankings and eighth among global private equity firms in the 2020 Preqin Consis­tent Perfor­mers in Global Private Equity & Venture Capi­tal Report. In addi­tion, Real Deals awarded Water­land the title of Pan-Euro­pean House of the Year 2020 at the PE Awards. www.waterland.de

About NORD Holding
With a history of more than 50 years and assets under manage­ment of € 2.5 billion, NORD Holding is one of the leading private equity asset manage­ment compa­nies in Germany. The focus is on the invest­ment areas of direct invest­ments and funds of funds. The focus of the direct busi­ness is on the struc­tu­ring and finan­cing of corpo­rate succes­sion models, the acqui­si­tion of group divisions/subsidiaries and expan­sion finan­cing for medium-sized compa­nies. Unlike most other finan­cial inves­tors who manage funds for a limi­ted period of time, NORD Holding opera­tes as a so-called “ever­green fund” with no time limit and invests off the balance sheet. Curr­ently, the company is directly inves­ted in more than 15 compa­nies in Germany and other German-spea­king count­ries. The other Fund Invest­ments busi­ness unit targets the small-cap segment of the Euro­pean private equity market and focu­ses on primary, secon­dary and co-invest­ments. In addi­tion, NORD Holding focu­ses on buyout mana­gers newly estab­lished in the market, opera­tio­nal invest­ment stra­te­gies and regu­larly acts as an anchor inves­tor. www.nordholding.de

News

Berlin — Deli­very Hero has acqui­red a majo­rity stake in GlovoApp23, S.L., based in Barce­lona, Spain. Deli­very Hero has alre­ady been a share­hol­der of Glovo since 2018 and curr­ently holds appro­xi­m­ately 43.8% of the outstan­ding shares (on an undi­luted basis). Under the share purchase agree­ment concluded between Deli­very Hero SE and the selling share­hol­ders, Deli­very Hero acqui­res a further approx. 39.4% of the outstan­ding shares in Glovo (on an undi­luted basis) and thus a majo­rity stake.

Deli­very Hero will acquire the shares in Glovo in exch­ange for the issu­ance of new Deli­very Hero shares. Under the tran­sac­tion, Glovo is valued at appro­xi­m­ately EUR 2.3 billion on a fully diluted basis and after taking into account cash and finan­cial liabi­li­ties. The tran­sac­tion is expec­ted to close in the second quar­ter of 2022 and is subject to custo­mary condi­ti­ons and regu­la­tory appr­ovals as well as merger control clearance in multi­ple jurisdictions.

Advi­sor Deli­very Hero: YPOG

Dr. Martin Scha­per (Co-Lead, Corporate/Transactions), Partner
Dr. Tim Schlös­ser (Co-Lead, Corporate/Transactions), Partner
Dr. Karen Freh­mel-Kück (Corporate/Transactions), Senior Associate

About Deli­very Hero SE

Deli­very Hero is a leading global local deli­very plat­form opera­ting in appro­xi­m­ately 50 count­ries within Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa. Laun­ched in 2011 with a grocery deli­very service, the company is a pioneer in Quick Commerce — the next gene­ra­tion of e‑commerce — and aims to deli­ver groce­ries and house­hold goods to custo­mers in less than an hour, often in as little as 10 to 15 minu­tes. Deli­very Hero is head­quar­te­red in Berlin and was included in the German bench­mark index DAX (Deut­scher Akti­en­in­dex) in 2020.

About Glovo

Foun­ded in Barce­lona in 2015, the company opera­tes in 25 count­ries within Europe, Central Asia as well as Africa and offers a cross-cate­gory app that connects custo­mers with local restau­rants, grocery stores, super­mar­kets, phar­macies and major retail­ers. The goal is to create easy and digi­tal access for people to all services in cities and local regi­ons. This allows users to acquire what they need anytime, anywhere.

About YPOG

YPOG is a specia­list tax and commer­cial law firm, opera­ting in the core areas of corpo­rate, funds, liti­ga­tion, tax, tran­sac­tions, IP/IT and nota­rial services. The YPOG team advi­ses a wide variety of clients. These include emer­ging tech­no­logy compa­nies and family-run medium-sized enter­pri­ses as well as corpo­ra­ti­ons and private equity/venture capi­tal funds. YPOG is one of the leading addres­ses for venture capi­tal, private equity and fund struc­tu­ring in Germany. www.ypog.law

News

Munich — EMERAM Capi­tal Part­ners, one of the leading invest­ment mana­gers for medium-sized compa­nies in the German-spea­king region, has gained Dr. Sven Oleow­nik as a further partner.

“With Dr. Sven Oleow­nik, we are streng­thening our team for the next phase of our deve­lo­p­ment as a part­ner for medium-sized growth compa­nies. We are firmly estab­lished in the market as a busi­ness deve­lo­p­ment part­ner for compa­nies in the technology/software, value-added services and new consu­mer stap­les sectors. We have known Mr. Oleow­nik for many years and know that he brings the exper­tise and network to play a powerful role in expan­ding our posi­tion,” explains Dr. Chris­tian Näther, Mana­ging Part­ner of EMERAM Capi­tal Part­ners. “So we are plea­sed to now welcome Dr. Sven Oleow­nik to the circle of our partners.”

For the last seven years, Dr. Sven Oleow­nik was Part­ner and Head of Germany at the invest­ment company Gimv in Munich. There he built up the current team. Prior to that, he spent twelve years at Deloitte as Mana­ging Part­ner in the Corpo­rate Finance Advi­sory prac­tice, advi­sing invest­ment compa­nies and corporations.

About EMERAM Capi­tal Partners
EMERAM is one of the leading invest­ment mana­gers for medium-sized compa­nies in German-spea­king count­ries. Funds advi­sed by EMERAM curr­ently provide more than 400 million euros of capi­tal for the deve­lo­p­ment of compa­nies. The port­fo­lio includes compa­nies from the Technology/Software, Value-added Services and New Consu­mer Stap­les sectors. www.emeram.com

EMERAM acts as a long-term busi­ness deve­lo­p­ment part­ner for its compa­nies and promo­tes the sustainable growth (orga­nic and inor­ga­nic) of the port­fo­lio compa­nies. Curr­ently, the port­fo­lio compri­ses six plat­form invest­ments that conti­nuously gene­rate double-digit orga­nic sales growth. In addi­tion, signi­fi­cant inor­ga­nic growth was achie­ved through more than 20 add-on acqui­si­ti­ons, enab­ling inter­na­tio­nal expansion.

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