ALTERNATIVE FINANCING FORMS
FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND INVESTORS

Author: Tatjana Anderer

Gründerin des FYB-Verlag
News

Stutt­gart — Keen­sight Capi­tal acqui­res Onven­tis, a leading provi­der of cloud procu­re­ment solu­ti­ons for SMEs in the DACH region, Bene­lux and Scan­di­na­via Part­ners. The seller is Main Capi­tal Part­ners, which had inves­ted in Onven­tis in 2019. Keen­sight was advi­sed by DLA Piper on this transaction.

Keen­sight will support Onven­tis as it conti­nues to evolve into an inter­na­tio­nal SaaS cham­pion in the midmar­ket. The current manage­ment team will remain with the company and invest toge­ther with Keen­sight Capital.

Onven­tis, head­quar­te­red in Stutt­gart, Germany, has been provi­ding cloud solu­ti­ons for the digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion of purcha­sing and finance proces­ses since 2000. World­wide, more than 1,000 compa­nies in the Onven­tis network handle an annual procu­re­ment volume of over 10 billion euros with more than 50,000 suppliers.

During Main Capi­tal Part­ners’ invest­ment period, Onven­tis evol­ved from a company focu­sed on the DACH region to a leading pan-Euro­pean spend manage­ment soft­ware provi­der with local offices in the Nether­lands, Sweden and Austria. During this period, the company became an attrac­tive Rule-of-40 company with a strong focus on recur­ring reve­nue growth and an increase in total reve­nue of more than 2.0x.

Keen­sight Capi­tal is one of the leading Euro­pean growth buyout firms. For more than 20 years, the company has been making long-term invest­ments in profi­ta­ble compa­nies with high growth poten­tial and sales of between 10 and 400 million euros.

The DLA Piper team was led by Part­ner Lars Jessen (Corporate/M&A, Frank­furt) with Part­ners Sebas­tian Decker (Corporate/M&A, Hamburg), Dr. Konrad Rohde, Of Coun­sel Martin Hein­sius (both Tax, Frank­furt), Senior Asso­cia­tes Anne-Kath­rin Hoppe, Frie­de­rike Rickers (both Corporate/M&A, Hamburg), Sven Bisch­off (Tax) and Asso­ciate Daniel Osma­no­vic (Corporate/M&A, both Frank­furt) in the core team. The team in Germany included more the partners.

In addi­tion, an inter­na­tio­nal team from DLA Piper’s offices in Sweden, the Nether­lands and Austria acted in an advi­sory capacity.

Paul Hastings, Paris, advi­sed on the French law aspects and struc­tu­ring of the tran­sac­tion with Olivier Deren, Allard de Waal, Vincent Naci­n­o­vic and Alban Castarède.

About Main Capi­tal Partners

Main Capi­tal Part­ners is a leading soft­ware inves­tor in the Bene­lux, DACH region and the Nordic count­ries. Main has nearly 20 years of expe­ri­ence streng­thening soft­ware compa­nies and works closely with the manage­ment teams of its port­fo­lio compa­nies as a stra­te­gic part­ner to realize sustainable growth and build excel­lent soft­ware groups. Main employs 60 people and has offices in The Hague, Stock­holm, Düssel­dorf, Antwerp and the USA (Boston). As of Octo­ber 2021, Main has over €2.2 billion in assets under manage­ment. Main has inves­ted in more than 150 soft­ware compa­nies to date. These compa­nies have crea­ted jobs for about 9000 employees.

About DLA Piper

DLA Piper is one of the worl­d’s leading commer­cial law firms, with offices in more than 40 count­ries in Africa, Asia, Austra­lia, Europe, the Middle East, and North and South America. In Germany, DLA Piper is repre­sen­ted by more than 250 lawy­ers at its offices in Frank­furt, Hamburg, Colo­gne and Munich. In certain juris­dic­tions, this infor­ma­tion may be conside­red attor­ney adver­ti­sing. www.dlapiper.com

News

Düssel­dorf — The IPO of United Inter­ne­t’s subsi­diary IONOS on the Frank­furt Stock Exch­ange took place on Febru­ary 8. Last year, United Inter­net made public its plans to float the cloud and web hosting company on the stock exch­ange follo­wing strong growth in recent years, in order to further expand its posi­tio­ning as a key provi­der of digi­tiza­tion solu­ti­ons for the self-employed and small and medium-sized enterprises.

In 2021, IONOS repor­ted sales of EUR 1.06 billion, which accoun­ted for just under 20 percent of United Inter­ne­t’s total sales. The adjus­ted EBITDA margin was 32.2 percent.

McDer­mott Will & Emery advi­sed IONOS Group in the context of its IPO on the struc­tu­ring of the compen­sa­tion system for the Manage­ment Board and the revi­sion of the contrac­tual compen­sa­tion arran­ge­ments for top manage­ment. The shares of IONOS are listed in the Prime Stan­dard of the Frank­furt Stock Exch­ange. It is the first major IPO in Europe in months.

IONOS is a leading Euro­pean provi­der of hosting services, cloud services and cloud infra­struc­ture from the United Inter­net AG Group. With the IPO, the company intends to further acce­le­rate its growth course.

United Inter­net is a leading Euro­pean inter­net service provi­der and tele­coms group.

Advi­sors to IONOS: McDer­mott Will & Emery, Düsseldorf
Dr. Thomas Gennert (lead), Volker Teigel­köt­ter; Asso­ciate: Julian Jäger (all labor law)

About McDer­mott Will & Emery

McDer­mott Will & Emery is a leading inter­na­tio­nal law firm with more than 1,200 lawy­ers in more than 20 offices in Europe, North America and Asia. Our lawy­ers cover the entire spec­trum of commer­cial and corpo­rate law with their advice. The German prac­tice is mana­ged by McDer­mott Will & Emery Rechts­an­wälte Steu­er­be­ra­ter LLP. https://www.mwe.com/de/

News

Dort­mund — Dort­mund-based start-up sovity has secu­red seven-figure seed funding to increase the effi­ci­ency and inno­va­tive capa­city of compa­nies through quick and easy access to data spaces. With the High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF), one of Euro­pe’s leading seed inves­tors, and the Fraun­ho­fer Tech­no­lo­gie-Trans­fer Fonds (FTTF), which has supported sovity since its begin­nings, two important compa­n­ions are on board. The new capi­tal will be used for the further deve­lo­p­ment of the product and the expan­sion of the market presence.

“We are very plea­sed that we were able to attract another well-known inves­tor in addi­tion to FTTF: HTGF also shares our vision of the market and the mission of our product around Data Space tech­no­logy.”, Sebas­tian Kleff, CEO and Co-Foun­der of sovity

“The market for Data Spaces is growing: compa­nies are now actively looking for solu­ti­ons that enable them to share data with part­ners as easily as possi­ble and without major tech­ni­cal hurd­les,” Dr. Sebas­tian Opriel, CTO and Co-Foun­der of sovity.

In Data Spaces, compa­nies can exch­ange and use data to measure the carbon foot­print of products, for exam­ple, or to gain trans­pa­rency about supplier requi­re­ments and capa­ci­ties. Data Spaces imple­ment prin­ci­ples of data sove­reig­nty — compa­nies retain full control over their data at all times. With sovi­ty’s soft­ware — theCon­nec­tor-as-a-Service — compa­nies are offe­red the right solu­tion for this. This allows compa­nies to be connec­ted to a Date Spaces within ten minu­tes. Inde­pen­dent imple­men­ta­tion would take appro­xi­m­ately six to eight months.

Since its foun­ding in 2021, sovity has built a strong team of tech and busi­ness experts and curr­ently employs more than ten people. The team will use the funding to focus on further deve­lo­p­ment of the product. In addi­tion, the sales and marke­ting depart­ment is to be streng­the­ned in order to expand the market presence and acquire new custo­mers. On its website, sovity offers inte­res­ted compa­nies access to a trial version of its software.

“Sovity is very clear in their vision to make Data Spaces acces­si­ble to all busi­nesses. We see tech­no­logy as a rele­vant lever to enable compa­nies to exch­ange data with each other in order to opti­mize proces­ses and improve products and services,” Johan­nes Dier­kes, Invest­ment Mana­ger at HTGF.

“Sovity enables the exch­ange of data while provi­ding full data control to data holders. Since its incep­tion, the team has made excel­lent tech­ni­cal progress and won important custo­mers as well as renow­ned part­ners,” said Tobias Schwind, Mana­ging Part­ner at FTTF.

Last but not least, exis­ting part­ner­ships with Data Spaces initia­ti­ves, such as Catena‑X, Mobi­lity Data Space and Gaia‑X, as well as with the Inter­na­tio­nal Data Spaces Asso­cia­tion (IDSA), are to be further expan­ded. In addi­tion to these initia­ti­ves, sovity is alre­ady working with a large number of indus­trial compa­nies on pilot or tech­no­logy projects.

About sovity

Foun­ded in Octo­ber 2021 as a spin-off of the Fraun­ho­fer Insti­tute for Soft­ware and Systems Engi­nee­ring ISST in Dort­mund, sovity offers data sove­reig­nty as a service. The start-up provi­des compa­nies with the tech­no­logy for Data Spaces based on stan­dards, inclu­ding Inter­na­tio­nal Data Spaces (IDS), Gaia‑X or Eclipse Foun­da­tion. Thus, sovity provi­des compa­nies with the easiest and fastest access to Data Spaces. Compa­nies exch­ange a wide range of infor­ma­tion via Data Spaces in order to opti­mize proces­ses or products and to deve­lop new busi­ness models. The mana­ging direc­tors of sovity, Sebas­tian Kleff (Co-Foun­der, CEO) and Dr. Sebas­tian Opriel (Co-Foun­der, CTO), have seve­ral years of exper­tise in the field of data exch­ange as well as corre­spon­ding use cases, e.g. from Fraun­ho­fer rese­arch and IDS, as well as seve­ral years of expe­ri­ence in manage­ment consul­ting at BCG Platinion.

About FTTF — Fraun­ho­fer Tech­no­logy Trans­fer Fund (FTTF) GmbH

The FTTF finan­ces start-ups that use Fraun­ho­fer tech­no­logy. As a strong entre­pre­neu­rial part­ner, up to 250 TEUR will be inves­ted in the pre-seed phase and up to 5 MEUR in further finan­cing rounds. In addi­tion, the fund provi­des support with exten­sive start-up expe­ri­ence and a broad inves­tor network. The fund has a volume of 60 MEUR, alre­ady more than 30 port­fo­lio compa­nies and is mainly finan­ced by the Fraun­ho­fer-Gesell­schaft and the Euro­pean Invest­ment Fund (EIF). www.fttf.eu

About High-Tech Gründerfonds

The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start-ups with growth poten­tial and has supported more than 690 start-ups since 2005. With the launch of the fourth fund, HTGF has over 1.3 billion euros under manage­ment. The 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 €4.5 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in 2,000 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. In addi­tion, the fund has alre­ady successfully sold shares in more than 160 compa­nies. Fund inves­tors in the public-private part­ner­ship include the German Fede­ral Minis­try for Econo­mic Affairs and Climate Protec­tion, KfW Capi­tal, the Fraun­ho­fer-Gesell­schaft, and more than 40 compa­nies from a wide range of industries.

News

Munich — Eraneos Group has acqui­red DCP. DCP is a consul­ting firm specia­li­zed in finan­cial service provi­ders with head­quar­ters in Düssel­dorf. The spec­trum of services ranges from busi­ness area alignment and the manage­ment of IT imple­men­ta­ti­ons to reor­ga­niza­tion and process opti­miza­tion to the imple­men­ta­tion of new regu­la­tory requi­re­ments. Eraneos Group was advi­sed on this tran­sac­tion by the law firm Gütt Olk Feldhaus.

Eraneos Group is an inde­pen­dent inter­na­tio­nal manage­ment and tech­no­logy consul­tancy with offices in Switz­er­land, Germany, the Nether­lands, Spain, Luxem­bourg and Asia. It is the result of the merger of Ginkgo Manage­ment Consul­ting, Quint Group and AWK Group announ­ced in 2021. Origi­nally purely Swiss, Eraneos has become a leading inter­na­tio­nal digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion consul­ting group in recent years through mergers with Talos, Ginkgo and Quint. In 2021, the Group achie­ved sales of almost 200 million euros.

Legal advi­sors Eraneos Group: Gütt Olk Feld­haus, Munich
Dr. Heiner Feld­haus (Part­ner, Corporate/M&A, Lead), Dr. Tilmann Gütt (Part­ner, Banking/Finance), Thomas Becker (Of Coun­sel, IP/IT/Data Protec­tion), David Ziegel­mayer (Of Coun­sel, IP/Competition/Litigation), Matthias Uelner (Senior Asso­ciate, Corporate/M&A), Dr. Ricarda Theis (Asso­ciate, Corporate/M&A), Chris­to­pher Krappitz (Asso­ciate, Banking/Finance)

Pusch Wahlig Work­place Law, Munich: Ingo Sappa (Part­ner, Employ­ment Law)

Kind & Drews, Düssel­dorf: Dr. Ernesto Drews (Part­ner, Tax Law)

About Gütt Olk Feldhaus

Gütt Olk Feld­haus is a leading inter­na­tio­nal law firm based in Munich. We provide compre­hen­sive advice on commer­cial and corpo­rate law. Our focus is on corpo­rate law, M&A, private equity and finan­cing. In these specia­list areas we also take on the litigation.

News

Amster­dam / Munich — Andra Tech Group, a leading group of compa­nies focu­sed on the manu­fac­tu­ring of precis­ion mecha­ni­cal compon­ents, successfully makes its second acqui­si­tion under the aegis of Equis­tone: With the majo­rity acqui­si­tion of DKH Metaal­be­werk­ing B.V. (“DKH”), a specia­li­zed manu­fac­tu­rer of complex metal­lic parts and compon­ents, the Dutch group further expands its presence in its home market. The group takes over DKH from its foun­der and CEO Fran­cois van Hirtum, who has deve­lo­ped the company into an estab­lished part­ner for a deman­ding custo­mer base from various high-tech industries.

Head­quar­te­red in the Nether­lands, Andra Tech Group (form­erly Kusters Beheer) has grown into a leading group for the manu­fac­ture of high-tech precis­ion compon­ents and modu­les since its foun­ding in 1973. Follo­wing the acqui­si­tion of metal specia­list DKH, the Group now grows to a total of seven compa­nies. As a result, the Andra Tech Group employs around 500 highly quali­fied employees across the group, who use their many years of expe­ri­ence to serve an inter­na­tio­nal custo­mer base — with a parti­cu­lar focus on the semi­con­duc­tor market as well as the aero­space, trans­port, pack­a­ging, food and medi­cal indus­tries. In addi­tion to the deve­lo­p­ment of high-tech proto­ty­pes and produc­tion of small to medium-sized series of precis­ion compon­ents, the Group combi­nes the highest level of exper­tise in the proces­sing of complex metals as well as synthe­tic and compo­site mate­ri­als with state-of-the-art tech­no­lo­gies (inclu­ding in the areas of 3D metal prin­ting and clean room assem­bly systems).

Based in Uden, the Nether­lands, DKH has grown since its foun­ding in 1999 to become a specia­list in the manu­fac­ture of complex, precis­ion mecha­ni­cal parts and compon­ents with a focus on CNC milling and turning. With solu­ti­ons for small to medium-sized product series, the company acts as a relia­ble part­ner for its custo­mers from diverse indus­tries — inclu­ding the manu­fac­tu­ring and food proces­sing indus­tries as well as the trans­por­ta­tion sector. The company curr­ently employs around 30 expe­ri­en­ced, highly quali­fied employees.

With the acqui­si­tion of DKH, Andra Tech Group successfully reali­zes its second acqui­si­tion within a short period of time. This is inten­ded on the one hand to further expand the Group’s growth and presence in its home market, and on the other hand to posi­tion DKH at the same time to best meet incre­asing custo­mer demand for its products.

“Toge­ther with the team, we have deve­lo­ped DKH into an important part­ner for the produc­tion of custo­mi­zed products in the Nether­lands. Now, through the merger with Andra Tech Group, we want to take the company’s previous success and deve­lo­p­ment to a new level,” explains Fran­cois van Hirtum, foun­der and CEO of DKH.

Geert Ketel­a­ars, CEO of Andra Tech Group, adds: “We are plea­sed to welcome DKH and its employees as a new member of our group. Toge­ther, we intend to conti­nue the impres­sive growth achie­ved under the leader­ship of Fran­cois van Hirtum.”

“With DKH, the Andra Tech Group gains another strong part­ner, which is excel­lently posi­tio­ned in its market. With its high quality stan­dards and compre­hen­sive tech­ni­cal know-how, DKH, now the seventh member, under­lines the strong tech­ni­cal capa­bi­li­ties of the group and once again increa­ses the attrac­ti­ve­ness towards the alre­ady broad custo­mer base,” explains Hubert van Wolfs­win­kel, Part­ner in Equis­to­ne’s Amster­dam office.

Respon­si­ble for the tran­sac­tion on the part of Equis­tone are Hubert van Wolfs­win­kel, Dr. Marc Arens (photo © Equis­tone), Phil­ipp Gauss and Josh Aalbers.

Equis­tone was advi­sed on the tran­sac­tion by PwC (Finan­cial & Tax) and Vesper (Legal).

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. The Equis­tone funds invest prima­rily 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 around 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. In addi­tion, the “Equis­tone Reinvest­ment Fund” was recently laun­ched, from which it is possi­ble to reinvest in mino­rity posi­ti­ons follo­wing sales of port­fo­lio compa­nies from the main funds. www.equistonepe.com

About Andra Tech Group https://werkenbijandratech.nl/home

About DKH Metaal­be­werk­ing https://www.dkhmetaal.nl/

News

Munich — The Gimv port­fo­lio company KÖBERL Group with Fink Gebäu­de­tech­nik GmbH & Co KG conso­li­da­tes the main loca­tion Munich in the pipe clea­ning and sewage tech­no­logy by acqui­ring the estab­lished specia­list compa­nies Rohr­rei­ni­gungs — Service RRS GmbH and THG Abwas­ser­tech­nik GmbH. The mana­ging part­ner, Andreas Stau­ber, remains on board and takes a stake in the KÖBERL Group. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose details of the transaction.

The aim of the KÖBERL Group is to build up a leading full-service provi­der in buil­ding tech­no­logy and faci­lity manage­ment in Germany. Rohr­rei­ni­gungs — Service RRS GmbH (herein­af­ter also “RRS”) and THG Abwas­ser­tech­nik GmbH (herein­af­ter also “THG”) expand this attrac­tive busi­ness divi­sion of Fink Gebäu­de­tech­nik. This will make the Group a leading provi­der in this segment in the grea­ter Munich area as well. The specia­li­zed compa­nies are known for their custo­mer proxi­mity as well as tech­ni­cal compe­tence, avai­la­bi­lity paired with the most modern tech­ni­cal equip­ment. This merger not only increa­ses the recur­ring reve­nue of the KÖBERL Group, but also repres­ents an ideal stra­te­gic addition.

Andreas Stau­ber explains the merger: “Both RRS and THG have enjoyed an excel­lent repu­ta­tion in the grea­ter Munich area for seve­ral deca­des. I am ther­e­fore very plea­sed to have found a strong part­ner for the future of both compa­nies in the KÖBERL Group, which not only values today’s strong market posi­tion but also intends to conti­nue growing toge­ther. In parti­cu­lar, I am looking forward with great anti­ci­pa­tion to the syner­gies with Fink Gebäu­de­tech­nik that are still to be lever­a­ged. Within the frame­work of a very inten­sive process, the entre­pre­neu­rial approach of the KÖBERL Group, with Gimv as an expe­ri­en­ced and finan­ci­ally strong invest­ment company in the back­ground, was ulti­m­ately decisive.”

Armin and Karl Köberl, mana­ging part­ners of the KÖBERL Group, comment: “With RRS as well as THG we welcome two more members to the KÖBERL Group. Both compa­nies belong to the most renow­ned compa­nies in the field of pipe clea­ning and sewer reha­bi­li­ta­tion in the Munich area and comple­ment our port­fo­lio in the field of buil­ding services but also buil­ding manage­ment. This enables us to respond even better to the wishes and requi­re­ments of our custo­mers and part­ners. We are very much looking forward to an exci­ting and inte­res­t­ing coope­ra­tion that will further increase the Group’s potential.”

“With RRS and THG, we are plea­sed about excel­lently fitting new addi­ti­ons to the group and are proud that the part­ner­ship approach of the KÖBERL Group with Mr. Köberl has convin­ced”, says Maja Marko­vic (photo © GIMV), part­ner of Gimv and advi­sory board member of the KÖBERL Group. “The merger is another important stra­te­gic step for the Group towards beco­ming a leading full-service provider.”

About the KÖBERL Group

The agile group of compa­nies is a growing tech­ni­cally-savvy full-service provi­der of buil­ding tech­no­logy and faci­lity manage­ment services for resi­den­tial and commer­cial proper­ties as well as indus­trial custo­mers in Germany with around 650 employees. In addi­tion to tech­ni­cal buil­ding equip­ment for heating, air condi­tio­ning, venti­la­tion and refri­ge­ra­tion, the Group focu­ses on tech­ni­cal buil­ding manage­ment and inte­gra­ted faci­lity manage­ment. https://koeberl.group/.

About pipe clea­ning service RRS GmbH and THG Abwas­ser­tech­nik GmbH

RRS and THG have been provi­ding pipe and drain clea­ning and sewer reha­bi­li­ta­tion services prima­rily to private house­holds, muni­ci­pa­li­ties and indus­trial compa­nies for over 50 years. Both compa­nies are among the longest-serving compa­nies in this segment in the grea­ter Munich area. For years, nume­rous orders in the field of pipe clea­ning and sewer reha­bi­li­ta­tion have been hand­led by an expe­ri­en­ced and well-coor­di­na­ted team of about 30 employees. www.rrs-abwassertechnik.de and www.thg-abwassertechnik.de.

About GIMV

For over 40 years, Gimv has been iden­ti­fy­ing entre­pre­neu­rial and inno­va­tive compa­nies with high growth poten­tial and, as a Euro­pean invest­ment company, support­ing them on their way to market leader­ship. Listed on Euron­ext Brussels, Gimv curr­ently has a port­fo­lio of around EUR 1.5 billion in invest­ments in more than 60 holdings, which toge­ther realize sales of more than EUR 3.1 billion and employ 19,000 people. www.gimv.com.

News

Frank­furt am Main — Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (DBAG) reports a very successful start to the new finan­cial year 2022/2023. Having recently focu­sed in parti­cu­lar on adding attrac­tive compa­nies to its invest­ment port­fo­lio and rapidly expan­ding its market posi­tion through acqui­si­ti­ons, DBAG agreed three dispo­sals in the first quar­ter of 2022/2023 and a fourth in Febru­ary 2023. “It is parti­cu­larly plea­sing that these dispo­sals relate to the two growth sectors of broad­band tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons and IT services and soft­ware, as well as an invest­ment from Italy,” comm­ents Tors­ten Grede, DBAG Board Spokes­man (photo 1st from left). “This means that the stra­te­gic decis­i­ons of broa­de­ning our sector focus and expan­ding geogra­phi­cally into Italy are now bearing fruit. Even in the current chal­len­ging capi­tal market envi­ron­ment, tran­sac­tions are taking place. This is eviden­ced by both our recent study published in coope­ra­tion with FINANCE and our successful dispo­sals,” Grede continued.

By selling its invest­ment in Cloudf­light in a chal­len­ging market, DBAG was able to realize more than four times the capi­tal inves­ted. The sale of the invest­ment in Heytex marks the successful conclu­sion of DBAG Fund V. DBAG Fund V is thus one of the most successful funds of its vintage for private equity invest­ments in Europe. In addi­tion, the dispo­sal of the invest­ment in Pmflex also marked the first dispo­sal in Italy and was comple­ted in Janu­ary 2023. DBAG was thus able to realize more than twice the capi­tal inves­ted after a holding period of just over two years. Finally, the sale of the stake in BTV Multi­me­dia was agreed in Febru­ary, reali­zing around three times the capi­tal invested.

The good start to the fiscal year is supported by posi­tive capi­tal market influen­ces. This affec­ted the entire breadth of our port­fo­lio, i.e. both busi­ness models with an indus­trial focus and busi­ness models in growth sectors. The chan­geo­ver to the 2023 budgets, which is custo­mary in the first quar­ter, also resul­ted in a posi­tive contri­bu­tion to earnings. Due to the value reco­very period, this also alre­ady takes into account the dispo­sal of BTV Multi­me­dia. In total, the net asset value increa­ses to 620.8 million euros. This is seven percent more than at the begin­ning of the fiscal year.

The Fund Consul­ting segment deve­lo­ped accor­ding to plan and gene­ra­ted earnings before taxes of 3.5 million euros (prior-year quar­ter: 3.7 million euros). Profit before tax in the Private Equity Invest­ments segment reached 38.4 million euros (prior-year quar­ter: ‑11.9 million euros). Over­all, DBAG closes the first three months of finan­cial year 2022/2023 with conso­li­da­ted net income of 41.6 million euros (prior-year quar­ter: ‑8.2 million euros).

Results for a single quar­ter cannot be extra­po­la­ted to the full fiscal year. Due to DBAG’s busi­ness model, the results of indi­vi­dual peri­ods, even directly conse­cu­tive ones, may differ significantly.

The company’s key perfor­mance indi­ca­tors in the first quar­ter of 2022/2023 are within the corri­dor of the fore­cast published at the begin­ning of Decem­ber 2022; it is ther­e­fore unch­an­ged. In its fore­cast, DBAG assu­mes that the valua­tion condi­ti­ons on the capi­tal markets at the end of the current finan­cial year will not differ signi­fi­cantly from those at the time the fore­cast was prepared.

About Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG

Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (DBAG), listed on the stock exch­ange since 1985, is one of Germany’s most renow­ned private equity compa­nies. As an inves­tor and fund advi­sor, DBAG’s invest­ment focus has tradi­tio­nally been on medium-sized compa­nies with a focus on well-posi­tio­ned compa­nies with deve­lo­p­ment poten­tial, prima­rily in the DACH region. The indus­try focus is on manu­fac­tu­ring compa­nies, indus­trial service provi­ders and Indus­try­Tech compa­nies — i.e. compa­nies whose products enable auto­ma­tion, robo­tics and digi­tiza­tion — as well as compa­nies from the broad­band tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons, IT services, soft­ware and health­care sectors. Since 2020, DBAG has also been repre­sen­ted in Italy with its own office in Milan. Assets mana­ged or advi­sed by the DBAG Group amount to appro­xi­m­ately 2.6 billion euros.

News

Schaan, Liech­ten­stein — FMA Holding AG (“FMA Group”) announ­ces the acqui­si­tion of NOX Systems AG (“NOX”), a leading deve­lo­per and manu­fac­tu­rer in the field of secu­rity tech­no­logy, with a focus on intru­sion detec­tion and access control systems, head­quar­te­red in Vaduz, Liech­ten­stein. The FMA Group thus under­lines its strong growth with another stra­te­gic acqui­si­tion. NOX brings to the group not only outstan­ding deve­lo­p­ment exper­tise in the field of safety systems, but also a new mecha­tro­nic product and a strong custo­mer base. The company’s foun­der, Sven Sauter, will remain with the company in his current role as Mana­ging Director.

NOX products are widely used to support access control, intru­sion detec­tion systems and video surveil­lance. Further­more, the products have a special repu­ta­tion, espe­ci­ally with larger inter­na­tio­nal custo­mers, due to the flexi­bi­lity, indi­vi­dua­lity and holi­stic offer. NOX is able to meet all the secu­rity needs of these custo­mers. Custo­mers include, for exam­ple, banks, muse­ums and other buil­dings that have parti­cu­larly high secu­rity requirements.

“We are deligh­ted about this promi­sing merger,” says NOX Mana­ging Direc­tor Sven Sauter. “We have had trus­ting and valuable discus­sions over time, which have convin­ced me that we have found the right further deve­lo­p­ment for NOX. This step is a posi­tive sign for our employees, custo­mers, suppli­ers and other busi­ness part­ners. We are convin­ced to streng­then our growth with the FMA Group as a strong part­ner. I look forward to actively shaping this path as Mana­ging Director.”

Through the acqui­si­tion of NOX, the FMA Group expands its busi­ness model with a strong product port­fo­lio in the field of safety tech­no­logy. As a result, the FMA Group grows to three compa­nies with a total of four produc­tion sites and appro­xi­m­ately 120 employees, thus streng­thening its posi­tion as a mecha­tro­nics group in the DACH region. NOX will remain as an opera­ting unit under the manage­ment of Sven Sauter.

“The busi­ness model is comple­men­tary to FMA and allows a stra­te­gic further deve­lo­p­ment from “manu­fac­tu­ring service provi­der of mecha­tro­nic assem­blies” to “mecha­tro­nics group with own and third-party products” with a versa­tile engi­nee­ring know-how”, says mana­ging direc­tor of FMA, Erich Trink­ler. “By being geogra­phi­cally close, we hope to mutually bene­fit from this busi­ness combi­na­tion and increase mutual growth.”

About NOX Systems AG

NOX Systems AG was foun­ded in 2001 by Sven Sauter. In a very short time, the company succee­ded in beco­ming a sought-after specia­list for secu­rity systems in the Euro­pean market. The products convince with inno­va­tive spirit and almost unli­mi­ted possi­bi­li­ties. Custo­mer wishes and speci­fic requi­re­ments are always incor­po­ra­ted into the deve­lo­p­ment process, resul­ting in a modu­lar product range that offers maxi­mum perfor­mance and relia­bi­lity, while being precis­ely tail­o­red to the respec­tive custo­mer requi­re­ments. The company is head­quar­te­red in Vaduz, Liech­ten­stein. For more infor­ma­tion, visit: www.noxsystems.com

About FMA Mecha­tro­nic Solu­ti­ons AG

Foun­ded in 1955 and head­quar­te­red in Schaan, Liech­ten­stein, the company star­ted with the produc­tion and distri­bu­tion of simple mecha­ni­cal parts. Since the take­over by Stefan Dürr in the 1990s, FMA has deve­lo­ped into a renow­ned mecha­tro­nics service provi­der. As such, FMA supplies custo­mers in the semi­con­duc­tor indus­try, water manage­ment, medi­cal tech­no­logy and the alumi­num indus­try, among others. Since 2019, FMA has been majo­rity-owned by the multi-family holding company Liberta Part­ners. For more infor­ma­tion, visit: www.fma.li

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 20 employees working in M&A, corpo­rate deve­lo­p­ment and legal, as well as an active indus­try advi­sory board. www.liberta-partners.com

News

Munich — Private equity inves­tor Altor has acqui­red a majo­rity stake of 80% in Kommu­nal­kre­dit Austria AG on behalf of Altor Funds. Altor will part­ner with the bank’s exis­ting owners and manage­ment. — Inter­na­tio­nal law firm Clif­ford Chance advi­sed Altor on behalf of Altor Funds on the signing of the agree­ment to acquire a majo­rity stake of 80% in Kommu­nal­kre­dit Austria AG.

Altor will support Kommu­nal­kre­dit with addi­tio­nal capi­tal to conti­nue its growth trajec­tory and become the leading sustainable infra­struc­ture plat­form in Europe. The exis­ting long-term share­hol­ders, Inter­ri­tus, Trinity Invest­ment Manage­ment and the Austrian Asso­cia­tion of Muni­ci­pa­li­ties, will remain mino­rity shareholders.

Kommu­nal­kre­dit was foun­ded in 1958 and is a provi­der of finan­cing solu­ti­ons for infra­struc­ture and energy projects throug­hout Europe. Head­quar­te­red in Austria and with a team of 350 full-time employees, Kommu­nal­kre­dit has become a leading specia­list infra­struc­ture bank, finan­cing some 200 projects over the past seven years with a focus on green trans­for­ma­tion and rene­wa­ble energy. With total assets of EUR 4.4 billion, Kommu­nal­kre­dit is expec­ted to gene­rate net inte­rest income of around EUR 120 million in 2022, repre­sen­ting an impres­sive annual growth rate of over 50% in recent years.

Altor Equity Part­ners is a private equity firm focu­sed on lever­a­ged buyouts and growth capi­tal invest­ments in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway and the DACH region. Since their incep­tion, Altor funds have recei­ved a total of more than 10 billion euros in commit­ments. The funds are inves­ted in more than 85 mid-sized, predo­mi­nantly Nordic compa­nies, with the aim of crea­ting value through growth initia­ti­ves and opera­tio­nal improvements.

Paal Weberg (photo © Altor), Co-Mana­ging Part­ner at Altor: “Kommu­nal­kre­dit has a unique posi­tion as a finan­cing part­ner for some of the most promi­nent green trans­for­ma­tion projects and we believe that toge­ther we can build the Euro­pean cham­pion in sustainable infra­struc­ture finan­cing. Altor will support Kommu­nal­kre­dit with capi­tal and resour­ces to streng­then its capa­bi­li­ties. In doing so, we can build on our expe­ri­ence inves­t­ing in other leading finan­cial insti­tu­ti­ons and Green Tran­si­tion Champions.”

Kommu­nal­kre­dit and Altor are united in their vision to promote the tran­si­tion to a green and sustainable future. Both insti­tu­ti­ons have alre­ady gained exten­sive expe­ri­ence in finan­cing the tran­si­tion to a sustainable economy through their invest­ments and invol­vement in sustainable infra­struc­ture and energy projects across Europe.

The Clif­ford Chance team advi­sing Altor on this tran­sac­tion was led by part­ners Dr. Thomas Krecek (Frank­furt) and Dr. Mark Aschen­bren­ner (Munich, both Corporate/Private Equity). Clif­ford Chance worked closely with Wolf Theiss (Lead Part­ners: Andrea Grit­sch and Florian Kusznier) on all Austrian legal matters.

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

Landshut/Munich — Munich-based tech company Enmacc, opera­tor of the largest digi­tal OTC energy trading plat­form for gas and elec­tri­city in Europe, has announ­ced the second and final closing of a Series B finan­cing round — three months after the first closing with a volume in the eight-digit euro range. Now Bayern Kapi­tal, one of the most expe­ri­en­ced and active growth inves­tors in the German high-tech finan­cing land­scape, is also joining Enmac­c’s circle of inves­tors with funds from the Bava­rian Growth Fund. Lead inves­tor is Alan­tra with the Climate Energy Tran­si­tion Fund and previous inves­tors such as 10x Group are also incre­asing their commitment.

Enmacc GmbH was foun­ded in Munich in 2016 and has since estab­lished itself as an alter­na­tive to tradi­tio­nal brokers and exch­an­ges for Euro­pean whole­sale energy trading with its digi­tal OTC (over the coun­ter) energy trading plat­form. As the Euro­pean market leader, the Munich-based energy company specia­li­zes in over-the-coun­ter futures trading in gas, elec­tri­city and green power certi­fi­ca­tes. The plat­form is based on the worl­d’s leading RFQ tech­no­logy, which enables energy trad­ers, port­fo­lio and risk mana­gers to share their trading inte­rest within seconds and thus receive imme­dia­tely compa­ra­ble offers from multi­ple trading part­ners. In doing so, Enmacc elimi­na­tes inef­fi­ci­ent and time-consum­ing market condi­ti­ons such as trading via tele­phone and e‑mail, and contri­bu­tes signi­fi­cantly to impro­ving trad­ers’ liqui­dity — espe­ci­ally when tradi­tio­nal order books of exch­an­ges and brokers show only few price quotes.

Jens Hart­mann, CEO of Enmacc, explains: “We are very plea­sed to have the trust and support of Bayern Kapi­tal as a long-term part­ner. The funding will allow us to expand our reach and improve our plat­form so that we are even better equip­ped for the rapidly evol­ving energy market and the need for decarbonization.”

“Enmacc has estab­lished itself as one of the leading compa­nies within the energy indus­try in just a few years with its inno­va­tive approach to digi­tiz­ing the energy market,” commen­ted Monika Steger, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Bayern Kapi­tal. “We see Enmacc as an important player in shaping the future of the indus­try and are proud to support the company as it conti­nues on its journey.”

Bastien Gambini (photo © Alan­tra), Mana­ging Part­ner at Alan­tra: “Enmacc has done an impres­sive job of digi­tally trans­forming gas and elec­tri­city trading, quickly gaining a large custo­mer base in a conser­va­tive market. We believe that the unique combi­na­tion of supe­rior tech­no­logy and indus­try exper­tise will make Enmacc successful across a broad spec­trum of energy and envi­ron­men­tal commo­dity trading. With its plat­form, the company is posi­tio­ning itself as a global market leader in energy trading and a pioneer for an acce­le­ra­ted energy transition.”

About Enmacc
Enmacc is the largest OTC energy trading plat­form in Europe. Deve­lo­ped by trad­ers for trad­ers, Enmacc digi­ti­zes the energy trading process — the digi­tal market­place enables members to trade faster, more compre­hen­si­vely and with grea­ter control. Enmacc is trus­ted by over 450 custo­mers and hosts a growing network of nearly 2000 trad­ers from various insti­tu­ti­ons — inclu­ding utili­ties, indus­trial compa­nies, energy trading houses and muni­ci­pal utilities.

In addi­tion to elec­tri­city and gas, envi­ron­men­tal goods such as guaran­tees of origin and emis­sion certi­fi­ca­tes will also be traded on the plat­form in the coming months. Enmacc was foun­ded in Munich in 2016 and has since evol­ved into a leading B2B tech­no­logy company with a diverse and growing team. www.enmacc.com

About Alan­tra

Alan­tra is an inter­na­tio­nal finan­cial services company with over 555 employees from 35 count­ries in 25 offices. We are a global company. We do not have a head office. Each market in which we operate is as important as the other. Each employee is as valuable as the other. And that means that each custo­mer’s needs are as important as the next.

About Bayern Kapital
Bayern Kapi­tal GmbH, based in Lands­hut, is the venture/growth capi­tal company of the Free State of Bava­ria. It accom­pa­nies inno­va­tive high-tech compa­nies in the Free State through various growth phases, from seed to later stage, with equity capi­tal in the amount of 0.25 to 25 million euros. Bayern Kapi­tal often fills gaps in the VC sector in proven consor­tium constel­la­ti­ons with private inves­tors (busi­ness angels, family offices and corpo­rate ventures).

Bayern Kapi­tal mana­ges specia­li­zed invest­ment funds with a volume of around 700 million euros. Since its foun­da­tion in 1995 on the initia­tive of the state govern­ment, the wholly owned subsi­diary of LfA Förder­bank Bayern has so far inves­ted around 400 million euros of its own equity capi­tal in around 300 start-ups and scale-ups in sectors such as life scien­ces, soft­ware & IT, mate­ri­als & new mate­ri­als, nano­tech­no­logy and envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­logy. As a result, more than 8,000 jobs have been perma­nently crea­ted in Bava­ria in sustainable compa­nies. The active port­fo­lio curr­ently compri­ses over 80 companies.

 

News

Munich — Unter­neh­mer­TUM, Euro­pe’s largest center for inno­va­tion and start-ups, is laun­ching CIRCULAR REPUBLIC, a unique combi­na­tion of forces in the field of Circu­lar Economy. True sustaina­bi­lity and thus climate neutra­lity can only be achie­ved if we succeed in massi­vely redu­cing resource consump­tion and rethin­king estab­lished proces­ses. This enorm­ous chall­enge offers both compa­nies and start-ups immense busi­ness poten­tial and a wide range of oppor­tu­ni­ties for inno­va­tive busi­ness models. They can be crucial in making Europe more resi­li­ent by making it less depen­dent on global supply chains in the long term.

Climate and energy crisis, popu­la­tion growth, species extinc­tion, fragile supply chains and incre­asing resource scar­city: Circu­lar Economy is a key to solving exis­ten­tial crises. In line with the vision of a sustainable and people-cente­red future for Germany and Europe, Unter­neh­mer­TUM aims to create a central plat­form for the bund­ling and active shaping of such ideas in Munich. Circu­lar economy is unders­tood as a rege­ne­ra­tive econo­mic system in which resour­ces are kept in cycles and whose goal is to decou­ple value crea­tion from resource consump­tion.

Circu­la­rity works best in the ecosys­tem

CIRCULAR REPUBLIC supports compa­nies and start-ups in further deve­lo­ping their inno­va­tions and ideas for the Circu­lar Economy in line with market requi­re­ments and trans­forming them into concrete busi­ness models. In addi­tion, the initia­tive networks compa­nies and start-ups with rele­vant play­ers from science, busi­ness and the venture capi­tal indus­try. In this context, the inno­va­tion ecosys­tem of Unter­neh­mer­TUM plays a crucial role: The initia­tive speci­fi­cally offers access to the latest rese­arch findings from the field of Circu­lar Economy at Tech­ni­sche Univer­si­tät München and itself provi­des advice on entre­pre­neu­rial issues and chal­lenges. A central service also consists of directly networ­king compa­nies and start-ups in so-called “multi-stake­hol­der projects” and acting as a joint plat­form for the exch­ange of know­ledge and expe­ri­ence. Ideally, the projects deve­lo­ped will then find their way into concrete application.

The initia­tive was laun­ched with foun­ding part­ner BMW AG. The first part­ner compa­nies include SAP, PreZero and Tengel­mann.

Inter­di­sci­pli­nary foun­ding trio

To be able to fully address the field of Circu­lar Economy, you need diverse perspec­ti­ves and a team with very diffe­rent back­grounds. The foun­ding team of the initia­tive includes Dr. Susanne Kadner, Dr. Matthias Ball­weg and Niclas Mauß (Photo © CIRCULAR REPUBLIC). Kadner previously initia­ted and led the Circu­lar Economy Initia­tive Germany. Before joining CIRCULAR REPUBLIC, Ball­weg was respon­si­ble for SYSTE­MI­Q’s global Circu­lar Economy acti­vi­ties and Mauß initia­ted and estab­lished Germany’s largest Circu­lar Economy rese­arch network at the Tech­ni­cal Univer­sity of Munich.

Multi-stake­hol­der approach

The first “multi-stake­hol­der project” will focus on the textile indus­try — one of the least circu­lar sectors of all. Start-ups alre­ady offer nume­rous partial solu­ti­ons here — such as recy­cling tech­no­lo­gies — but there is a lack of a cross-indus­try solu­tion that is now being jointly deve­lo­ped. Another project will subse­quently revolve around the recy­cling of batte­ries. The findings deve­lo­ped in the initia­tive — for exam­ple, on the start-up land­scape in the Circu­lar Economy sector — will also be shared with the public. A speci­ally initia­ted festi­val will take place in Munich from Novem­ber 15–18, 2023, and aims to bring toge­ther outstan­ding play­ers in the circu­lar economy.

Dr. Matthias Ball­weg, Co-Foun­der and Direc­tor of CIRCULAR REPUBLIC, says: “The global deve­lo­p­ments around climate, lack of resour­ces or supply shorta­ges, as well as the accom­pany­ing regu­la­tory conse­quen­ces show: In the 30s of this century, there will no longer be a successful busi­ness model based on the explo­ita­tion of primary raw mate­ri­als. The Circu­lar Economy will be the key to solving the climate crisis and at the same time the driving force for inno­va­tion and prospe­rity in Europe. The large number of start­ups working on the topic of the Circu­lar Economy — we have iden­ti­fied almost 400 of them in Germany alone — is another indi­ca­tor that this is where the future lies.“
https://www.unternehmertum.de//circular-republic


CIRCULAR REPUBLIC

The Circu­lar Economy is the basis for a prospe­rous, resi­li­ent and sustainable economy. As part of Unter­neh­mer­TUM, Euro­pe’s largest center for inno­va­tion and startup, CIRCULAR REPUBLIC empowers compa­nies and start­ups to realize circu­lar economy inno­va­tions and deve­lop new busi­ness models. As a plat­form, the initia­tive networks rele­vant actors and thus aims to set system-chan­ging impul­ses along the entire value chain.

News

Berlin — Capi­ton has announ­ced the closing of its EUR 248 million “capi­ton Quan­tum” conti­nua­tion fund. In addi­tion to exis­ting and new capi­ton inves­tors, high-profile blue-chip secon­dary inves­tors led by Eura­zeo and Uniges­tion have also inves­ted in capi­ton Quan­tum. capi­ton Quan­tum has reinves­ted in Raith and AEMtec, two leading indus­trial tech­no­logy compa­nies origi­nally acqui­red by capi­ton Fund V in 2016 and 2018, respectively.

The Conti­nua­tion Fund capi­ton Quan­tum was estab­lished to invest in the compa­nies AEMtec GmbH(“AEMtec”) and Raith GmbH (“Raith”). This will provide the compa­nies with addi­tio­nal capi­tal and time to conti­nue the very successful growth stra­te­gies that have been imple­men­ted in both compa­nies since capi­ton’s entry via the capi­ton V fund. AEMtec is one of the leading specia­lists in the deve­lo­p­ment and produc­tion of complex opto- and microelec­tro­nic modu­les through to complete systems. Raith is a leading provi­der of precis­ion tech­no­logy solu­ti­ons for nano-fabri­ca­tion, elec­tron beam litho­gra­phy, focu­sed ion beam manu­fac­tu­ring, nano-engi­nee­ring and reverse engi­nee­ring applications.

The conti­nua­tion fund will provide addi­tio­nal capi­tal to Raith and AEMtec to acce­le­rate their orga­nic and inor­ga­nic growth and allow the capi­ton team to conti­nue inves­t­ing in both compa­nies to support their next phase of growth. Both compa­nies were origi­nally acqui­red by the capi­ton V fund. Raith, a leading equip­ment manu­fac­tu­rer in the nano­tech­no­logy sector, has alre­ady been part of the capi­ton port­fo­lio since 2016, and capi­ton inves­ted in AEMtec, a full-service provi­der of state-of-the-art microelec­tro­nic and opto­elec­tro­nic systems, in 2019.

We are very plea­sed to have attrac­ted a high cali­ber group of blue chip secon­dary inves­tors led by Eura­zeo and Uniges­tion along­side exis­ting and new capi­ton LPs. This under­lines the strong convic­tion in favor of robust German SMEs even in times of considera­ble market volatility.

Under capi­ton’s owner­ship, Raith and AEMtec have focu­sed on capa­city expan­sion, inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion and impro­ving their tech­no­logy offe­ring. Toge­ther with the two manage­ment teams, we will conti­nue to execute on a combi­na­tion of orga­nic initia­ti­ves and trans­for­ma­tive bolt-on acqui­si­ti­ons. Both manage­ment teams will remain heavily invested.

Chris­toph Karbenk, Mana­ging Part­ner at capi­ton, comm­ents: “On behalf of the entire capi­ton team, I would like to thank the group of inves­tors who supported us in this tran­sac­tion as well as the manage­ment teams who have done an excel­lent job to date. We are very exci­ted to conti­nue this successful part­ner­ship and take both compa­nies to the next level. The tran­sac­tion gene­ra­tes strong returns for our exis­ting capi­ton V LPs, who have been given the full option to either gene­rate liqui­dity or parti­ci­pate in the next chap­ter of both companies.”

Dr. Ralf Jede, CEO of Raith, said: “We are very proud to have deve­lo­ped Raith into the world market leader for nano­fa­bri­ca­tion equip­ment. Many thanks to the great commit­ment of all Raith employees and the trustful part­ner­ship with capi­ton. We very much look forward to working with capi­ton Quan­tum to realize further highly attrac­tive growth opportunities.”

Jan Trom­mers­hau­sen, CEO of AEMtec, said, “We look forward to the next chap­ter of our part­ner­ship with capi­ton, with all AEMtec employees remai­ning stron­gly commit­ted to the company. We are exci­ted to be able to leverage inter­na­tio­nal buy-and-build oppor­tu­ni­ties to further streng­then our posi­tion as a leading full-service provi­der of advan­ced micro- and opto­elec­tro­nic systems.”

Consul­tant Capiton:

UBS Private Funds Group, a fully inte­gra­ted part of UBS Invest­ment Bank, as exclu­sive secon­dary advisor

Legal advice: Stephen­son Harwood, POELLATH, BMH Bräu­ti­gam and Ashurst

EY (tax and struc­tu­ring advice), Houli­han Lokey (debt advice), Deloitte (legal and finan­cial due dili­gence), Roland Berger (commer­cial due dili­gence) and Kroll (fair­ness opinion).

The main inves­tors were advi­sed by Hogan Lovells. The tran­sac­tion was nota­ri­zed by CMS Hasche Sigle.

BMH BRÄUTIGAM advi­sed finan­cial inves­tor capi­ton in the context of the newly laun­ched 248 million Euro fund “capi­ton Quan­tum” on the acqui­si­tion of the stakes in the leading German high-tech compa­nies Raith and AEMtec.

 

News

Landshut/Munich — Bayern Kapi­tal, one of the most expe­ri­en­ced and active inves­tors in the German high-tech finan­cing land­scape, is inves­t­ing in tado°. The Munich-based scale-up is the Euro­pean market leader for intel­li­gent indoor climate manage­ment and deve­lops energy-effi­ci­ent ther­mo­stats to opti­mize energy consump­tion in resi­den­tial buil­dings. The inves­ted funds come from the ScaleUp-Fonds Bayern, the largest of the invest­ment funds mana­ged by Bayern Kapi­tal. Other inves­tors in the finan­cing round with a total volume of EUR 43 million include Kiko Ventures, Swis­scanto and Trill Impact Ventures as lead inves­tor; previous inves­tors, inclu­ding Noven­tic and Target Part­ners, among others, also parti­ci­pa­ted in the round.

With energy prices rising across Europe, house­holds are incre­asingly looking for ways to reduce high energy costs. An effec­tive method for cost reduc­tion and energy saving is promi­sed by the effi­ci­ent services and products of tado GmbH. Since its foun­ding in 2011, the Munich-based company has been deve­lo­ping consu­mer-friendly and energy-effi­ci­ent ther­mo­stats that are compa­ti­ble with over 95% of all house­holds in Europe across manu­fac­tu­r­ers and can be instal­led by consu­mers them­sel­ves. The energy-saving features reduce custo­mers’ heating costs by an average of 22%. By combi­ning smart ther­mo­stats with time-varia­ble energy rates, a home’s energy use can be shifted to times when energy prices are low. To acce­le­rate its market entry in this area, tado° recently acqui­red aWAT­Tar, a pioneer in energy load shif­ting and time-varia­ble energy offers. Toge­ther, the two compa­nies are now plan­ning to signi­fi­cantly expand their bund­led offe­ring to reduce costs and CO2 emis­si­ons for customers.

tado° sold around three million smart ther­mo­stats by the end of 2022 and doubled its busi­ness with smart ther­mo­stats and service offe­rings in 2022. The step into profi­ta­bi­lity is now to follow in 2023. In order to reach even more house­holds, tado° is plan­ning to work more closely with housing asso­cia­ti­ons that manage a large number of apart­ments for this purpose. A new, adapted product line is to be laun­ched for this market segment this year.

Chris­tian Deil­mann, Co-Foun­der and Chief Product Offi­cer at tado°, comm­ents, “As the market leader in smart indoor climate manage­ment, now is the right time to bring our unique energy manage­ment offe­rings to the mass market. We look forward to strong part­ner­ships with the new investors.”

“With tado°, we have inves­ted in a company that makes the problem of high energy consump­tion in resi­den­tial buil­dings, espe­ci­ally through heating and cooling, more effi­ci­ent and addres­ses it with a sustainable and cost-saving approach,” explains Monika Steger (photo © Bayern Kapi­tal), Mana­ging Direc­tor of Bayern Kapi­tal. “The strong reve­nue growth of the past years proves that with the closed finan­cing round, tado° has the tools to become one of the worl­d’s leading play­ers for intel­li­gent indoor climate manage­ment. We look forward to support­ing the company in its further expan­sion plans.”

Bava­ria’s Minis­ter of Econo­mic Affairs Hubert Aiwan­ger says: “Espe­ci­ally in times of crisis, we need inno­va­tive ideas. tado° has its finger on the pulse with its energy-effi­ci­ent ther­mo­stats. We ther­e­fore support such ambi­tious high-tech compa­nies with our ScaleUp Fund Bava­ria. We thus help you as a co-invest­ment part­ner to realize large finan­cing rounds in parti­cu­larly capi­tal-inten­sive expan­sion phases.”

The ScaleUp Fund Bava­ria was initia­ted by the Bava­rian state govern­ment in July 2021 and has since been mana­ged by Bayern Kapi­tal GmbH, a wholly owned subsi­diary of LfA Förder­bank Bayern. A prere­qui­site for parti­ci­pa­tion by the ScaleUp Fund Bava­ria is a demons­tra­bly successful, scalable busi­ness model based on an inno­va­tive tech­no­logy, ideally secu­red by property rights, with sustainable unique selling points and clear compe­ti­tive advan­ta­ges. Like all funds mana­ged by Bayern Kapi­tal, ScaleUp-Fonds Bayern never invests in compe­ti­tion, but exclu­si­vely in close coope­ra­tion and always on equal terms with private investors.

About tado°

tado° is the Euro­pean market leader for intel­li­gent indoor climate manage­ment. As the only cross-manu­fac­tu­rer plat­form, tado°‘s 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 and varia­ble-time rates. tado° was foun­ded in 2011 and has its company head­quar­ters in Munich. With 180 employees, tado° is revo­lu­tio­ni­zing the way energy is used at home, for more comfort, effi­ci­ency and in harm­ony with nature. www.tado.de

About Bayern Kapital

Bayern Kapi­tal GmbH, based in Lands­hut, is the venture/growth capi­tal company of the Free State of Bava­ria. It accom­pa­nies inno­va­tive high-tech compa­nies in the Free State through various growth phases, from seed to later stage, with equity capi­tal in the amount of 0.25 to 25 million euros. Bayern Kapi­tal often fills gaps in the VC sector in proven consor­tium constel­la­ti­ons with private inves­tors (busi­ness angels, family offices and corpo­rate ventures).

Bayern Kapi­tal mana­ges specia­li­zed invest­ment funds with a volume of around 700 million euros. Since its foun­da­tion in 1995 on the initia­tive of the state govern­ment, the wholly owned subsi­diary of LfA Förder­bank Bayern has so far inves­ted around 400 million euros of its own equity capi­tal in around 300 start-ups and scale-ups in sectors such as life scien­ces, soft­ware & IT, mate­ri­als & new mate­ri­als, nano­tech­no­logy and envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­logy. As a result, more than 8,000 jobs have been perma­nently crea­ted in Bava­ria in sustainable compa­nies. The active port­fo­lio curr­ently compri­ses over 80 companies.

Examp­les of nume­rous ground­brea­king success stories that Bayern Kapi­tal has been invol­ved in early on include EOS (today the worl­d’s leading tech­no­logy provi­der in indus­trial 3D prin­ting of metals and plas­tics), Proglove, Fazua, SimS­cale, Scom­pler, egym, Parcel­lab, Cobrai­ner, Quan­tum Systems, Casavi, Theva, Riskme­thods, Tubu­lis, Cata­lym, Immu­nic, Sirion and many more.
www.bayernkapital.de

News

Berlin — Venture capi­tal inves­tors Burd­a­Prin­ci­pal Invest­ments, Sequoia Capi­tal India and Vorwerk Ventures are merging their port­fo­lio company and co-living opera­tor Habyt with its US coun­ter­part Common. Habyt, as the largest co-living company in Europe and Asia, will join US market leader Common to form the largest global co-living operator.

Foun­ded in Berlin in 2017 and led by CEO Luca Bovone, Habyt Group is backed by major inves­tors from around the world, inclu­ding P101, Vorwerk Ventures, DI Capi­tal Solu­ti­ons, Burd­a­Prin­ci­pal Invest­ments, Sequoia Capi­tal India and Mitsu­bi­shi. Common is based in the U.S. and provi­des stream­li­ned manage­ment of multi­fa­mily proper­ties through tech­no­lo­gi­cal, design and opera­tio­nal inno­va­tions. With more than $110 million in venture capi­tal invest­ments, Common provi­des excep­tio­nal expe­ri­en­ces for renters in more than 10 metro­po­li­tan areas across the United States.

The merged company now opera­tes in more than 40 cities and 14 count­ries on three conti­nents, mana­ging more than 30,000 units ranging from co-living to studios to tradi­tio­nal rental housing. Both Habyt and Common tripled their busi­ness in 2022 and expect further growth in 2023. The new merged company is expec­ted to be profi­ta­ble as early as 2023.

About Burd­a­Prin­ci­pal Investments

BPI is a unit of Hubert Burda Media that provi­des long-term growth capi­tal for fast-growing digi­tal tech­no­logy and media compa­nies. Hubert Burda Media is one of the largest Euro­pean media and tech­no­logy groups, which has been successfully inves­t­ing in Inter­net-based compa­nies since 1998.

About Sequoia India and Southe­ast Asia

Sequoia helps bold foun­ders build excep­tio­nal compa­nies, from idea to IPO and beyond. Sequoia India and Southe­ast Asia actively works with foun­ders from a wide range of compa­nies across all indus­tries, inclu­ding BYJUs, Carou­sell, Druva, GoTo, OYO Rooms, Toko­pe­dia, True­cal­ler, Zomato and nume­rous others. By part­ne­ring with Sequoia, start­ups bene­fit from over 50 years of expe­ri­ence and lessons lear­ned from early colla­bo­ra­ti­ons with compa­nies like Airbnb, Alibaba, Apple, Drop­box, Google, Linke­dIn and Stripe. From the begin­ning, univer­si­ties, foun­da­ti­ons and other non-profit orga­niza­ti­ons have formed the foun­da­tion of Sequoia’s inves­tor base. www.sequoiacap.com/india/ and www.sequoiacap.com/sea/.

About Vorwerk Ventures

Vorwerk Ventures is an inde­pen­dent venture capi­tal fund that emer­ged from the Vorwerk Group at the end of 2019 and is charac­te­ri­zed by a strong commit­ment to consu­mer-facing and digi­tal compa­nies. Head­quar­te­red in Berlin, Vorwerk Ventures curr­ently mana­ges assets of nearly €500 million and is constantly on the lookout for promi­sing projects. Start­ing with seed and Series A invest­ments of € 1 million up to € 10 million, Vorwerk Ventures offers ongo­ing support and provi­des up to € 15 million for subse­quent finan­cing rounds.

Advi­sors Burd­a­Prin­ci­pal Invest­ments, Sequoia Capi­tal India and Vorwerk Ventures: YPOG
Dr. Benja­min Ullrich (Co-Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Partner
Tobias Lovett (Co-Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Senior Associate
Dr. Tim Schlös­ser (M&A), Partner
Barbara Hasse (M&A), Associate

About YPOG

YPOG is a specia­list tax and commer­cial law firm opera­ting in the core areas of Funds, Tax and Tran­sac­tions. 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. Today, YPOG employs more than 100 expe­ri­en­ced lawy­ers, tax advi­sors, tax specia­lists and a notary in three offices in Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne.

News

Frank­furt a. M. — The sale of Onven­tis to Keen­sight by Main Capi­tal Part­ners is another very successful exit for Main and under­lines the track record of top quar­tile returns. Main Capi­tal inves­ted in Onven­tis in 2019, helping the company become a leading source-to-pay (S2P) provi­der for mid-market compa­nies. Keen­sight, a reco­gni­zed tech­no­logy-focu­sed inves­tor specia­li­zing in pan-Euro­pean growth buyouts, will support Onven­tis in its next phase of growth.

Foun­ded in 2000 and head­quar­te­red in Stutt­gart, Germany, the company’s offe­ring mana­ges the source-to-pay proces­ses of direct and indi­rect mate­ri­als in stra­te­gic and opera­tio­nal purcha­sing. Keen­sight, who have been inte­res­ted in the spend manage­ment soft­ware space for years, iden­ti­fied Onven­tis as a market leader early on and reco­gni­zed that Onven­tis stood out for its strong product offe­ring, clear stra­te­gic vision and seam­less execu­tion. Keen­sight will support Onven­tis on its jour­ney to beco­ming an inter­na­tio­nal SaaS cham­pion in the midmar­ket. Throug­hout the part­ner­ship, the entire Onven­tis manage­ment team will remain on board and co-invest with Keen­sight Capital.

During the Main invest­ment period, the company evol­ved from a company focu­sed on the DACH region to a leading pan-Euro­pean provi­der of spend manage­ment soft­ware with local offices in the Nether­lands, Sweden and Austria. During this period, the company became an attrac­tive Rule-of-40 company with a strong focus on recur­ring reve­nue growth and an increase in total reve­nue of more than 2.0x. In addi­tion, Main Capi­tal supported Onven­tis with two stra­te­gic acqui­si­ti­ons in the areas of spend analy­tics and invoice manage­ment to expand the group’s product offe­ring and streng­then its inter­na­tio­nal presence. These achie­ve­ments were also recently reco­gni­zed by Spend Matters, which ranked Onven­tis as one of the top ‘Provi­ders to Watch’.

Frank Schmidt, CEO of Onven­tis, commen­ted, “Onven­tis has a promi­sing future ahead of it and we look forward to start­ing this new chap­ter with Keen­sight as our new part­ner. We believe their exper­tise will drive our growth and look forward to working toge­ther. We would like to expressly thank Main Capi­tal Part­ners for the good coope­ra­tion and their support in the rapid imple­men­ta­tion of our jointly defi­ned growth strategy.”

Yuri Mikhalev, Part­ner at Keen­sight Capi­tal, added: “We are proud to welcome Onven­tis to our port­fo­lio and look forward to working with the team to streng­then the group’s growth and expand the company’s offe­ring and geogra­phic reach. We iden­ti­fied this company as a leading cloud procu­re­ment provi­der, and Onven­tis’ alre­ady outstan­ding market posi­tio­ning, strong brand and attrac­tive profile convin­ced us of the company’s high caliber.”

Sven van Berge Henegou­wen (Photo © Main Capi­tal Part­ners), Mana­ging Part­ner at Main Capi­tal Part­ners, concluded, “We congra­tu­late Onven­tis on ente­ring the next phase of growth with Keen­sight. The company has shown great promise over the past few years and we are proud to have supported Onven­tis with two very stra­te­gic acqui­si­ti­ons that signi­fi­cantly increase custo­mer value. We wish the company, manage­ment and employees all the best for the future.”

About Onven­tis

Onven­tis has been a cloud pioneer for the digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion of procu­re­ment and finance proces­ses since 2000. Onven­tis Buyer cloud soft­ware is an all-in-one procu­re­ment system that helps compa­nies with all procu­re­ment opera­ti­ons to achieve finan­cial control, process effi­ci­ency, and cost savings while comply­ing with corpo­rate poli­cies and laws. Onven­tis Buyer stream­li­nes and auto­ma­tes all proces­ses from procu­re­ment source to payment, inclu­ding colla­bo­ra­tion with suppli­ers in the network. The Onven­tis network connects busi­ness proces­ses of buyers and suppli­ers — simply and secu­rely. World­wide, more than 1,000 compa­nies with appro­xi­m­ately 450,000 users in the Onven­tis network handle an annual procu­re­ment volume of over 10 billion euros with more than 50,000 suppliers.

About Keen­sight Capital

Keen­sight Capi­tal (“Keen­sight”), one of Euro­pe’s leading growth buyout firms, is dedi­ca­ted to helping entre­pre­neurs execute their growth stra­te­gies. For over 20 years, the Keen­sight Capi­tal team has used its know­ledge of invest­ment and growth indus­tries to make long-term invest­ments in profi­ta­ble compa­nies with high growth poten­tial and reve­nues of between €10 million and €400 million. Drawing on its exper­tise in tech­no­logy and health­care, Keen­sight iden­ti­fies the best invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties in Europe and works closely with manage­ment teams to deve­lop and execute their stra­te­gic vision. Keen­sight Capi­tal’s success has earned it a Gold Award from the Private Equity Exch­ange & Awards for the last six conse­cu­tive years, for the best Euro­pean Growth Private Equity Fund.

About Main Capi­tal Partners

Main Capi­tal Part­ners is a leading soft­ware inves­tor in the Bene­lux, DACH region and the Nordic count­ries. Main has nearly 20 years of expe­ri­ence streng­thening soft­ware compa­nies and works closely with the manage­ment teams of its port­fo­lio compa­nies as a stra­te­gic part­ner to realize sustainable growth and build excel­lent soft­ware groups. Main employs 60 people and has offices in The Hague, Stock­holm, Düssel­dorf, Antwerp and the USA (Boston). As of Octo­ber 2021, Main has over €2.2 billion in assets under manage­ment. Main has inves­ted in more than 150 soft­ware compa­nies to date. These compa­nies have crea­ted jobs for about 9000 employees.

News

London/ Munich — Offi­cium GmbH (“Offi­cium”), a port­fo­lio company of Arcus Euro­pean Infra­struc­ture Fund 3 SCSp (“AEIF3”), a fund mana­ged by Arcus Infra­struc­ture Part­ners LLP (“Arcus”), conti­nues its growth path and has successfully comple­ted the acqui­si­tion of Alpham­ess GmbH in Bochum, North Rhine-West­pha­lia (“Alpham­ess”). Offi­cium is one of Germany’s leading inde­pen­dent meter­ing service provi­ders in the field of heating and opera­ting cost billing and equip­ment rental for the housing indus­try. Alpham­ess is Offi­ci­um’s tenth acqui­si­tion in the last two years. It under­lines the success of the conso­li­da­tion stra­tegy of leading inde­pen­dent suppli­ers. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price.

With the now comple­ted acqui­si­tion of Alpham­ess, Offi­cium is expan­ding its presence in North Rhine-West­pha­lia. The members of the exis­ting manage­ment team will support the next phase of Alpham­ess’ busi­ness development.

Volker Wylach, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Alpham­ess GmbH, comm­ents: “We are plea­sed to take the next stra­te­gic step with the strong plat­form Offi­cium. Offi­ci­um’s compre­hen­sive know-how will allow us to deve­lop in a targe­ted manner and improve our effi­ci­ency even further. This will bene­fit both our custo­mers and our employees.”

Stefano Brug­nolo, Part­ner at Arcus Infra­struc­ture Part­ners, explains: “The German market for meter­ing services is highly fremen­ted and has been on a conso­li­da­tion course for years. Offi­cium, as one of the leading inde­pen­dent provi­ders in this attrac­tive segment, is an ideal plat­form for small to medium-sized compa­nies that want to grow without giving up their iden­tity. We support Offi­cium in pushing its buy-and-build stra­tegy even further in the future.”

Stephan Kier­meyer, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Offi­cium GmbH, adds: “With Alpham­ess, we now have another strong part­ner that opti­mally comple­ments our service port­fo­lio. With the tenth acqui­si­tion, we are once again streng­thening our market posi­tion and incre­asing our presence in North Rhine-Westphalia.”

Advi­sors Offi­cium: Noerr (Legal) and Alva­rez & Marsal (Finan­cial)

About Offi­cium

Offi­cium GmbH is one of the leading inde­pen­dent measu­re­ment service provi­ders in the field of heating and opera­ting cost billing and equip­ment rental for the housing indus­try. The company has been estab­lished as a plat­form invest­ment in 2020. As an umbrella company, Offi­cium mana­ges nume­rous regio­nal provi­ders and has a presence prima­rily in Berlin, Bran­den­burg, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-West­pha­lia (for exam­ple, Düssel­dorf and Duis­burg), Meck­len­burg-Western Pome­ra­nia, Saxony-Anhalt (Dessau-Roßlau), Saxony (Dres­den and Chem­nitz), Thurin­gia, and Bava­ria (Upper and Lower Fran­co­nia). Custo­mers are prima­rily small and medium-sized property manage­ment compa­nies and private land­lords. More than one million measu­ring units are now supplied. — www.officium.gmbh

About Arcus Infra­struc­ture Partners 

Arcus Infra­struc­ture Part­ners LLP is an inde­pen­dent fund mana­ger focu­sed exclu­si­vely on long-term invest­ments in Euro­pean infra­struc­ture. Arcus invests on behalf of insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors through discre­tio­nary funds and dedi­ca­ted co-invest­ment vehic­les and, through its subsi­dia­ries, curr­ently mana­ges invest­ments with a total enter­prise value of over EUR 19 billion (as of Septem­ber 30, 2022). Arcus targets mid-sized, value-add infra­struc­ture invest­ments, focu­sing on compa­nies in the digi­tal tech­no­logy, trans­por­ta­tion, logi­stics and indus­trial, and energy sectors. — www.arcusip.com

News

Grün­wald /Eningen unter Achalm — G&N Holding GmbH (“G&N” or “G&N Group”), a port­fo­lio company of AURELIUS Wachs­tums­ka­pi­tal, has acqui­red Renz Sicher­heits­tech­nik GmbH & Co KG (“Renz Sicher­heits­tech­nik”). The company offers high-quality services in the field of tech­ni­cal buil­ding equip­ment for fire alarm systems, secu­rity tech­no­logy as well as IT and tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons technology.

A signi­fi­cant share of sales is gene­ra­ted with main­ten­ance and service. In addi­tion, Renz Sicher­heits­tech­nik has its own 24/7 service and emer­gency call center. The company’s head­quar­ters are loca­ted in Enin­gen unter Achalm. A further four bran­ches are loca­ted on Lake Cons­tance, in Ulm, in Allgäu and in Heil­bronn. G&N’s exis­ting loca­ti­ons in southern Germany will be suita­bly expan­ded. The opera­tio­nal manage­ment of Renz Sicher­heits­tech­nik by Björn Renz and Jörg Schwarz will conti­nue in the long term after the tran­sac­tion. In addi­tion, Björn Renz remains signi­fi­cantly invol­ved and streng­thens the exis­ting manage­ment of the G&N Group.

The acqui­si­tion repres­ents the fourth add-on acqui­si­tion of the G&N Group and streng­thens its market posi­tion as a leading manu­fac­tu­rer-inde­pen­dent service provi­der throug­hout Germany. This unders­cores AURELIUS Growth Capi­tal’s active approach to expan­ding port­fo­lio compa­nies through stra­te­gic acqui­si­ti­ons of market participants.

“The exis­ting manage­ment team around Björn Renz has achie­ved impres­sive growth and deve­lo­ped the company into one of the regi­on’s leading service provi­ders in the secu­rity and commu­ni­ca­ti­ons tech­no­logy sector in southern Germany. We are proud to work with Renz Sicher­heits­tech­nik to streng­then the market posi­tion of the G&N Group in Germany,” said Nico Vitense, Mana­ging Part­ner at AURELIUS Wachstumskapital.

“A part­ner­ship between the G&N Group and Renz Sicher­heits­tech­nik signi­fi­cantly streng­thens our market posi­tion in the econo­mic­ally strong region of Southern Germany. We are very much looking forward to working with Björn Renz and Jörg Schwarz and their entire team,” commen­ted Stefan Carle (Mana­ging Direc­tor and Co-CEO of G&N) and Chris­tian Dahl (Mana­ging Direc­tor and Co-CEO of G&N).

“We value the G&N Group as a long-stan­ding confi­dant in the market. With AURELIUS growth capi­tal behind us, we are convin­ced that we can conti­nue to expand the company sustain­ably and build on the histo­ri­cal growth. The team and I are looking forward to the future toge­ther and the next steps,” added Björn Renz (Mana­ging Direc­tor of Renz Sicherheitstechnik).

On the part of AURELIUS Growth Capi­tal, Mana­ging Part­ner Nico Vitense and his team mana­ged the transaction.

Advi­sor AURELIUS Growth Capital

Blue­mont Consul­ting (Markus Frän­kel, Commer­cial Due Diligence),
Ebner Stolz (Jörg Scho­berth, Finan­cial and Tax Due Diligence)
Kuzaj Witt­mann & Part­ner (Hans-Jörg Witt­mann, legal due dili­gence and legal advice).

AURELIUS is a pan-Euro­pean alter­na­tive invest­ment group with offices in London, Luxem­bourg, Munich, Amster­dam, Stock­holm, Madrid, Milan, Berlin and Düssel­dorf. AURELIUS has exten­sive opera­tio­nal exper­tise as well as expe­ri­ence and is thus in a posi­tion to acce­le­rate the value crea­tion process in its port­fo­lio companies.

The main invest­ment plat­forms are the AURELIUS Euro­pean Oppor­tu­ni­ties IV Fund and the exch­ange-traded AURELIUS Equity Oppor­tu­ni­ties SE & Co. KGaA (ISIN: DE000A0JK2A8, stock exch­ange symbol: AR4), which acquire group spin-offs and compa­nies with deve­lo­p­ment poten­tial in the midmar­ket sector. The core element of the invest­ment stra­tegy is to grow the port­fo­lio compa­nies with a team of nearly 100 in-house opera­tio­nal taskforce experts.

AURELIUS is also active in the busi­ness areas of growth capi­tal, real estate and alter­na­tive forms of finan­cing. AURELIUS Growth Capi­tal parti­ci­pa­tes in LBO tran­sac­tions for midmar­ket succes­sion solu­ti­ons. AURELIUS Real Estate Oppor­tu­ni­ties focu­ses on real estate invest­ments with sustainable value enhance­ment poten­tial through active manage­ment. AURELIUS Finance Company offers flexi­ble finan­cing solu­ti­ons for compa­nies throug­hout Europe.

News

The Hague — Main Capi­tal Part­ners (“Main”) today announ­ced its part­ner­ship with Dutch invoi­cing soft­ware specia­list WeFact. This stra­te­gic part­ner­ship was formed to jointly acce­le­rate WeFac­t’s natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal growth. Under the leader­ship of the manage­ment team and supported by Main’s exper­tise in the inter­na­tio­nal soft­ware market, WeFact will streng­then its market posi­tion and further deve­lop its product port­fo­lio to provide even grea­ter value to its custo­mers and partners.

WeFact was foun­ded in 2005 and is based in Eersel, the Nether­lands. The company is a modern SaaS provi­der of invoi­cing soft­ware that faci­li­ta­tes the sending of invoices, the crea­tion of quota­ti­ons and the proces­sing of inco­ming invoices, so that custo­mers have conti­nuous insight and control over their admi­nis­tra­tion. With a go-to-market stra­tegy focu­sed on product-driven growth, WeFact serves more than 10,000 custo­mers in the Nether­lands, Belgium and nume­rous other Euro­pean count­ries. More than 750 accoun­ting firms work as distri­bu­tion part­ners for WeFact and recom­mend WeFact as the ideal online invoi­cing and manage­ment solu­tion for entrepreneurs.

Growth acce­le­ra­tion

WeFact and Main will work closely toge­ther to acce­le­rate both dome­stic and inter­na­tio­nal growth. The growth stra­tegy includes deepe­ning and broa­de­ning the product offe­ring, (inter)national sales by the inter­nal team and by part­ners, and explo­ring oppor­tu­ni­ties for stra­te­gic acqui­si­ti­ons. The focus of this stra­tegy is on acce­le­ra­ting orga­nic growth, inclu­ding the expan­sion of the part­ner network and increased inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion. In addi­tion, the orga­nic growth stra­tegy will be acce­le­ra­ted through selec­tive stra­te­gic combi­na­ti­ons with other market players.”

Roel Kort­ing, CEO of WeFact, said, “We look forward to working with Main and buil­ding WeFact into a leading inter­na­tio­nal company toge­ther. The combi­na­tion of Main’s exten­sive know­ledge and inter­na­tio­nal expe­ri­ence with our tech­ni­cal and commer­cial exper­tise is an excel­lent fit. This puts us in an excel­lent posi­tion to realize our ambi­tious growth plans and the further profes­sio­na­liza­tion of our company. In short, we are the same company, with the same people, the same core values, the same service and the same ambi­ti­ons. Howe­ver, now with the rein­force­ment of Main as our stra­te­gic partner.”

Jeroen Blox, Chief Tech­no­logy Offi­cer of WeFact, adds, “To grow and support WeFact, we need a strong and expe­ri­en­ced part­ner that fits our unique WeFact culture. We have found this kind of part­ner in Main. The drive to deve­lop the best product has remained unch­an­ged for 18 years. With Main as our part­ner, we can ensure conti­nuity for our custo­mers while our perfor­mance-driven team focu­ses on capi­ta­li­zing on new growth oppor­tu­ni­ties in the market­place. This part­ner­ship will enable us to deepen and expand our product offe­ring and further roll out WeFact internationally.”

Ivo van Deude­kom (photo © Main Capi­tal), Invest­ment Direc­tor at Main Capi­tal Part­ners, summa­ri­zes: “We have known the foun­ders and the manage­ment team of WeFact for many years and are impres­sed by the way they have built the company in a sustainable and fast growing way. That’s why we’re exci­ted to work with WeFact and support the company in its next phase. WeFact is a leading soft­ware provi­der in the billing and manage­ment soft­ware market with an extre­mely modern product. With WeFact, sole proprie­tors, small busi­ness owners and SMBs can be unbur­dened and gain more insight, control and effi­ci­ency for their orga­niza­tion. So we’re really looking forward to working toge­ther to make the custo­mer base even bigger and more international.”

About WeFact

Foun­ded in 2005 and based in Eersel (North Brabant, the Nether­lands), WeFact has become a leading soft­ware deve­lo­per for invoi­cing and admi­nis­tra­tion. WeFact provi­des a powerful solu­tion for sending invoices, crea­ting quotes, and proces­sing inco­ming invoices so busi­ness owners can get and stay in control of their admi­nis­tra­tion. The company makes its plat­form available to more than 10,000 entre­pre­neurs in the Nether­lands, Belgium and nume­rous other Euro­pean compa­nies. More than 750 accoun­ting firms act as distri­bu­tors for WeFact, recom­men­ding it as the ideal online invoi­cing and manage­ment solu­tion for entre­pre­neurs. WeFact employs around 17 people. https://www.wefact.nl

About Main Capi­tal Partners

Main Capi­tal Part­ners is a leading soft­ware inves­tor in Bene­lux, DACH and the Nordic count­ries. Main has nearly 20 years of expe­ri­ence streng­thening soft­ware compa­nies and works closely with the manage­ment teams of its port­fo­lio compa­nies as a stra­te­gic part­ner to realize sustainable growth and build excel­lent soft­ware groups. Main employs 60 people and has offices in The Hague, Stock­holm, Düssel­dorf, Antwerp and Boston (USA). As of Octo­ber 2021, Main had over €2.2 billion in assets under manage­ment. Main has inves­ted in more than 150 soft­ware compa­nies to date. These compa­nies have crea­ted jobs for about 9000 employees.

News

Frank­furt am Main — Stan­dard Char­te­red, through its SC Ventures arm, is inves­t­ing with Landes­bank Baden-Würt­tem­berg (LBBW) and Frank­furt-based finan­cial soft­ware specia­list Comyno in block­chain soft­ware provi­der SWIAT, which was foun­ded by Deka­bank in Febru­ary 2022. The invest­ment is part of the first finan­cing round for the further deve­lo­p­ment of SWIAT. As part of the tran­sac­tion, Stan­dard Char­te­red, Deka­Bank and LBBW will each hold a 30 percent stake in SWIAT, while Comyno will hold a 10 percent stake.

The goal of the new joint venture is to use SWIAT to create a uniform stan­dard for proces­sing block­chain-based secu­ri­ties. The new “SWIFT” for digi­tal assets, so to speak. In the future, the decen­tra­li­zed finan­cial infra­struc­ture will enable secu­ri­ties lending, repurchase agree­ments, deri­va­ti­ves and bond issues to be sett­led in real time. SWIAT stands for Secure World­wide Inter­bank Asset Trans­fer and is an enter­prise block­chain plat­form where banks control the nodes. www.swiat.io

Advi­sor Stan­dard Char­te­red: Allen & Overy 

The Allen & Overy team was led by part­ner Dr. Hans Scho­ne­weg and senior asso­ciate Juliane Dieck­mann-Keden (both Corporate/M&A, Hamburg) and further included part­ners Dr. Udo Olgem­öl­ler (Public Law, Frank­furt) and Dr. Jens Matthes (IP, Düssel­dorf) as well as coun­sel Dr. Ioan­nis Thanos (Anti­trust) and Dr. Daniel Bolm (Real Estate). The team also included senior asso­cia­tes Dr. Marcus Macken­sen (Corporate/Private Equity, all Hamburg), Anna Kräling (IP), Catha­rina Glugla (Data Protec­tion) and Florian Annu­schat (Tax Law, all Düssel­dorf), asso­cia­tes Dr. Stephan Bühner (Public Law, Frank­furt), Chan­tal Ahne­feld (Labor Law), Chris­tin Schlorf, Juliana Palavra Gorgueira (all Hamburg), Florian Diehl (Frank­furt) as well as Tran­sac­tion Offi­cer Dario Barbato (all Corporate/M&A, Hamburg).

 

News

Stutt­gart — TRUMPF Venture II GmbH (“TRUMPF Venture”) made an invest­ment of 13 million euros in the Series D finan­cing round of Munich-based medtech company iThera Medi­cal GmbH (“iThera Medi­cal”). TRUMPF Venture recei­ved legal and tax advice on this tran­sac­tion from Heuking Part­ner in Stutt­gart. In addi­tion to TRUMPF Venture, exis­ting inves­tors such as Bayern Kapi­tal again parti­ci­pa­ted with money from the Bava­rian Growth Fund. Further invest­ments were made by the Euro­pean Coun­cil Fund of the EU Commis­sion, Mey Capi­tal Matrix and Fluxu­nit. The company intends to use the capi­tal to deve­lop its own diagno­stic product to market matu­rity and to obtain regu­la­tory appr­oval in Europe and the USA.

TRUMPF Venture is a stra­te­gic as well as corpo­rate venture capi­tal inves­tor specia­li­zing in the promo­tion of promi­sing start-ups in the indus­try world­wide. TRUMPF Venture posi­ti­ons itself as a long-term deve­lo­p­ment part­ner. TRUMPF Venture usually seeks mino­rity stakes of between five and 25 percent.

iThera Medi­cal is a start-up for optoa­cou­stic imaging in medi­cal diagno­stics. A new deve­lo­p­ment of the company is the so-called MSOT tech­no­logy (Multis­pec­tral Optoa­cou­stic Tomo­gra­phy). Through this tech­no­logy, dise­ase patterns such as cancer or fibro­sis can be diagno­sed. By conver­ting light energy into sound waves, diffe­rent types of tissue in the body can thus be charac­te­ri­zed, diffe­ren­tia­ted and displayed in 3D images.

iThera Medi­cal was foun­ded in 2010 as a spin-off of Helm­holtz Zentrum München.

Advi­sors to Trumpf Venture GmbH: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek

Dr. Hermann Ali Hinde­rer, LL.M. (lead), Anika Lisa Dasch­mann (both Private Equity / Venture Capi­tal), Antje Münch, LL.M. (IP), all Stuttgart;
Laura-Feli­cia Bokranz, LL.M. (Univer­sity of Cape Town), Chris­toph Hexel (both Labor Law), both Düssel­dorf; Cécile Corbet, LL.M. (Patent Law), Frankfurt;
Dr. Martin Schel­len­berg (Public Law), Dr. Sarah Slavik-Schulz (Tax Law), both Hamburg

News

Hamburg / Munich — Water­land Private Equity has laun­ched two new funds — with capi­tal commit­ments tota­ling four billion euros. Despite a chal­len­ging econo­mic envi­ron­ment, nume­rous insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors thus provi­ded Water­land with more fresh capi­tal than ever before. In the DACH region, too, the Euro­pean mid-market inves­tor specia­li­zing in buy & build stra­te­gies can thus conti­nue its success story even stronger.

Water­lan­d’s ninth fund (“WPEF IX”) has a volume of 3.5 billion euros and will invest as usual in medium-sized compa­nies in frag­men­ted growth markets. With the “Water­land Part­ner­ship Fund I”, an addi­tio­nal fund was estab­lished for mino­rity share­hol­dings, e.g. in selec­ted former port­fo­lio compa­nies of Water­land. Funds amoun­ting to 500 million euros are now available here. Fund­rai­sing for both funds was comple­ted in just four months and signi­fi­cantly excee­ded the origi­nal target.

“Capi­tal commit­ments from top-class insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors from all over the world are not a matter of course in these tense and cautious times. Howe­ver, the commit­ment of many exis­ting and new inves­tors shows that our invest­ment philo­so­phy and the nume­rous success stories are sustain­ably convin­cing,” says Dr. Cars­ten Rahlfs (photo © Water­land), Mana­ging Part­ner at Water­land in Hamburg. In two deca­des, the company has comple­ted appro­xi­m­ately 1,000 tran­sac­tions, foun­ding and deve­lo­ping more than 150 new plat­forms to build successful long-term market leaders. The expe­ri­en­ced buy & build inves­tor imple­ments an average of appro­xi­m­ately ten add-on acqui­si­ti­ons for each of its port­fo­lio companies.

Five new plat­forms in the DACH region in 2022

Water­land is active in Bene­lux, DACH, Scan­di­na­via, Poland, France as well as in the British Isles and recently also in Spain. In the DACH region, Water­land initia­ted five strong plat­forms through majo­rity acqui­si­ti­ons last year: Duven­beck (a leading Euro­pean logi­stics service provi­der), the Sleepco Group (merger of the premium bed manu­fac­tu­r­ers RUF and BRUNO from Germany and the Belgian LS Bedding), Lions­Home (a leading Euro­pean product compa­ri­son plat­form), the Swiss commu­ni­ca­ti­ons consul­tancy Team Farner and the soft­ware solu­ti­ons provi­der MT. In addi­tion, more than 20 stra­te­gic acqui­si­ti­ons were made for the port­fo­lio — despite a very tense and compe­ti­tive situa­tion in nume­rous sectors.

For the new year 2023, Dr. Gregor Hengst, part­ner at Water­land in Munich, sees­De­spite the vola­tile macroe­co­no­mic envi­ron­ment, there are attrac­tive oppor­tu­ni­ties in our target region. For exam­ple, tech­no­logy-based services and health­care remain inte­res­t­ing for us. In addi­tion, we are iden­ti­fy­ing and moni­to­ring other frag­men­ted markets where our strong buy & build approach can come into play. In the current envi­ron­ment of increased vola­ti­lity, our close colla­bo­ra­tion with port­fo­lio compa­nies on their resi­li­ence and sustainable posi­tio­ning remains an important focus — we are expan­ding our team in the 13 Euro­pean offices for this purpose.”

In Germany and Switz­er­land, Water­land is curr­ently inves­ted in the follo­wing compa­nies in addi­tion to Duven­beck, Sleepco, Lions­Home, Farner and MT: MEDIAN (reha­bi­li­ta­tion clinic opera­tor), Schö­nes Leben Group (care faci­li­ties), Fit/One (fitness studios), Hanse­fit (company fitness offe­rings), Athera (physio­the­rapy), coeo (receiv­a­bles manage­ment), Horn & Company (manage­ment consul­ting), Leupold (pack­a­ging), Serrala (payment and finance soft­ware), netgo (IT services), Skay­link (cloud services), enreach (unified commu­ni­ca­ti­ons), mrge (adtech), Netrics (mana­ged cloud services) and GOD (enter­prise software).

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, appro­xi­m­ately four­teen billion euros in equity funds are managed.

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

 

News

Düssel­dorf — NRW.BANK has laun­ched the fourth gene­ra­tion of its venture fund, NRW.Venture. The volume amounts to 150 million euros, which is another 50 million euros more than in previous fund gene­ra­ti­ons. Indi­vi­dual invest­ments of up to EUR 15 million are possi­ble, compared with 10 previously. NRW.BANK is thus respon­ding to the sustained growth in finan­cing requi­re­ments in the market. The invest­ment focus is on future-orien­ted topics such as climate tech or the digi­ta­liza­tion of indus­try, busi­ness and administration.

Econo­mics Minis­ter Mona Neubaur: “With NRW.BANK’s fourth venture fund, we have an offer that even better meets the finan­cing needs of high-growth start-ups. The previous fund gene­ra­ti­ons have alre­ady shown that inno­va­tive and future-orien­ted start-ups in North Rhine-West­pha­lia find the best condi­ti­ons for successful deve­lo­p­ment. We are buil­ding on this and signi­fi­cantly incre­asing the fund volume available, with a parti­cu­lar focus on future topics such as ClimateTech.”

Michael Stöl­ting (Photo © NRW.BANK), Member of the Mana­ging Board of NRW.BANK: “In the fight against climate change, we need inno­va­tive solu­ti­ons in North Rhine-West­pha­lia. Start-ups can play an essen­tial role here. At NRW.BANK, we make sure that promi­sing ideas do not fail due to financing.”

Between 20 and 30 new invest­ments are plan­ned by the end of 2027. In indi­vi­dual cases, the fund then invests up to 15 million euros in a company over seve­ral finan­cing rounds — toge­ther with private-sector co-inves­tors. Howe­ver, the commit­ment of NRW.Venture does not only include capi­tal, but also further support, among others in the areas of company buil­ding and gover­nance development.

Invest­ment focus

The invest­ment focus of the NRW.Venture funds is on indus­tries such as infor­ma­tion and commu­ni­ca­tion tech­no­logy, IT secu­rity, digi­tal economy, Inter­net of Things, life scien­ces, digi­tal health, inno­va­tive cross-sectional tech­no­lo­gies, new mate­ri­als, clean­tech as well as sustaina­bi­lity tech­no­lo­gies and agri­cul­tu­ral tech­no­lo­gies. In NRW.Venture IV, special atten­tion is also paid to start-ups in the Climate Tech segments as well as those that can support indus­try, busi­ness and admi­nis­tra­tion in the digi­tal transformation.

Prede­ces­sor fund: 68 invest­ments, many successful exits
The previous fund gene­ra­ti­ons of NRW.Venture have inves­ted in 68 start-ups, a signi­fi­cant number of which have alre­ady led to successful exits. Among them most recently, for exam­ple, the Bochum-based company phenox, which deve­lops, produ­ces and sells medi­cal tech­no­logy products for the treat­ment of strokes and vascu­lar dise­a­ses. NRW.Venture sold its shares in the company in April 2022 to Wallaby, a stra­te­gic inter­na­tio­nal part­ner of phenox.

The last fund to date, NRW.Venture III, star­ted its invest­ment period in 2018, ending with the end of 2022 and 22 invest­ments. Despite its early phase, this fund has also alre­ady recor­ded two successful exits.

News

Munich — The Life­Fit Group has expan­ded its brand port­fo­lio and acqui­red the Fitness­LOFT Group.
Fitness­LOFT is a leading opera­tor of fitness studios in the Full Service Best Price (FSBP) segment and opera­tes 27 studios in Bremen, Hamburg, North Rhine-West­pha­lia, Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt with more than 65,000 members. Gütt Olk Feld­haus advi­sed Life­Fit Group on the acqui­si­tion of Fitness­LOFT Group.

Life­Fit Group is a leading fitness and health plat­form in Germany, combi­ning seve­ral fitness brands from the boutique, premium and full service best price segments under one roof. Fitness First is the Group’s best-known brand.

GOF provi­ded legal support to Life­Fit in all phases of the tran­sac­tion process.

Legal advi­sors Life­Fit: Gütt Olk Feld­haus, Munich
Dr. Heiner Feld­haus (Part­ner, Corporate/M&A, Lead), Thomas Becker (Of Coun­sel, IP/IT/Data Protec­tion), Karl Ehren­berg, LL.M. (Melbourne) (Senior Asso­ciate, Corporate/M&A), Matthias Uelner (Senior Asso­ciate, Corporate/M&A), Dr. Ricarda Theis (Asso­ciate, Corporate/M&A)

Pusch Wahlig Work­place Law, Munich: Ingo Sappa (Labor Law)

About Gütt Olk Feldhaus
Gütt Olk Feld­haus is a leading inter­na­tio­nal law firm based in Munich. We provide compre­hen­sive advice on commer­cial and corpo­rate law. Our focus is on corpo­rate law, M&A, private equity and finan­cing. In these specia­list areas we also take on the litigation.

News

Berlin/Cologne — The funding of The Rain­fo­rest Company has a total volume of € 36 million and was led by Kalt­roco Ltd. Katjes Green­food parti­ci­pa­ted in the finan­cing round via a secon­dary. This is one of the largest finan­cing rounds in the German food tech sector in 2022 and the largest invest­ment amount recei­ved by a women-led food tech company in Europe to date. A YPOG team co-led by Johan­nes Janning and Benja­min Ullrich advi­sed Katjes Green­food on this finan­cing round for food startup The Rain­fo­rest Company.

The Rain­fo­rest Company achie­ved impres­sive growth rates in 2018 follo­wing the entry of Katjes Green­food. Thanks to a successful multich­an­nel stra­tegy with listings in more than 12,000 retail loca­ti­ons world­wide and a strong D2C busi­ness, the startup has alre­ady achie­ved sales of € 20 million. In order to further expand the company’s success, the addi­tio­nal capi­tal will be used for inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion and product expansion.

Albana Rama (photo © THe Rain­fo­rest Company) is foun­der of The Rain­fo­rest Company, the Euro­pean pioneer of sustainable super­foods with a focus on açaí, the “super­food” from the Brazi­lian rain­fo­rest. There are curr­ently two natu­ral, vegan products: The frozen açaí puree of the tropi­cal fruit, which is curr­ently parti­cu­larly popu­lar for prepa­ring healthy bowls and deli­cious smoothies, and the worl­d’s first açaí bowl-to-go in blueberry, mango and ginger flavors.

About Katjes Greenfood

Katjes­green­food GmbH & Co. KG, based in Düssel­dorf, toge­ther with its two sister compa­nies Katjes Fassin GmbH & Co. KG and Katjes Inter­na­tio­nal GmbH & Co. KG, form the Katjes Group. As a legally inde­pen­dent invest­ment company, it invests in growth compa­nies in the food indus­try that are rede­fi­ning the future of nutri­tion with inno­va­tive and sustainable products. In addi­tion to finan­cial invest­ments, a profound network and in-depth exper­tise in food retail­ing are the central pillars on the basis of which the port­fo­lio compa­nies are built into market leaders and the iconic brands of tomorrow.

About The Rain­fo­rest Company

Since 2016, The Rain­fo­rest Company has been on a mission to provide 100% natu­ral foods to make a lasting diffe­rence in the lives of its custo­mers across Europe. The company specia­li­zes in the vegan life­style, super­foods, acai-based products, orga­nic and healthy foods, and trans­pa­rent sustaina­bi­lity. The Rain­fo­rest Company was foun­ded in 2016 and is based in Berlin.

Consul­tant Katjes Green­food: YPOG
Dr. Johan­nes Janning (Co-Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Part­ner (elect)
Dr. Benja­min Ullrich (Co-Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Partner

About YPOG

YPOG is a specia­list tax and commer­cial law firm opera­ting in the core areas of Funds, Tax and Tran­sac­tions. 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. Today, YPOG employs more than 100 expe­ri­en­ced lawy­ers, tax advi­sors, tax specia­lists and a notary in three offices in Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne.

News

Paris/ Frank­furt a. M. — Montagu, a leading Euro­pean private equity firm, is plea­sed to announce that it has agreed to sell Main­care, a provi­der of soft­ware for French public hospi­tals and health autho­ri­ties, to Doca­poste, the digi­tal arm of the French Post Office. — The tran­sac­tion is still subject to appr­oval by the French compe­ti­tion authority.

Main­care offers a compre­hen­sive range of hospi­tal infor­ma­tion systems in France, where it is a leader in elec­tro­nic health records and solu­ti­ons for hospi­tal manage­ment, inter­ope­ra­bi­lity and tele­me­di­cine. With its inte­gra­ted soft­ware suite, the company helps public hospi­tals, payers and insu­r­ers imple­ment successful digi­tal stra­te­gies for the bene­fit of patients.

Since acqui­ring Main­care in 2018, Montagu has worked with the company to respond to the rapidly chan­ging needs of poli­cy­ma­kers and hospi­tals, parti­cu­larly in the wake of the Covid 19 pande­mic. Signi­fi­cant invest­ment in rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment led to the deve­lo­p­ment of a new gene­ra­tion of elec­tro­nic health records and the moder­niza­tion of Main­ca­re’s tech­no­logy to ensure that its products are inter­ope­ra­ble, SaaS-enab­led and at the fore­front of inno­va­tion in cybersecurity.

Under Monta­gu’s leader­ship, Main­ca­re’s busi­nesses acqui­red in the past were brought toge­ther orga­niza­tio­nally and tech­no­lo­gi­cally to deve­lop a common vision and stra­tegy for the company and drive effi­ci­en­cies. Led by a strong and unified manage­ment team, the chan­ges helped create a custo­mer-centric culture that puts the needs of medi­cal staff and pati­ents at the center of the organization.

Guil­laume Jaba­lot, Part­ner at Montagu: “Main­care is an excel­lent exam­ple of Monta­gu’s stra­tegy to part­ner with leading compa­nies that offer important products and services. We are proud of the success that Main­care has achie­ved, and we are confi­dent that the company will conti­nue to thrive under Doca­pos­te’s leadership.”

Fran­çois-Xavier Floren, CEO of Main­care, commen­ted, “Part­ne­ring with Doca­poste will allow us to address one of the biggest chal­lenges in our market — the importance of provi­ding custo­mers with long-term support from a trus­ted part­ner present in soft­ware, hosting and services. Over the past two years, with Monta­gu’s support, we have successfully imple­men­ted a trans­for­ma­tion plan aimed at impro­ving one of the persis­tent chal­lenges of the French hospi­tal system by giving time back to care­gi­vers.” The manage­ment team and all Main­care employees are confi­dent that the part­ner­ship with Doca­poste will bring further signi­fi­cant value to our custo­mers and the market.”

 

News

Cologne/ Berlin — In the latest finan­cing round of the AI-based trans­la­tor DeepL, venture capi­tal inves­tor Atomico was advi­sed by YPOG. In addi­tion to Atomico, IVP, Besse­mer Venture Part­ners and WiL as well as exis­ting inves­tors Bench­mark and btov parti­ci­pa­ted in the funding.

The Colo­gne-based startup emer­ged from the online diction­ary Linguee in 2017 and curr­ently offers 29 languages. Reve­nues are gene­ra­ted prima­rily from paid services, which include more features and privacy opti­ons than the free and open-access version. The company’s latest round of funding demons­tra­tes the incre­asing commer­cial importance of AI-based busi­ness models to the market and profes­sio­nal sectors.

Foun­der & CEO Jaros­law “Jarek” Kuty­low­ski is a passio­nate deve­lo­per and star­ted working on perso­nal projects he found useful and suita­ble for ever­y­day use at the age of 10. He later earned a docto­rate in compu­ter science with a focus on mathe­ma­tics. His fond­ness for languages and new tech­no­lo­gies led him into the world of AI trans­la­tion, in large part due to his multi­l­in­gual back­ground and sensi­bi­li­ties, having been born in Poland and raised in Germany.

The new capi­tal will be used for further rese­arch acti­vi­ties and the further deve­lo­p­ment of the company’s soft­ware. Further­more, DeepL is working on addi­tio­nal services and features and plans further inter­na­tio­nal expansion.

About Atomico

Atomico invests in emer­ging tech foun­ders in Series A and beyond — with a parti­cu­lar focus on Europe — lever­aging its exten­sive opera­tio­nal expe­ri­ence to acce­le­rate their growth. Since its foun­ding in 2006, Atomico has worked with over 100 ambi­tious teams — inclu­ding those at Klarna, Super­cell, Graph­core, Compass, Messa­ge­Bird, Master­class, Atten­tive Mobile, Pipedrive and Hinge Health. Atomic­o’s team of foun­ders, inves­tors and opera­tio­nal leaders has been respon­si­ble for global expan­sion, hiring and marke­ting at compa­nies ranging from Skype and Google to Twit­ter and Uber. The company curr­ently has $4 billion in assets under management.

About DeepL

DeepL is a German company that aims to elimi­nate language barriers around the world through the use of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Since 2017, the company has offe­red DeepL Trans­la­tor, a machine trans­la­tion system that achie­ves the best trans­la­tion quality in the world accor­ding to blind tests, at www.DeepL.com. In addi­tion, DeepL provi­des profes­sio­nal products for compa­nies, entre­pre­neurs and trans­la­tors. To date, more than one billion people have used the services of DeepL. The company is led by foun­der and CEO Jaros­law Kuty­low­ski and backed by inter­na­tio­nal inves­tors such as Bench­mark and btov.

Advi­sor Atomico: YPOG
Dr. Benja­min Ullrich (Co-Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Partner
Tobias Lovett (Co-Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Senior Associate
Dr. Matthias Schatz (Corpo­rate), Partner
Dr. Bene­dikt Flöter (IP/IT), Asso­cia­ted Partner
Dr. Andreas Bergt­hal­ler (Corpo­rate), Senior Associate
Pia Meven (Tran­sac­tions), Associate
Dr. Chris­toph Lütten­berg (Corpo­rate), Associate

About YPOG

YPOG is a specia­list tax and commer­cial law firm opera­ting in the core areas of Funds, Tax and Tran­sac­tions. 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. Today, YPOG employs more than 100 expe­ri­en­ced lawy­ers, tax advi­sors, tax specia­lists and a notary in three offices in Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne.

News

Düssel­dorf — NRW.BANK is one of the first German finan­cial insti­tu­ti­ons to issue a digi­tal bearer bond under the Elec­tro­nic Secu­ri­ties Act. This makes it one of the pioneers in the digi­tiza­tion of this still very analog area in the secu­ri­ties market. Auto­ma­ted emis­sion process increa­ses speed

“The hand­ling of our first digi­tal bond issue is another consis­tent step for us to actively shape the tech­no­lo­gi­cal trans­for­ma­tion in the finan­cial sector,” says Gabriela Pant­ring (photo © NRW.Bank), member of NRW.BANK’s Mana­ging Board. “A fully digi­tal issue signi­fi­cantly stream­li­nes the process while ensu­ring trans­pa­rency. It demons­tra­tes our commit­ment to digi­tiza­tion in the secu­ri­ties sector.”

The issue of the digi­tal bond with a volume of €20 million, two-year matu­rity and a coupon of 2.875% was hand­led via Deut­sche Börse Group’s D7 plat­form. The issu­ance of the bond was supported by LBBW.

The D7 plat­form replaces the tradi­tio­nal vault with a digi­tal secu­ri­ties regis­ter. This is an important first step that will enable further digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion of subse­quent sett­le­ment proces­ses. — NRW.BANK’s digi­tal bearer bond is listed on the Düssel­dorf Stock Exch­ange under WKN NWB1W2.

In summer 2021, the Elec­tro­nic Secu­ri­ties Act (eWpG) crea­ted the legal basis for issuing digi­tal secu­ri­ties. Issuers are no longer requi­red to depo­sit certi­fi­ca­tes of secu­ri­ties in paper form with Deut­sche Börse subsi­diary Clearstream. Veri­fi­ca­tion and storage is also now no longer done in analog, but in a digi­tal emis­si­ons register.

In 2019, NRW.BANK had alre­ady become the first deve­lo­p­ment bank to process a promis­sory note loan tran­sac­tion on a same-day and paper­less basis via block­chain. This was follo­wed in Septem­ber 2020 by the first block­chain-based and thus fully digi­tal and legally secure own issue of a promis­sory note loan.

About NRW.BANK
NRW.BANK is the deve­lo­p­ment bank for North Rhine-West­pha­lia. It supports its owner, the state of NRW, in its struc­tu­ral and econo­mic policy tasks. In its three promo­tion fields “Economy”, “Housing” and “Infrastructure/Municipalities”, NRW.BANK uses a broad range of promo­tion instru­ments: from low-inte­rest deve­lo­p­ment loans to equity finan­cing and advi­sory services. It works toge­ther with all banks and savings banks in NRW on a compe­ti­tion-neutral basis. In its promo­tion acti­vi­ties, NRW.BANK also takes into account exis­ting offers from the fede­ral govern­ment, the state and the Euro­pean Union. www.nrwbank.de

News

Frank­furt am Main / Bous — KTP Kunst­stoff Palet­ten­tech­nik GmbH (KTP) has acqui­red the majo­rity of shares in K2 PAK of Koper, Slove­nia. KTP was supported in this by the Frank­furt-based invest­ment company VR Equi­typ­art­ner, which holds a mino­rity stake in the Saar­land-based company. KTP is one of the Euro­pean market leaders in the produc­tion and deve­lo­p­ment of foldable large contai­ners and large load carri­ers as well as pallets and carrier systems made of plas­tic. With the acqui­si­tion of K2 PAK, KTP is streng­thening its busi­ness area around the inner pack­a­ging of trans­port boxes, lever­aging valuable syner­gies between the two compa­nies and conti­nuing its long-term growth strategy.

KTP had alre­ady acqui­red a majo­rity stake in K2 PAK at the begin­ning of 2022; the stake was now signi­fi­cantly increased again at the turn of the year. The remai­ning shares remain with the mana­ging part­ner Marco Krmac. For more than two deca­des, the family-owned company K2 PAK has been deve­lo­ping and supp­ly­ing advan­ced indus­trial reusable pack­a­ging solu­ti­ons made of a wide variety of mate­ri­als as an inner packer, provi­ding opti­mum protec­tion for custo­mers’ compon­ents during trans­port. There are alre­ady long-stan­ding busi­ness rela­ti­onships with KTP — the inte­gra­tion will enable further syner­gies to be lever­a­ged and deve­lo­p­ment and inno­va­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties to be driven forward.

KTP Kunst­stoff Palet­ten­tech­nik GmbH, based in Bous (Saar­land), has specia­li­zed in the manu­fac­ture and deve­lo­p­ment of foldable large contai­ners and large load carri­ers as well as pallets and carrier systems made of plas­tic since 1988. The advan­ta­ges of the KTP contai­ners are the ease of use and the space saving due to volume reduc­tion. In addi­tion, resour­ces are conser­ved — both through the use of recy­cled raw mate­ri­als and the possi­bi­lity of retur­ning them to the raw mate­rial cycle, and thanks to the lower trans­port weight. VR Equi­typ­art­ner (VREP) had acqui­red a mino­rity stake in KTP at the end of 2011 to support manage­ment in exploi­ting the company’s further growth poten­tial and driving inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion. From its head­quar­ters in Bous and its Chinese sales loca­tion in Taicang, KTP now exports its products to over 100 countries.

“The 2022 finan­cial year was the best in KTP’s history,” says a deligh­ted KTP Mana­ging Direc­tor Martin Hent­schel: “We also acqui­red a majo­rity stake in K2 PAK, thus ente­ring the inner pack­a­ging market. This expands our offer to our custo­mers, increa­ses our compe­ti­ti­ve­ness and enhan­ces custo­mer proximity.”

Chris­tian Futter­lieb, Mana­ging Direc­tor at VR Equi­typ­art­ner, also welco­mes the new part­ner­ship: “With the acqui­si­tion of K2 PAK, KTP is conti­nuing its successful growth story: after the strong expan­sion of produc­tion capa­ci­ties, the ongo­ing diver­si­fi­ca­tion out of the auto­mo­tive sector into other indus­tries and the successful inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion, the acqui­si­tion of K2 PAK is a real game chan­ger. The addressa­ble market has increased signi­fi­cantly and now offers custo­mer access through both trans­port boxes and inner packaging.”

The tran­sac­tion team of VR Equi­typ­art­ner: Sarah Oster­mann, Simone Weck

Advi­sor VR Equitypartner:
Finan­cial Due Dili­gence: ECOVIS CF, Ljubljana, with Chris­toph Geymayer
Legal due dili­gence and legal advice: CMS REICH-ROHRWIG HAINZ / Senica & Part­ners, Ljubljana, with Aleš Lunder

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