ALTERNATIVE FINANCING FORMS
FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND INVESTORS

Author: Tatjana Anderer

Gründerin des FYB-Verlag
News

Paris/ Frank­furt a. M. — The Ardian Clean Energy Ever­green Fund (ACEEF) is targe­ting € 1 billion for its first invest­ment cycle. As an Article 9 fund under the EU’s SFDR, it is a perma­nent, long-term invest­ment plat­form enti­rely dedi­ca­ted to finan­cing clean energy

Ardian, a world-leading private invest­ment house, today announ­ces the launch of a new open-ended fund — Ardian Clean Energy Ever­green Fund (ACEEF).

The fund is Ardian Infra­struc­tu­re’s first ever­green fund, offe­ring inves­tors the oppor­tu­nity to grow their expo­sure to rene­wa­bles and the energy tran­si­tion. It is an Article 9 fund under the EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclo­sure Regu­la­tion (SFDR) and ther­e­fore meets the highest social and envi­ron­men­tal stan­dards in Europe.

More than half of its € 1 bn target has alre­ady been inves­ted in a seed port­fo­lio of 12 wind and solar assets, tota­ling 1 GW of capa­city in Europe and the Ameri­cas. The fund will conti­nue to target mature rene­wa­ble tech­no­lo­gies inclu­ding solar, wind and hydro­elec­tric, as well as emer­ging tech­no­lo­gies such as biogas, biomass, storage, and energy effi­ci­ency. The stra­tegy is focu­sed on opera­tio­nal opti­miza­tion to maxi­mize value crea­tion. The fund targets up to €150m per indi­vi­dual investment.

The AXA Group is the corner­stone inves­tor of ACEEF, and this part­ner­ship perfectly aligns with AXA’s ambi­tion to fight climate change by finan­cing the energy tran­si­tion. As an open-ended struc­ture, the fund will provide a perma­nent solu­tion to Ardian’s clients to support rene­wa­ble energy as part of Ardian’s wider energy tran­si­tion stra­tegy. The launch of ACEEF follows the crea­tion of Hy24, the worl­d’s largest invest­ment plat­form focu­sed on clean hydrogen.

ACEEF port­fo­lio will also bene­fit from Opta, Ardian Infra­struc­tu­re’s in house digi­tal tool which coll­ects and analy­ses data from its rene­wa­ble assets. The plat­form uses this data to better under­stand produc­tion patterns, iden­tify areas for impro­ve­ment and opti­mize asset perfor­mance, as well as moni­to­ring reve­nues at risk.

“ACEEF is a new inno­va­tive step to provide long term capi­tal to acce­le­rate the energy tran­si­tion. The fund, mana­ged by a highly quali­fied team with a track record span­ning 15 years and a large network of indus­trial experts, offers to our clients a unique plat­form to operate in the rene­wa­ble energy sector with an indus­trial approach. Ardian’s stra­tegy to acce­le­rate the energy tran­si­tion is more rele­vant than ever to fight climate change and to contri­bute to energy independence.”

Mathias Burg­hardt, Head of Ardian Infra­struc­ture and Member of Ardian’s Execu­tive Committee
Ardian has been one of the pioneers in energy tran­si­tion, having star­ted inves­t­ing in the rene­wa­ble asset class since 2007. Across all Ardian Infra­struc­ture Funds, the team alre­ady mana­ges more than 7.6GW of heat and rene­wa­ble energy capa­city in Europe and the Americas.

In the coming months, Ardian’s exper­tise will be further streng­the­ned by the arri­val of a new Mana­ging Direc­tor from the rene­wa­bles indus­try, who will be dedi­ca­ted to the clean energy platform.

About Ardian

Ardian is a world-leading private invest­ment house with assets of US$125 billion mana­ged or advi­sed in Europe, the Ameri­cas and Asia. The company is majo­rity-owned by its employees. It keeps entre­pre­neur­ship at its heart and focu­ses on deli­ve­ring excel­lent invest­ment perfor­mance to its global inves­tor base. Through its commit­ment to shared outco­mes for all stake­hol­ders, Ardian’s acti­vi­ties fuel indi­vi­dual, corpo­rate and econo­mic growth around the world. Holding close its core values of excel­lence, loyalty and entre­pre­neur­ship, Ardian main­ta­ins a truly global network, with more than 850 employees working from fifteen offices across Europe (Frank­furt, Jersey, London, Luxem­bourg, Madrid, Milan, Paris and Zurich), the Ameri­cas (New York, San Fran­cisco and Sant­iago) and Asia (Beijing, Singa­pore, Tokyo and Seoul). It mana­ges funds on behalf of more than 1,200 clients through five pillars of invest­ment exper­tise: Secon­da­ries, Direct Funds, Infra­struc­ture, Real Estate and Private Debt.

www.ardian.com

News

Hamburg/ New York/ Berlin — Hamburg-based FinTech company Express­Group, foun­ded in 2019, has raised a Series A finan­cing with a total volume of € 25 million. This was led by Project A Ventures and Insight Part­ners.

Using an AI-powered backend system, Express­Group enables plat­form provi­ders such as accoun­ting firms, tax advi­sors and lawy­ers to process tax files within minu­tes. The system combi­nes machine lear­ning and auto­ma­tion capa­bi­li­ties with manual labor to ensure easier, faster and more accu­rate proces­sing of income tax returns. The first product, Express­Tax, offers users the ability to submit the requi­red data within 10 minu­tes and, on the other hand, provi­des process intel­li­gence and auto­ma­tion for tax profes­sio­nals. In less than 12 months, they have thus increased to a total volume of receiv­a­bles of € 45 million.

Follo­wing on from its promi­sing growth in Germany, Express­Group is now turning its focus to the larger EU tax market. The addi­tio­nal funds will be spent on the company’s inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion and the launch of further products in addi­tio­nal FinTech areas.

About Project A Ventures

Project A (photo: manage­ment team, © Project A) is one of the leading venture capi­tal firms in Europe with offices in Berlin and London.In addi­tion to appro­xi­m­ately $600 million in assets under manage­ment, Project A supports its port­fo­lio compa­nies with a team of more than 100 experts in soft­ware and product deve­lo­p­ment, busi­ness intel­li­gence, bran­ding, design, marke­ting, sales and recrui­ting. Project A was foun­ded in 2012 and has since supported more than 100 startups.
The port­fo­lio includes compa­nies such as Trade Repu­blic, World­Re­mit, senn­der, KRY, Spry­ker, Cata­wiki and Voi.

About Express­Group

Express­Group wants to rede­sign fintech products for the working and middle class, start­ing with taxes. The goal is for ever­yone to be able to reclaim over­paid taxes from the tax office — regard­less of income, language barriers or know­ledge of the tax system. The company was foun­ded in 2019 by Maxi­mi­lian Lamb­s­dorff, Dennis Konrad, Konstan­tin Loeb­ner, Mehdi Afridi and Andreas Santoro. Express­Group’s first product, “Express­Tax”, has been on the market since 2021 and has alre­ady helped thou­sands of custo­mers who have never filed a tax return before to do so within minutes.


Advi­sor Project A Ventures: 


YPOG

Dr. Frede­rik Gärt­ner (Lead, Corporate/Transactions), Part­ner , Tobias Lovett (Corporate/Transactions), Senior Asso­ciate , Matthias Kres­ser (Finance), Asso­cia­ted Part­ner , Dr. Bene­dikt Flöter (IP/IT), Asso­cia­ted Part­ner, Anna Eick­meier (Data Protec­tion), Senior Asso­ciate, Dr. Niklas Ulrich (Regu­la­tory), Asso­ciate, Stefan Rich­ter (Tax), Part­ner, Lukas Schmitt (Tax), Associate

Advi­sors to Insight Part­ners: Will­kie Farr & Gallag­her LLP

The Will­kie team was led by the part­ners Miriam Steets and Dr. Axel Wahl (both Corporate/M&A, Frank­furt) and included part­ners Matthew Haddad (Corpo­rate M&A, New York) and Dr. Jens- Olrik Murach (Anti­trust, Brussels), coun­sel Wulf Kring (Tax, Frank­furt) and asso­cia­tes Dr. Tobias Gerigk and Nils Bock (both Corporate/M&A, Frankfurt).

News

Berlin — Product­sup raised Euro 65 million from Bregal Mile­stone and Nord­wind Capi­tal. “The invest­ment will enable Product­sup to further advance its product deve­lo­p­ment, take advan­tage of merger and acqui­si­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties, streng­then its part­ner network, and expand into new markets to soli­dify its posi­tion as the leading global solu­tion for retail success,” the company shares. The Berlin-based company, foun­ded in 2010 by Kai Seefeldt and Johan­nis Hatt, hand­les “data inte­gra­tion in e‑commerce.”

In the previous finan­cing round, Nord­wind Capi­tal and Deut­sche Handels­bank inves­ted around EUR 18.5 million in the company, which was foun­ded and is mana­ged by Vincent Peters and Stefan Sonn­tag and curr­ently has around 250 employees.

www.productsup.com©

News

Luxem­bourg — Univer­sal Invest­ment Group and the share­hol­ders of Euro­pean Fund Admi­nis­tra­tion (EFA) — Banque de Luxem­bourg, Banque et Caisse d’Épargne de l’État, Oddo BHF and Quin­tet Private Bank (Europe) S.A. — have agreed on the acqui­si­tion of EFA by Univer­sal Invest­ment Group. The tran­sac­tion is still subject to appr­oval by the Luxem­bourg finan­cial regu­la­tor CSSF and is expec­ted to close in the second half of 2022.

Foun­ded in 1996, EFA is one of the leading provi­ders of fund admi­nis­tra­tion, private asset services, and front, middle and back office solu­ti­ons, with offices in Luxem­bourg and France and nearly €167 billion in assets under admi­nis­tra­tion as of the end of 2021. Clients include banks, asset mana­gers, insu­rance compa­nies, asset mana­gers, family offices and insti­tu­tio­nal investors.

The Univer­sal Invest­ment Group is one of the largest fund service plat­forms in Europe with around 750 billion euros in assets under admi­nis­tra­tion, appro­xi­m­ately 2,000 retail and insti­tu­tio­nal fund manda­tes and more than 1,000 employees at loca­ti­ons in Frank­furt am Main, Luxem­bourg, Dublin, London, Hamburg and Krakow. In recent years, Univer­sal Invest­ment has joined the ranks of the few major inter­na­tio­nal play­ers in this market. In addi­tion to the DACH region, Univer­sal Invest­ment is successfully driving inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion through Luxem­bourg and Irish fund hubs, espe­ci­ally for inter­na­tio­nal asset managers.

The combi­na­tion of the two compa­nies streng­thens their joint presence in the Euro­pean markets with combi­ned assets under admi­nis­tra­tion of more than 900 billion euros in over 7,000 funds and structures.

Fernand Reiners, Chair­man of the EFA Board of Direc­tors, comm­ents: “EFA and Univer­sal Invest­ment share a simi­lar history, compa­ra­ble busi­ness models and objec­ti­ves. Both were origi­nally foun­ded by banks to pool fund admi­nis­tra­tion exper­tise. The fact that clients can focus on their core busi­ness thanks to the specia­lists was and is the driver for the strong growth of both compa­nies. We are convin­ced that this success story will conti­nue by entrus­ting EFA to the Univer­sal Invest­ment Group. As stra­te­gic clients, the exis­ting share­hol­ders are commit­ted to contri­bu­ting to the long-term success of EFA as part of the Univer­sal Invest­ment Group.”

Michael Rein­hard (Photo, © UI), CEO of the Univer­sal Invest­ment Group, adds: “EFA is a perfect fit for Univer­sal Invest­ment and our growth story. The merger with EFA is not only another mile­stone towards our goal of beco­ming the leading Euro­pean inves­tor services plat­form and Super­ManCo, but also for our ambi­tion to offer our clients the full spec­trum of inves­tor services”. EFA will act as the Group’s inter­na­tio­nal inves­tor services plat­form based in Luxem­bourg and France, comple­men­ting the Frank­furt admi­nis­tra­tion plat­form for the DACH region. “Our custo­mers will bene­fit from addi­tio­nal solu­ti­ons in the area of alter­na­tive invest­ments and private assets. The combi­na­tion of our successful busi­ness models will further acce­le­rate both the growth and the inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion of our joint company. Toge­ther, we intend to signi­fi­cantly expand our custo­mer base in Scan­di­na­via, France and the Bene­lux count­ries, among others. We are ther­e­fore very plea­sed to welcome EFA’s employees and clients to the Univer­sal Invest­ment Group.”

Both compa­nies have specia­li­zed busi­ness models in asset servicing and share the idea of an open and modu­lar plat­form for the finan­cial services indus­try. Custo­mers will bene­fit from the merger in the form of a specia­li­zed finan­cial services company with a clear busi­ness model, new product deve­lo­p­ments, parti­cu­larly in the area of private and alter­na­tive invest­ments, and inno­va­tive strength, for exam­ple in the area of digi­tal assets. Toge­ther, the two compa­nies aim to signi­fi­cantly expand their custo­mer base in Scan­di­na­via, France and the Bene­lux count­ries, among others.

About the Euro­pean Fund Administration
EFA will remain an inde­pen­dent busi­ness unit as part of the Univer­sal Invest­ment Group and under the Univer­sal Invest­ment brand. The company comple­ments Univer­sal Invest­ment’s busi­ness model and toge­ther they will expand the port­fo­lio of services for inter­na­tio­nal clients in the future. Univer­sal Invest­ment Luxem­bourg will conti­nue to operate the successful inter­na­tio­nal third-party ManCo and AIFM busi­ness for the Group inde­pendently of EFA.

With offices in Luxem­bourg and France, EFA, foun­ded in 1996, is one of the leading provi­ders of fund admi­nis­tra­tion, private asset services and front, middle and back office solu­ti­ons. Clients include banks, asset mana­gers, insu­rance compa­nies, asset mana­gers, family offices and insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors. More at www.efa.eu.

About Univer­sal Invest­ment Group
Univer­sal Invest­ment Group is one of the leading Euro­pean fund service plat­forms and Super ManCos. Foun­ded in 1968, the company is an inde­pen­dent plat­form offe­ring fund initia­tors and insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors struc­tu­ring and admi­nis­tra­tion solu­ti­ons as well as risk manage­ment for secu­ri­ties, real estate and alter­na­tive invest­ments. The compa­nies UI Labs, UI Enlyte and CAPin­side round off the Group’s inno­va­tive service offering.

News

Munich/ Paris — EMZ Part­ners acqui­res majo­rity stake in Foto­Fin­der, the leading provi­der of visua­liza­tion tech­no­logy for early skin cancer detec­tion and aesthe­tics. Co-foun­der and main share­hol­der Rudolf Mayer with­draws from his share­hol­der posi­tion and entrusts the future success of Foto­Fin­der to co-foun­der Andreas Mayer, other members of the Mayer family and selec­ted members of the manage­ment team. All of the latter reinvest a signi­fi­cant portion of their proceeds or become new shareholders.

The Euro­pean private equity firm EMZ Part­ners has ente­red into a binding agree­ment to acquire a majo­rity stake in Foto­Fin­der, head­quar­te­red in Bad Birn­bach, Germany. The company’s foun­der, Rudolf Mayer, who toge­ther with his son and co-foun­der Andreas Mayer has driven the successful deve­lo­p­ment of the company and shaped Foto­Fin­der into the leading and pionee­ring brand in the field of early skin cancer detec­tion tech­no­logy, will fully retire from his role as mana­ging direc­tor and shareholder.

The signi­fi­cant (re)investments of all other exis­ting family share­hol­ders as well as other members of the manage­ment team clearly under­line the promi­sing pros­pects of the company and the firm belief in its future success.

Foto­Fin­der was foun­ded in 1991 and provi­des products and services to derma­to­lo­gists, derma­to­logy clinics, hospi­tals, scree­ning centers and rese­arch insti­tu­tes. Foto­Fin­der systems combine proprie­tary AI-based soft­ware with indus­try-leading Auto­ma­ted Total Body Mapping and Video Derma­to­scopy tech­no­logy to form inte­gra­ted skin visua­liza­tion solu­ti­ons. The company main­ta­ins close colla­bo­ra­tion with univer­si­ties and leading experts in derma­to­logy and has access to a global network of derma­to­lo­gists through its Foto­Fin­der Online Academy. The service offe­ring is comple­ted by a service port­fo­lio inclu­ding main­ten­ance, trai­ning and second opinion services.

Although Foto­Fin­der’s core market is Germany and the DACH region, the company opera­tes globally and gene­ra­tes more than 70% of its reve­nue abroad in over 90 count­ries. Products and services are sold directly, through subsi­dia­ries, and through a world­wide network of distri­bu­tors and agents.

Driven by rising global aware­ness of skin cancer, Foto­Fin­der is pursuing attrac­tive growth opti­ons in highly regu­la­ted regio­nal medi­cal tech­no­logy markets. This includes further inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion, a stron­ger focus on tech­no­lo­gi­cally advan­ced solu­ti­ons (ATBM Master), proprie­tary AI-supported tech­no­logy, and consis­tent culti­va­tion of the adja­cent aesthe­tics and beauty market.

Shear­man & Ster­ling advi­sed EMZ Part­ners (EMZ) on the finan­cing of the acqui­si­tion of a majo­rity stake in Foto­Fin­der Systems GmbH (Foto­Fin­der), a leading provi­der of visua­liza­tion tech­no­logy for early skin cancer detec­tion and aesthetics.
The Shear­man & Ster­ling team included part­ner Winfried M. Carli and asso­ciate Daniel Wagner (both Munich Finance). The team led by part­ner Winfried M. Carli regu­larly advi­ses EMZ on finan­cings, such as the recent invest­ments in Hermann Pipers­berg, cele­brate company and Ankerkraut.

About Foto­fin­der
Foto­Fin­der, foun­ded in 1991, provi­des products and services to derma­to­lo­gists, derma­to­logy clinics, hospi­tals, scree­ning centers and rese­arch insti­tu­tes. The systems sold combine proprie­tary AI-based soft­ware with indus­try-leading Auto­ma­ted Total Body Mapping (ATBM) and video dermo­scopy tech­no­logy to form inte­gra­ted skin visua­liza­tion solutions.

About EMZ

EMZ is a leading Euro­pean invest­ment company that sees itself as a part­ner to medium-sized compa­nies. The focus of acti­vi­ties is on invest­ments along­side foun­ders, family share­hol­ders and mana­gers. EMZ is majo­rity control­led by its own employees and invests the money of insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors from Europe. From the current fund with a volume of more than one billion euros, EMZ makes invest­ments in the amount of 10 to 150 million euros.

About Shear­man & Sterling

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

News

Munich — The share­hol­ders of DC-Soft­ware Doster & Christ­mann GmbH have sold 100% of their shares in the company to FRILO Soft­ware GmbH, Stutt­gart, part of the Nemet­schek Group, Munich. The Munich-based company has been deve­lo­ping special soft­ware solu­ti­ons for foun­da­tion engi­nee­ring since 1989. With the acqui­si­tion, FRILO stra­te­gi­cally expands its product port­fo­lio in the foun­da­tion engi­nee­ring & foun­da­ti­ons segment and thus streng­thens its posi­tion as a leading provi­der of struc­tu­ral analy­sis programs.

With more than 30 programs, the DC soft­ware covers a compre­hen­sive range of digi­tal basic cons­truc­tion solu­ti­ons. The offer of the soft­ware company is divi­ded into two parts of the basic struc­ture. Users employ the programs of the DC Soil Mecha­nics segment for subsoil inves­ti­ga­ti­ons, soil and conta­mi­na­ted site inves­ti­ga­ti­ons, and the visua­liza­tion of geother­mal bore­holes and geother­mal probes. The program group DC Foun­da­tion Engi­nee­ring, on the other hand, compri­ses soft­ware solu­ti­ons for geotech­ni­cal calcu­la­ti­ons, foun­da­tion engi­nee­ring as well as ground­wa­ter draw­down and infiltration.

Since its foun­da­tion in 1989, DC-Soft­ware has deve­lo­ped into a sustain­ably growing and profi­ta­ble company. With the acqui­si­tion of the company, which is well estab­lished on the DACH market, FRILO is expan­ding its port­fo­lio in the foun­da­tion engi­nee­ring & foun­da­ti­ons segment in a trend-setting way. “We are extre­mely plea­sed to have gained many years of exper­tise in soft­ware deve­lo­p­ment in the specia­li­zed field of foun­da­tion engi­nee­ring for our custo­mers with DC Soft­ware,” said Markus Gallen­ber­ger, Mana­ging Direc­tor of FRILO. “Due to the increase in our foun­da­tion engi­nee­ring solu­ti­ons, our custo­mers bene­fit from an enorm­ous solu­tion port­fo­lio that FRILO provi­des for day-to-day busi­ness. The consis­t­ently growing and bene­fi­cial product port­fo­lio always makes the diffe­rence for our customers.”

“We attach great importance to ensu­ring conti­nuity for custo­mers and employees with the take­over. I am convin­ced that FRILO and the Nemet­schek Group provide the appro­priate condi­ti­ons for this,” says Dr.-Ing. Armin Doster, co-foun­der of DC-Soft­ware. “In addi­tion, we expect this step to enable us to profi­ta­bly use the strong syner­gies between the two compa­nies and to bene­fit from new impulses.”

The role of Proven­tis Partners
Proven­tis Part­ners acted as exclu­sive M&A advi­sor to the share­hol­ders of DC-Soft­ware Doster & Christ­mann GmbH in the prepa­ra­tion and imple­men­ta­tion of the tran­sac­tion. In addi­tion to the imple­men­ta­tion of a struc­tu­red sales process, the consul­ting services included the prepa­ra­tion of marke­ting and tran­sac­tion docu­ments, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and approa­ching of poten­tial inves­tors inclu­ding manage­ment presen­ta­ti­ons as well as support in the due dili­gence and nego­tia­tion of the tran­sac­tion. The tran­sac­tion team of Proven­tis Part­ners was Jan Pörsch­mann (Part­ner, Munich), and Maxi­mi­lian Gluchow­ski (Asso­ciate, Munich).

About DC-Soft­ware Doster & Christ­mann GmbH

DC-Soft­ware, based in Munich, Germany, has been deve­lo­ping and distri­bu­ting soft­ware in the fields of foun­da­tion engi­nee­ring and soil mecha­nics since 1989 and can draw on more than 30 years of expe­ri­ence in these areas. By support­ing multi­ple languages as well as the stan­dards of diffe­rent count­ries, DC soft­ware programs can be used inter­na­tio­nally. DC soft­ware is used in over 50,000 program licen­ses by more than 3000 custo­mers in over 80 count­ries on all conti­nents. For more infor­ma­tion, visit https://www.dc-software.de/

About FRILO

FRILO has been offe­ring powerful and user-friendly soft­ware solu­ti­ons for struc­tu­ral calcu­la­ti­ons for over 40 years and has become a leading provi­der in this field on the German market with almost 200 calcu­la­tion programs. FRILO’s soft­ware engi­neers attach great importance to recon­ci­ling intui­tive opera­tion with easily compre­hen­si­ble and relia­ble results. With its claim to deve­lop products orien­ted to the BIM concept, FRILO is also paving the way for networked buil­ding plan­ning in which coope­ra­tion with other disci­pli­nes is more effi­ci­ent. Since 1999, FRILO, head­quar­te­red in Stutt­gart, has been inte­gra­ted into the Nemet­schek Group as an inde­pen­dent brand. For more infor­ma­tion, visit https://www.frilo.eu/

About Proven­tis Partners
Proven­tis Part­ners is a part­ner-led M&A advi­sory firm whose clients include a majo­rity of mid-sized family busi­nesses, corpo­rate subsi­dia­ries and private equity funds. With more than 30 M&A advi­sors, Proven­tis Part­ners is one of the largest inde­pen­dent M&A consul­tancies in the German-spea­king region and looks back on more than 20 years of M&A expe­ri­ence and well over 300 comple­ted tran­sac­tions. The M&A consul­tants with offices in Düssel­dorf, Hamburg, Munich and Zurich are active in the sectors Indus­tri­als & Chemi­cals, Busi­ness Services, Consu­mer & Retail, TMT, Health­Care and Energy & Sustaina­bi­lity. www.proventis.com

News

Frank­furt a. M. — The German offices of the inter­na­tio­nal law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges have advi­sed Tree Energy Solu­ti­ons (TES) on the estab­lish­ment of a stra­te­gic part­ner­ship with Open Grid Europe (OGE) to deve­lop and imple­ment acarbon circu­lar economy with the aim of avoi­ding green­house gas emissions.

The focus of future coope­ra­tion between TES and OGE will be on the deve­lo­p­ment of a Germany-wide CO2infrastructure for the removal of CO2emissions gene­ra­ted in the produc­tion process CO2intensive indus­tries cannot be avoided, and on the trans­port of CO2 espe­ci­ally for its reuse in a green, closed-loop system for import­ing green hydro­gen. To this end, TES and Essen-based OGE, one of Euro­pe’s leading long-distance network opera­tors, are plan­ning to jointly deve­lop a 1,000 kmCO2 trans­port network in Germany as a first step. TheCO2 trans­port network will origi­nate from a green lique­fied gas import termi­nal (Green Energy Hub Wilhelms­ha­ven) to be built by TES in Wilhelmshaven.

TES, which opera­tes inter­na­tio­nally, is a supplier of green hydro­gen and green synthe­tic gas. To this end, TES is deve­lo­ping energy supply and import centers in Germany, Belgium, the Nether­lands, France, Canada, the Middle East and the United States with the aim of inte­gra­ting and opti­mi­zing global supply chains.

TES, whose inves­tors include Switz­er­lan­d’s Varo and other energy inves­tors, plans to produce methane using mainly solar energy from the Gulf region, North Africa, North America and Mexico.

The Weil team for this tran­sac­tion consis­ted of the follo­wing attor­neys: Prof. Dr. Gerhard Schmidt (Corpo­rate, Frankfurt/Munich), Manuel-Peter Fringer (Corpo­rate, Munich), Andreas Fogel, Amelie Zabel (both Corpo­rate, Munich) and Stef­fen Giolda (Anti­trust, Munich).

Weil, Gotshal & Manges

Weil, Gotshal & Manges is an inter­na­tio­nal law firm with more than 1,100 lawy­ers, inclu­ding appro­xi­m­ately 300 part­ners. Weil is head­quar­te­red in New York and has offices in Boston, Brussels, Dallas, Frank­furt, Hong Kong, Hous­ton, London, Miami, Munich, Paris, Beijing, Prince­ton, Shang­hai, Sili­con Valley and Washing­ton, D.C.

News

Frank­furt a. M. — meda­tixx GmbH & Co KG (Eltville and Bamberg), a company of the Merckle Group, has acqui­red all shares of Soft­land GmbH. Soft­land will operate as a subsi­diary of meda­tixx in the future. Meda­tixx has more than 700 employees and offers soft­ware solu­ti­ons for medi­cal prac­ti­ces, MVZs and outpa­ti­ent clinics as well as rela­ted services.

Soft­land, based in Magde­burg, Leip­zig and Borna, has been active in the field of prac­tice soft­ware for physi­ci­ans in private prac­tice since 1992 and distri­bu­tes the prac­tice soft­ware “Elaphe Longis­sima” (EL). The inte­gra­tion of Soft­land into meda­tixx enables EL users to access the wide range of products and services offe­red by meda­tixx and guaran­tees them the up-to-date tech­no­lo­gi­cal deve­lo­p­ment of the prac­tice program.

Advi­sor meda­tixx: Gleiss Lutz
Dr. Patrick Kaffiné, photo (Lead, Part­ner), Dr. Maxi­mi­lian Hirsch, Maxi­mi­lian Leisen­hei­mer (all M&A), Dr. Ocka Stumm (Part­ner, Tax, all Frank­furt), Dr. Matthias Werner (Coun­sel), Dr. Theresa Uhlen­hut (both IP/IT, Munich), Dr. Jens Günther (Part­ner, Munich), Dr. Tobias Abend (Coun­sel, Frank­furt), Dr. Matthias Bögl­mül­ler (Munich, all Labor Law), Dr. Birgit Colbus (Coun­sel, Anti­trust Law, Frank­furt), Simon Wegmann (Data Protec­tion Law), Dr. Enno Burk (Coun­sel, Health­care, both Berlin), Dr. Jacob von Andreae (Part­ner, Public Law, Düsseldorf).

News

Düssel­dorf — McDer­mott Will & Emery advi­sed the foun­ders and share­hol­ders of Office Part­ner Group on the sale of a majo­rity stake to Prin­tus Group. The closing of the tran­sac­tion is subject to anti­trust approval.

Prin­tus acqui­res 70 percent of the shares in Office Part­ner. 30 percent will remain with the mana­ging direc­tors Peter Pölling and Sven Oster­holt; both will conti­nue to manage the busi­ness opera­ti­ons of Office Part­ner, which will remain opera­tio­nally independent.

Foun­ded in 1997, Office Part­ner GmbH specia­li­zes in online trading with prin­ters, compu­ters and other IT products. The company curr­ently employs 160 people and achie­ved sales of 189 million euros in 2021.

Prin­tus GmbH is one of the leading online and mail order retail­ers for office supplies in Europe. The family-owned company was foun­ded in 1977 and today gene­ra­tes annual sales of over 850 million euros with more than 1,600 employees.

Consul­ting Office Part­ner GmbH: McDer­mott Will & Emery, Düsseldorf

Dr. Phil­ipp Gren­ze­bach (Lead), Sebas­tian Bonk (both Corporate/M&A), Dr. Sandra Urban-Crell (Labor Law), Carina Kant (Coun­sel, Anti­trust Law); Asso­cia­tes: Dr. Frede­ric Peine (Colo­gne), Sebas­tian Klein (both Corporate/M&A), Dr. Helen Linden­berg (Anti­trust Law)

News

Munich — Liberta Part­ners (“LIBERTA”) acqui­res Medas Facto­ring GmbH (“MEDAS”) from the company’s foun­der Klaus Brecht in the course of a succes­sion situa­tion. The two mana­ging direc­tors of MEDAS, Jördis Wehr­stedt and Peter Wieland, are parti­ci­pa­ting in the company toge­ther with Liberta.

MEDAS is a service provi­der for physi­ci­ans of all special­ties, clinics and other custo­mers from the medi­cal profes­si­ons with priva­tely insu­red pati­ents. MEDAS offers a compre­hen­sive fee manage­ment, which includes the prepa­ra­tion of invoices, but also the corre­spon­ding control inclu­ding the dispatch and the dunning process for the private liqui­da­tion. A total of around 1,500 custo­mers are served from the company’s head­quar­ters in Munich. Around 1 million invoices with a billing volume of appro­xi­m­ately EUR 200 million are proces­sed annu­ally. The custo­mer network extends across Bava­ria, Berlin, North Rhine-West­pha­lia and Baden-Würt­tem­berg, with the focus curr­ently on Bavaria.

Commen­ting on the sale, company foun­der Klaus Brecht said: “I am plea­sed to have found a strong share­hol­der for MEDAS in LIBERTA. LIBERTA, with its entre­pre­neu­rial approach to deve­lo­p­ment, will help MEDAS to conti­nue to grow as a company. This is a posi­tive signal for our long-stan­ding custo­mers, employees and part­ners, as the succes­sion is now secu­red for the long term.”

The manage­ment of MEDAS, Jördis Wehr­stedt and Peter Wieland added “We are plea­sed about the entry of LIBERTA and look opti­mi­sti­cally into the future. LIBER­TA’s exper­tise promi­ses a steady and sustainable further deve­lo­p­ment of MEDAS. We look forward to LIBER­TA’s support and new approaches.”

Nils von Wietz­low, Part­ner of LIBERTA (photo, © Liberta Part­ners) and respon­si­ble for succes­sion solu­ti­ons, under­li­ned: “MEDAS is an estab­lished company with a strong name. Its excel­lent repu­ta­tion in the market will form the basis for further growth. We see poten­tial for such growth both orga­ni­cally and inor­ga­ni­cally. At the same time, we would like to conti­nue to drive the digi­tiza­tion trend in order to prepare MEDAS for new requi­re­ments. We would like to thank Klaus Brecht for the trust he has placed in us and will closely accom­pany MEDAS on the path we are stri­ving for.”

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

About Medas Facto­ring GmbH

MEDAS, based in Munich, was foun­ded in 1980 and is a billing service provi­der for physi­ci­ans. As such, MEDAS serves over 1500 custo­mers throug­hout Germany — physi­ci­ans of all special­ties, clinics and chief physi­ci­ans, physio­the­ra­pists, psycho­the­ra­pists, alter­na­tive prac­ti­tio­ners, occu­pa­tio­nal thera­pists and custo­mers from other heal­ing profes­si­ons. With over 60 employees, MEDAS can guaran­tee perso­nal atten­tion to each custo­mer. For more infor­ma­tion, visit: www.medas.de

About Liberta Partners

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

News

Paris/Berlin — Euro­pe’s biggest free­lan­cer market­place Malt, has acqui­red COMATCH, the cura­ted market­place for inde­pen­dent manage­ment consul­tants and indus­try experts, to rein­force its Euro­pean leader­ship on the free­lan­cing market. The acqui­si­tion extends Malt’s commu­nity of high-skil­led free­lan­cers to busi­ness consul­tants and takes Malt closer to reaching €1bn busi­ness volume by 2024. With a free­lan­cing market valued at €355bn, Malt projects to become the undis­pu­ted leader and the prefer­red part­ner for compa­nies seeking exter­nal resour­ces in Europe.

Foun­ded in 2014 by McKin­sey alumni Dr. Chris­toph Hardt and Dr. Jan Schäch­tele and backed by Acton Capi­tal since 2016, Comatch has estab­lished Euro­pe’s leading market­place for top free­lance manage­ment consul­tants and indus­try experts with clients ranging from start­ups to large corpo­ra­tes. Since its launch, Comatch has built a strong commu­nity of more than 15,000 top inde­pen­dent manage­ment consul­tants and indus­try experts and has grown across nine markets with 130 full-time employees in Berlin, Paris and London.

Home to a commu­nity of 340,000 free­lan­cers, the largest in Europe, Malt will now be on its way to offer Euro­pe’s most compre­hen­sive network of high-skil­led free­lan­cers and manage­ment consul­tants, making Malt the ideal part­ner for all busi­ness acti­vi­ties. As a result, clients will now bene­fit from a market­place with the best subject-matter specia­lists on hand to solve busi­ness chal­lenges from stra­tegy to execu­tion. Combi­ned, the two compa­nies work with 80% of the CAC-40 and DAX-40 compa­nies and toge­ther will build the largest Euro­pean client network with more than 1,000 enterprises.

Fueled by digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion and the incre­asing need to fill speci­fic roles, both compa­nies have witnessed a sharp uptake in client demand for inde­pen­dent resour­ces. The acqui­si­tion sends a strong signal of Malt’s place in the ecosys­tem at a time of tremen­dous growth in the Euro­pean free­lance market, curr­ently valued at 355 billion euros.

United over a shared vision of the future of work, one in which ever­yone has the power to choose how and whom they work with, Malt and Comatch will focus their efforts on market-facing syner­gies to broa­den the offe­rings for their clients and their commu­nity of highly-skil­led free­lan­cers. The growth of the combi­ned company will be supported by the hiring of 150 new employees, brin­ging the total count to 600 by the end of 2022. The exten­sion of services also means that dedi­ca­ted teams will now work across eleven regi­ons and count­ries, inclu­ding Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, the Middle East and North Africa, the Nether­lands, Nordics, Spain, Switz­er­land and the UK.

Vincent Huguet, Malt CEOComatch is a cham­pion in the field of busi­ness consul­ting market­places. As a fellow company that shares Malt’s “commu­nity first” approach, placing our talents at the core of the product and busi­ness to our vision for the future of work, we are eager and exci­ted to bring our two worlds of high-skil­led free­lan­cers together.”

Chris­toph Hardt, Comatch Co-Foun­der and Mana­ging Direc­tor: “We believe in a future where tech­no­logy and busi­ness consul­ting conti­nue to grow closer toge­ther. Malt is Euro­pe’s leading market­place espe­ci­ally for digi­tal free­lance talents while Comatch is the largest Euro­pean consul­ting market­place. We are very exci­ted to jointly build Euro­pe’s undis­pu­ted leading market­place where orga­niza­ti­ons can find the best inde­pen­dent profes­sio­nals for any possi­ble project.”

About Malt
Foun­ded in 2013 by Vincent Huguet (CEO) and Hugo Lassiège (CTO), with Alex­andre Fretti as Mana­ging Direc­tor in Paris, Malt is a Euro­pean market­place where more than 340,000 free­lance consul­tants put their skills and exper­tise at the service of compa­nies looking for exter­nal talents to acce­le­rate their projects. It alre­ady has more than 30,000 clients, inclu­ding 36 CAC 40 compa­nies. With 300 employees (50% women and men), Malt is present in France, Spain, Belgium, the Nether­lands, and Germany.

About COMATCH
Comatch is Euro­pe’s leading market­place for top free­lance manage­ment consul­tants and indus­try experts. Comatch combi­nes perso­nal service and inno­va­tive tech­no­logy to quickly and flexi­bly find the best experts for allbusi­ness chal­lenges. Compa­nies of all sizes and indus­tries — from start-ups to corpo­ra­ti­ons — use the support ofComatch.com to achieve sustainable project success. The cura­ted Comatch network includes more than 15,000consultants from over 120 count­ries. Comatch was foun­ded in 2014 by McKin­sey alumni Dr. Chris­toph Hardt and Dr. Jan Schäch­tele and employs over 130 people in Berlin, Paris and London.

About Acton Capital
Acton Capi­tal is a leading growth venture capi­tal inves­tor in Europe. Since 1999, the Acton team supports digi­tal start­ups in the fields of B2B/SaaS, Health­Care, FinTech or Future of Work on their way to market leader­ship. Acton Capi­tal invests world­wide with strong focus on Europe and North America. With two deca­des of invest­ment expe­ri­ence and a deep under­stan­ding of tech-enab­led models, the team has inves­ted over EUR 700 million across five fund gene­ra­ti­ons in +100 compa­nies, inclu­ding unicorns like Alpha­Sights, Clio, Etsy, Home­ToGo or Mambu.

News

Dresden/ Solingen/ Zug (CH)/ The elec­tro­ly­sis company Sunfire has recei­ved EUR 86 million from inves­tors. Parti­ci­pants in the expan­ded Series D finan­cing round include Copen­ha­gen Infra­struc­ture Part­ners (CIP), through its Copen­ha­gen Infra­struc­ture Energy Tran­si­tion I fund, and Blue Earth Capi­tal. Sunfire thus increa­ses its Series D capi­tal raising to a total of €195 million ($215 million). In addi­tion, CIP is ente­ring into an agree­ment with Sunfire to purchase pres­su­ri­zed alka­line elec­tro­ly­sers with a total capa­city of up to 640 MW for use in its multi-GW power-to‑X projects across Europe.

Up to 640 MW elec­tro­ly­sis for CIP

Through its Copen­ha­gen Infra­struc­ture Energy Tran­si­tion Fund I, CIP is support­ing Sunfire in the indus­tria­liza­tion of its hydro­gen tech­no­lo­gies. The fund company is one of the worl­d’s largest project deve­lo­pers for rene­wa­ble ener­gies and is active in the areas of offshore wind power, energy storage and power-to‑X, among others.

To imple­ment its plan­ned power-to‑X projects, CIP needs relia­ble, indus­trial elec­tro­ly­sis plants. The avai­la­bi­lity of these is still very limi­ted world­wide. In a frame­work agree­ment, the project deve­lo­per ther­e­fore also secu­res access to elec­tro­ly­sis capa­ci­ties from Sunfire. In the coming years, CIP plans to purchase pres­su­ri­zed alka­line elec­tro­ly­sers with a total capa­city of up to 640 MW and use them in its multi-GW projects throug­hout Europe.

“This agree­ment adds huge value for all parties invol­ved,” says Sunfire CEO Nils Aldag. “CIP can rely on our advan­ced alkali elec­tro­ly­sers and on our dedi­ca­ted team of experts — at the same time demons­t­ra­ting that we are a relia­ble part­ner for giga­watt-scale projects.”

Invest­ment company BlueE­arth contri­bu­tes capi­tal and expertise

As part of its climate stra­tegy, BlueE­arth is also part­ne­ring with Sunfire. The globally active invest­ment company was foun­ded by the Swiss Part­ners Group and built up with its support. Urs Wiet­lis­bach (photo) is Co-foun­der & Chair­man Blue Earth Capi­tal AG and Co-Foun­der Part­ners Group AG.

BlueE­arth places a high value on being invol­ved beyond its invest­ment. To support Sunfire in its growth, the new part­ners are ther­e­fore contri­bu­ting their entre­pre­neu­rial expe­ri­ence and expert know­ledge around the topic of growth and climate protection.

About Sunfire
Sunfire is a leading global elec­tro­ly­sis company that designs and manu­fac­tures indus­trial elec­tro­ly­zers based on alkali and solid oxide tech­no­lo­gies (SOEC). With its elec­tro­ly­sis solu­ti­ons, Sunfire is addres­sing the key chall­enge of today’s energy system: the provi­sion of green hydro­gen and synthe­sis gas as a climate-neutral substi­tute for fossil energy. Sunfi­re’s inno­va­tive and proven elec­tro­ly­sis tech­no­lo­gies enable the decar­bo­niza­tion of indus­trial sectors that today are still depen­dent on oil, gas or coal. The company employs more than 370 people at loca­ti­ons in Germany and Switz­er­land. www.sunfire.de

About Copen­ha­gen Infra­s­tuc­ture Partners
Copen­ha­gen Infra­struc­ture Part­ners P/S is the worl­d’s largest specia­li­zed fund mana­ger for green­field invest­ments in rene­wa­ble energy and a global leader in offshore wind. At COP26, CIP announ­ced a goal and road­map to streng­then and acce­le­rate its role in imple­men­ting the energy tran­si­tion by support­ing green energy invest­ments with €100 billion by 2030.

CIP mana­ges nine funds and has appro­xi­m­ately €16 billion in assets under manage­ment focu­sed on invest­ments in energy infra­struc­ture — inclu­ding offshore wind, onshore wind, photo­vol­taic, biomass and energy from waste, trans­mis­sion and distri­bu­tion, reserve capa­city and storage, and other energy assets such as power-to‑X. Today, the CIP funds have about 100 inter­na­tio­nal insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors from the Nordic count­ries, conti­nen­tal Europe, the United King­dom, Israel, Asia, Austra­lia and North America, as well as multi­la­te­ral orga­niza­ti­ons such as the EIB. CIP employs around 300 people and has offices in Copen­ha­gen, London, Hamburg, Utrecht, New York, Tokyo, Singa­pore and Melbourne. The invest­ment in Sunfire will be part of CIP’s Energy Tran­si­tion Fund I, which focu­ses on power-to‑X and other next-gene­ra­tion rene­wa­ble tech­no­lo­gies to faci­li­tate the decar­bo­niza­tion of hard-to-delete sectors such as steel, agri­cul­ture and trans­por­ta­tion. www.cip.dk

About Blue Earth Capital
Blue Earth Capi­tal is a global impact invest­ment firm head­quar­te­red in Zug, Switz­er­land, with offices in London, New York and Singa­pore. Blue Earth Capi­tal invests in compa­nies that address pres­sing envi­ron­men­tal and social chal­lenges while opera­ting profi­ta­bly. Blue Earth Capi­tal was initia­ted in 2015 by Urs Wiet­lis­bach, one of the foun­ders of Part­ners Group, and is supported by the Ursi­mone Wiet­lis­bach Foun­da­tion. Blue Earth Capi­tal was built with the help of Part­ners Group and lever­a­ges its expe­ri­ence as a leading global private markets firm. www.blueearth.capital

About Carbon Direct Capi­tal Management
Carbon Direct combi­nes scien­ti­fic exper­tise, tech­no­logy and finan­cial capi­tal to grow carbon manage­ment into a global indus­try. Our invest­ment busi­ness — Carbon Direct Capi­tal Manage­ment LLC — makes direct invest­ments in leading tech­no­logy compa­nies in the carbon manage­ment sector. Our consul­ting company — Carbon Direct Inc. — supports corpo­rate custo­mers with carbon manage­ment solu­ti­ons. Carbon Direc­t’s team is made up of world-renow­ned carbon scien­tists who have a deep under­stan­ding of the risks and oppor­tu­ni­ties of carbon tech­no­lo­gies. The company has offices in New York City and Seattle.
For more infor­ma­tion, visit www.carbon-direct.com

Advi­sor to CIP: Henge­ler Mueller
The firm was repre­sen­ted by part­ners Dr. Jens Wenzel (Venture Capital/M&A, Berlin) and Hendrik Bocken­hei­mer (Labor Law, Frank­furt), coun­sel Fabian Seip (Intellec­tual Property/IT), Alex­an­der Bekier (Corporate/M&A) and Dr. Moritz Rade­ma­cher (Energy Law, Düssel­dorf) as well as asso­cia­tes Theresa Scharff, Dr. Björn Brauer, Ciro D’Ame­lio (all Venture Capital/M&A, Berlin) and Mona Geimer (Labor Law, Frankfurt).

News

Munich — The topic of sustaina­bi­lity is rapidly gaining in importance among family offices, family entre­pre­neurs and foun­da­ti­ons. It is beco­ming a duty to address the issue of sustaina­bi­lity. The reason is not only the trend-setting regu­la­ti­ons of the Euro­pean Union, but also the pres­sure of society as well as the own know­ledge that some­thing has to be done.

Where better to get infor­ma­tion than at a confe­rence? Exch­ange ideas and ask ques­ti­ons directly with first-class spea­k­ers in a rela­xed atmo­sphere at the » Smart Impact Inves­t­ing Excel­lence Forum on 09. & May 10, 2022 at The Charles Hotel in Munich, Germany «.

Please orien­tate yours­elf about the program 
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How can we invest respon­si­bly as inves­tors? — How can meaningful sustaina­bi­lity approa­ches be asses­sed within the nume­rous concepts on offer? How to achieve the appro­priate desi­red return for further wealth preser­va­tion and accumulation?
Talk to insi­ders who have a global over­view in the field of impact inves­t­ing, such as Dr. Andreas Nils­son, Head of Impact, Golding Capi­tal Part­ners, Andreas Jobst, Global Head of Macroe­co­no­mic & Capi­tal Markets Rese­arch, Alli­anz SE, Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Hans Joachim Schellnhu­ber or Bernd Wendeln, Inves­tor, Advi­sory Board Social Entre­pre­neur­ship Akade­mie, Johan­nes Weber, Bundes­in­itia­tive Impact Inves­t­ing and others.

https://smartimpactinvesting-excellenceforum.com

You will receive special condi­ti­ons if you indi­cate “FYB-Special” in your registration!
The parti­ci­pa­tion at EUR 480 (excl. VAT) incl. 1 over­night stay. If you do not wish to stay over­night, please note this on your registration.

Registration/ Cont­act form: https://smartimpactinvesting-excellenceforum.com/#10

I would be happy to meet you at the event on 09. and May 10 to meet in Munich!

News

Cologne/ London — Central­Nic Group plc (AIM: CNIC), the global inter­net plat­form company (selling online presence and marke­ting services) has inves­ted in VGL Verlags­ge­sell­schaft mbH, Berlin, Germany, valuing the company at an enter­prise value of €60 million. — Deloitte or Deloitte Legal advi­sed Central­Nic on tax, finan­cial valua­tion, inclu­ding data analy­tics-based SEA/SEO analy­sis, and all legal matters inclu­ding contract negotiation.

Central­Nic is a London-based, AIM-quoted company that drives the growth of the global digi­tal economy by deve­lo­ping and mana­ging soft­ware plat­forms that enable busi­nesses world­wide to purchase domain name subscrip­ti­ons for websites and email, mone­tize websites and acquire custo­mers online. The Company opera­tes globally and gene­ra­tes reve­nue from the world­wide sale of Inter­net domain names and other services on an annual subscrip­tion basis.

VGL is known to the gene­ral public under the URL “Vergleich.org” and its various special websites and sees itself as a service for the consu­mer to make purcha­sing decis­i­ons easier. In doing so, the plat­form relies on various test sources to be able to make the best possi­ble over­all recom­men­da­tion and display corre­spon­ding offers to custo­mers, e.g. on Amazon.

Advi­sors Central­Nic Group plc: Deloitte 
Deloitte Legal: Dr. Mathias Reif, Photo (Lead Legal), Boris Kröpsky, Chris­tian Hanne­mann (all Corporate/M&A, Colo­gne), Dr. Chris­tine von Hauch (Commer­cial, Colo­gne), Gerrit Neuhaus (Labor Law, Colo­gne), Adrian Merk­lin­ger (IP, Munich)
Deloitte Wirt­schafts­prü­fungs­ge­sell­schaft mbH: Dr. Marcus Roth (Lead Tax, Munich), Thomas Funk (Tax, Munich), Dr. Marcus Nibler (Lead Tran­sac­tion Services, Munich), James Murphy, Mona Stap­per­fenne (all Tran­sac­tion Services, Munich), Kris­tina Ganzen (M&A Analy­tics, Frankfurt).

About Deloitte
Deloitte provi­des indus­try-leading audit and assu­rance, tax, consul­ting, finan­cial advi­sory and risk advi­sory services to nearly 90% of Fortune Global 500® compa­nies and thou­sands of private compa­nies. Legal services in Germany are provi­ded by Deloitte Legal. Our people deli­ver measura­ble, long-term results that help build public confi­dence in the capi­tal markets, help our custo­mers trans­form and grow, and lead the way to a stron­ger economy, a fairer society, and a sustainable world. Deloitte builds on more than 175 years of history and opera­tes in more than 150 count­ries. Learn more about how Deloit­te’s more than 345,000 employees live the mission state­ment “making an impact that matters” every day. www.deloitte.com/de.

News

Munich — Offi­cium GmbH, a port­fo­lio company of the invest­ment company EMERAM, conti­nues its growth course and has successfully imple­men­ted the acqui­si­tion of Delta‑t Mess­dienst & Consul­ting GmbH & Co. KG in Rudol­stadt, Thurin­gia. Offi­cium is one of Germany’s leading inde­pen­dent meter­ing and energy service provi­ders for the meter­ing and billing of water and heat for the housing indus­try. As the umbrella company for seve­ral regio­nal compa­nies, Offi­cium is pursuing a conso­li­da­tion stra­tegy and acqui­red a total of four suppli­ers in 2021, mostly as part of a succes­sion plan. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price.

With the now comple­ted acqui­si­tion of Delta‑t Mess­dienst & Consul­ting GmbH & Co. KG, Offi­cium is expan­ding into Thurin­gia. The members of the exis­ting manage­ment will accom­pany the further deve­lo­p­ment. To date, Offi­cium is mainly repre­sen­ted in Berlin, Bran­den­burg, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-West­pha­lia, Meck­len­burg-Western Pome­ra­nia, Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony and Bava­ria (Lower Franconia).

Markus Gyss­ler (photo), Part­ner at EMERAM Capi­tal Part­ners, comm­ents: “Within a short period of time, Offi­cium has estab­lished itself as a leading inde­pen­dent provi­der in the meter­ing services market. At the same time, Offi­cium is conside­red an attrac­tive plat­form for entre­pre­neurs inte­res­ted in a succes­sion solu­tion for their company. As a busi­ness deve­lo­p­ment part­ner, EMERAM Capi­tal Part­ners supports this conso­li­da­tion course.”

Stephan Kier­meyer, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Offi­cium GmbH, explains: “Our buy-and-build stra­tegy is paying off. With the seventh acqui­si­tion, we are once again streng­thening our market posi­tion and will also be present in Thurin­gia in the future. We conti­nue to see considera­ble growth poten­tial in the market for meter­ing and energy services — through addi­tio­nal digi­tal offe­rings and further acquisitions.”

Jürgen Walter, Mana­ging Direc­tor at Delta‑t Mess­dienst & Consul­ting GmbH & Co. KG, adds: “Our custo­mers and employees will bene­fit consider­a­bly from Offi­ci­um’s compre­hen­sive know-how and aware­ness of regio­nal offe­rings, as well as the contin­ued proxi­mity they are accus­to­med to. We are ther­e­fore plea­sed that we can conti­nue our busi­ness with the strong plat­form of Officium.”

Offi­cium was advi­sed by Noerr (Legal) and Alva­rez & Marsal (Finan­cial).

About Offi­cium
Offi­cium GmbH is one of the leading inde­pen­dent meter­ing and energy service provi­ders for consump­tion-based meter­ing and billing of water and heat for the housing indus­try. The company was estab­lished as a plat­form invest­ment of funds advi­sed by EMERAM in 2020. As an umbrella company, Offi­cium mana­ges the compa­nies Tenié und Gores GmbH, Systeme & Service Abrech­nungs­ge­sell­schaft mbH, Delta‑t Mess­dienst Fischer und Nagel GmbH, Exakta Wärme- und Wasser­zäh­ler Service GmbH as well as Wärme-Mess-Service GmbH and Delta‑t Mess­dienst & Consul­ting GmbH & Co. KG. Offi­cium is mainly present 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 (Lower Fran­co­nia). Custo­mers are prima­rily small and medium-sized property manage­ment compa­nies and private landlords.

About EMERAM Capi­tal Partners 
EMERAM is one of the leading invest­ment mana­gers for medium-sized compa­nies in German-spea­king count­ries. Funds advi­sed by EMERAM provide more than 500 million euros of capi­tal for the deve­lo­p­ment of compa­nies. The port­fo­lio includes compa­nies from the Technology/Software, Value-added Services and New Consu­mer Stap­les sectors. EMERAM acts as a long-term busi­ness deve­lo­p­ment part­ner for its compa­nies and promo­tes the sustainable growth (orga­nic and inor­ga­nic) of the port­fo­lio compa­nies. In addi­tion, the focus is on the imple­men­ta­tion of holi­stic ESG concepts. www.emeram.com

The port­fo­lio curr­ently consists of six plat­form invest­ments with a cumu­la­tive work­force of more than 2,500. The compa­nies conti­nuously achieve double-digit orga­nic sales growth. In addi­tion, a total of 28 add-on acqui­si­ti­ons to date have acce­le­ra­ted growth and enab­led inter­na­tio­nal expansion.

News

Frank­furt am Main — Funds advi­sed by Equis­tone Part­ners Europe (“Equis­tone”) are acqui­ring a majo­rity stake in eperi, a leading provi­der of cyber­se­cu­rity soft­ware for cloud appli­ca­ti­ons. The sellers of the secu­rity specia­list from Pfung­stadt, Hesse, are the venture capi­tal compa­nies Evolu­tion Equity Part­ners and btov. Elmar Eperiesi-Beck, foun­der and CEO of eperi, will conti­nue to lead the company as Mana­ging Direc­tor and will retain a signi­fi­cant stake in the company.

The further scaling and inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion of the company as well as a targe­ted buy & build stra­tegy are to be the focus of the new part­ner­ship. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose details of the transaction.

Based in the Rhine-Main area, Eperi GmbH is a leading provi­der of Data Secu­rity and Compli­ace as well as Cyber­se­cu­rity solu­ti­ons. The Eperi Gate­way enables custo­mers to use cloud appli­ca­ti­ons such as MS 365 or Sales­force in a secure and legally compli­ant manner (with e.g. the DSGVO or Schrems II) without any func­tional rest­ric­tions. Eperi’s solu­ti­ons can be easily instal­led in on-premise, hybrid and multi-cloud envi­ron­ments. Eperi GmbH places a special focus on data encryp­tion for cloud appli­ca­ti­ons for its inter­na­tio­nal custo­mers, which include large compa­nies from the finan­cial, health­care and indus­trial sectors.

“For us, the acqui­si­tion of eperi marks another important mile­stone in the addi­tion of high-growth and future-orien­ted IT compa­nies to our tradi­tio­nal port­fo­lio. eperi has deve­lo­ped into a leading inter­na­tio­nal company with an outstan­ding custo­mer and part­ner network in only a very short time — not least due to its foun­der’s many years of expe­ri­ence in cloud secu­rity,” explains Dr. Marc Arens (photo), Senior Part­ner and Coun­try Head DACH/NL at Equis­tone.

Bird & Bird advi­sed Equis­tone in coope­ra­tion with P+P Pöllath + Part­ners on the legal due dili­gence and the nego­tia­tion of the tran­sac­tion docu­men­ta­tion. Bird & Bird’s focus was on the complex IT and IP-rela­ted aspects due to its leading exper­tise in these areas, as well as the FDI assess­ment for the fund’s long-term stra­tegy in the context of the acqui­si­tion and FDI clearance by the German Minis­try of Economics.

Equis­tone Part­ners was advi­sed by the follo­wing Bird & Bird attor­neys: Lead Part­ner Dr. Hans Peter Leube, LL.M. and Asso­ciate Michael Maier (both Corporate/Private Equity, Frank­furt); Part­ner Dr. Alex­an­der Duis­berg and Asso­ciate Gökhan Kosak (both IT/Data Protec­tion, Munich); Part­ners Dr. Stephan Wald­heim and Tamy Tietze (both Anti­trust, Düssel­dorf) Part­ner Dr. Chris­toph Maier­hö­fer (IP, Munich); Part­ner Dr. Catha­rina Klumpp, LL.M. and Asso­ciate Julia Neuper (both Labor Law, Düssel­dorf); and Part­ner Guido Bormann and Asso­ciate Johan­nes Wolte­ring (both Public Commer­cial Law and Regu­la­tion, Düsseldorf).

Dr. Marc Arens, Sebas­tian Wint­gens and Chris­toph Wüste­meyer arerespon­si­ble for the tran­sac­tion on the part of Equis­tone. Equis­tone was advi­sed on the tran­sac­tion by BCG (Commer­cial), Code & Co. (Tech­no­logy), Bird & Bird (IP & Regu­la­tion), PWC (Finan­cial & Tax), and Pöllath (Legal & Contrac­tual Documentation).

News

Hano­ver — FINVIA is expan­ding its busi­ness capa­ci­ties and further deve­lo­ping digi­ta­liza­tion in wealth manage­ment and family office. 20 m capi­tal measure from HANNOVER Finanz, private inves­tors and employees Invest­ment will be used to further expand the custo­mer offe­ring and acce­le­rate growth.

The basis of FINVIA’s Multi Family Office services is the digi­tal FINVIA plat­form. In order to streng­then the growth trend and further expand the tech­no­logy plat­form, FINVIA is now being supported by equity part­ner HANNOVER Finanz and other renow­ned investors.

The entry of the profes­sio­nal inves­tors is inten­ded to drive the company’s growth trend to date and the further expan­sion of the digi­tal plat­form. FINVIA has deve­lo­ped its tech­no­logy plat­form for a future-orien­ted wealth manage­ment and family office in-house with more than 20 deve­lo­pers, UX specia­lists and other experts. All aspects of the service, from stra­te­gic asset allo­ca­tion and all rele­vant invest­ment clas­ses to control­ling and report­ing, are perso­nally supported by expe­ri­en­ced family offi­cers who also provide digi­tal support.

The long-term hori­zon of HANNOVER Finan­z’s invest­ments was also a key factor in the stra­te­gic part­ner­ship. In addi­tion to the capi­tal measure, HANNOVER Finanz also supports FINVIA with opera­tio­nal exper­tise as well as a broad network and strong roots in the SME sector in the DACH region. HANNOVER Finanz is backed by a number of renow­ned inves­tors with a deep under­stan­ding of the finan­cial indus­try. FINVIA employees and other Family & Friends inves­tors also parti­ci­pate in the capi­tal measure of more than 20 million euros.

“We look back on a very successful time since our foun­da­tion in 2020. We set out with no less a goal than to revo­lu­tio­nize the family office segment, and I am proud to say that we have achie­ved this mile­stone. The demand for our services is remar­kable, so now is the right time to set the course for progres­sive growth,” said Tors­ten Murke (photo), CEO at FINVIA. “In HANNOVER Finanz, we have the perfect part­ner to provide us with expert support during this important growth phase. FINVIA thus crea­tes all the condi­ti­ons for further scaling and profi­ta­ble growth.”

Goetz Hertz-Eichen­rode, CEO of HANNOVER Finanz: “FINVIA’s success impres­ses us: within less than two years, FINVIA alre­ady mana­ges more than €3.5 billion on the digi­tal plat­form — and the trend is still rising shar­ply. With an eye on future growth, a focus on digi­tiza­tion, a clear unique selling propo­si­tion and a highly expe­ri­en­ced foun­ding team, FINVIA matches HANNOVER Finan­z’s invest­ment focus.”

About FINVIA
FINVIA is a multi family office based in Frank­furt am Main. The company combi­nes excel­lent advice and proven family office services with the possi­bi­li­ties of digi­tal tech­no­lo­gies to make modern wealth orchestra­tion at family office level acces­si­ble to a much broa­der target group. At the same time, FINVIA takes a holi­stic approach that addres­ses all of its clients’ concerns about their assets — giving them access to all asset clas­ses, inclu­ding alter­na­tive assets. FINVIA was foun­ded in 2020 by Tors­ten Murke (CEO), Rein­hard Panse (CIO), Hanna Cimen (COO), Chris­tian Neuhaus (CCO), Marc Sonn­leit­ner (CLO) and Valen­tin Bohlän­der (CPO). The 70-strong company mana­ges assets worth EUR 3.5 billion (as of Janu­ary 2022). www.finvia.fo

The deal team was advi­sed by
Brös­kamp Consul­ting for Commer­cial Due Dili­gence (Dr. Udo Brös­kamp, Dr. Thors­ten Dylla);

Ebner Stolz for finan­cial and tax due dili­gence (Dr. Chris­toph Eppin­ger, Nadine Kißner, Alex­an­der Euch­ner, Tobias Schupp);

YPOG for Legal Due Dili­gence (Dr. Benja­min Ulrich, Emma Peters).

FINVIA was legally advi­sed by Momen­tum Rechts­an­wälte Steu­er­be­ra­ter.

About the HANNOVER Finanz Group
Foun­ded in 1979, HANNOVER Finanz has more than 40 years of expe­ri­ence as an equity part­ner for SMEs. The private equity house with head­quar­ters in Hano­ver and an office in Vienna is one of the first venture capi­ta­lists for the DACH region in Germany and is an owner-mana­ged invest­ment company in its second gene­ra­tion. Well-known compa­nies such as Fiel­mann, Ross­mann and AIXTRON have reali­zed their growth with equity capi­tal from HANNOVER Finanz and taken advan­tage of its entre­pre­neu­rial support. Since its foun­ding, the equity part­ner for SMEs has comple­ted over 250 projects and inves­ted over two billion euros. Invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties are mainly growth finan­cing and succes­sion plan­ning for solid medium-sized compa­nies with annual sales of 20 million euros or more. In addi­tion to majo­rity share­hol­dings, the HANNOVER Finanz Group is one of the few invest­ment compa­nies in Germany to acquire mino­rity inte­rests. The port­fo­lio curr­ently includes around 40 compa­nies. www.hannoverfinanz.de

News

Müns­ter, March 29, 2022 — Pixel Photo­nics, a spin-off from the Depart­ment of Physics at WWU Müns­ter foun­ded in 2020, has recei­ved €1.45 million in a seed finan­cing round from High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF), the French VC fund Quan­to­na­tion, which specia­li­zes in quan­tum tech­no­logy, and Dr. Hendrik Sabert, a proven expert in the photo­nics industry.

Pixel Photo­nics deve­lops highly scalable single photon detec­tors with inte­gra­ted photo­nics, enab­ling scaling of solu­ti­ons in quan­tum compu­ting, QKD and imaging, among others. The under­ly­ing wave­guide-inte­gra­ted SNSPD approach can be used for photo­nic quan­tum compu­ting, quan­tum key distri­bu­tion, micro­scopy, or other sens­ing appli­ca­ti­ons that require highly effec­tive detec­tion of light down to the single photon level. During the start-up phase Pixel Photo­nics was supported by the REACH EUREGIO Start-up Center in Müns­ter as well as EXIST.

Quan­to­na­tion and HTGF co-led the seed funding round with serial foun­der, former venture capi­tal mana­ger and photo­nics indus­try expert Dr. Hendrik Sabert. With this funding, Pixel Photo­nics will further expand its inter­na­tio­nal team in Germany, expand its premi­ses at the Center for Nano­tech­no­logy (CeNTech) in Müns­ter, and acce­le­rate the commer­cia­liza­tion of its products. Pixel Photo­nics bene­fits from the excel­lent inter­na­tio­nal network within Quan­to­na­ti­on’s quan­tum tech­no­logy commu­nity as well as from HTGF’s large indus­trial tech­no­logy portfolio.

“Pixel Photo­nics’ unique tech­no­lo­gi­cal approach to single photon detec­tion combi­nes scala­bi­lity with high detec­tion effi­ci­ency at very high speed. This enables new appli­ca­ti­ons as well as scaling up the number of photons used in quan­tum compu­ting or data rates in quan­tum cryp­to­gra­phy without incre­asing tech­ni­cal comple­xity. The team of physi­cists and entre­pre­neurs that emer­ged from Prof. Pernice’s and Prof. Schu­ck’s groups convin­ced us with their vision and exper­tise,” said Chris­to­phe Jurc­zak, part­ner at Quantonation.

In addi­tion to this important inves­tor funding, Pixel Photo­nics and the Depart­ment of Physics at West­fä­li­sche Wilhelms-Univer­si­tät (WWU) Müns­ter have been awarded €2.6 million in rese­arch funding from the German Fede­ral Minis­try of Educa­tion and Rese­arch (BMBF) to use quan­tum physics to improve data secu­rity. The aim of the so-called QSAMIS project, which is funded under the BMBF program “Enab­ling Start-up — Start-ups in Quan­tum Tech­no­lo­gies and Photo­nics”, is to deve­lop the first giga­bit QKD (Quan­tum Key Distri­bu­tion) system with a signi­fi­cantly increased trans­mis­sion rate to enable quan­tum-safe commu­ni­ca­tion for broad­band networks.

The idea came from Prof. Wolf­ram Pernice and Prof. Cars­ten Schuck
The idea for Pixel Photo­nics’ detec­tor design origi­na­ted years ago from the rese­arch of Prof. Wolf­ram Pernice and Prof. Cars­ten Schuck. Scien­tists repea­tedly expres­sed the need for single photon detec­tors with nume­rous chan­nels in combi­na­tion with addi­tio­nal func­tion­a­li­ties from inte­gra­ted optics at confe­ren­ces. This demand led to the first sale and deli­very of a four-chan­nel detec­tor for rese­arch purpo­ses earlier this year, and it is plan­ned to offer detec­tor systems with 32 or more chan­nels in the near future.

About Pixel Photonics
Pixel Photo­nics was foun­ded in 2020 as a spin-off from the rese­arch groups of Prof. Wolf­ram Pernice and Prof. Cars­ten Schuck at WWU Müns­ter by Nico­lai Walter, Dr. Wladick Hart­mann, Fabian Beutel, Martin Wolff and Chris­toph Seiden­stü­cker with the goal of commer­cia­li­zing highly scalable single photon detec­tors based on the wave­guide inte­gra­ted SNSPD approach. Appli­ca­ti­ons for Pixel Photo­nics’ tech­no­logy range from opti­cal quan­tum compu­ting, quan­tum key distri­bu­tion (QKD), micro­scopy to metro­logy and sens­ing. The company consists of an inter­na­tio­nal team with 8 full-time employees and has recei­ved EXIST funding, venture capi­tal funding from Quan­to­na­tion and HTGF, and rese­arch funding from the German Fede­ral Minis­try of Educa­tion and Rese­arch (BMBF).

About Quan­to­na­tion
Quan­to­na­tion is the first venture capi­tal fund to specia­lize in quan­tum tech­no­lo­gies and inno­va­tive physics. Areas such as mate­ri­als design, high-perfor­mance compu­ting, cyber­se­cu­rity, and ultra-precise detec­tion are now driven by inno­va­tions based on these breakth­rough tech­no­lo­gies. Quan­to­na­tion aims to support their tran­si­tion to marke­ta­ble products for indus­try. Quan­to­na­tion is head­quar­te­red in Paris, France, and invests worldwide.

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About REACH
The North Rhine-West­pha­lian Minis­try for Econo­mic Affairs, Inno­va­tion, Digi­ta­liza­tion and Energy has been funding the estab­lish­ment and work of a start-up center under the auspi­ces of the EMU with a total of around 20 million euros since 2019. This resul­ted in the REACH EUREGIO Start-up Center with the parti­ci­pa­tion of the coope­ra­tion part­ners Müns­ter Univer­sity of Applied Scien­ces, Digi­tal Hub müns­ter­LAND and the Univer­sity of Twente. The Start-up Center provi­des the infra­struc­ture and resour­ces neces­sary to help those inte­res­ted in start­ing a busi­ness in higher educa­tion estab­lish their start-ups. As a univer­sity start-up center, REACH is commit­ted to the trans­fer of scien­ti­fic know­ledge into start-up practice.
Learn more: https://www.reach-euregio.de

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

 

News

Frank­furt a.M. — Main Capi­tal Part­ners acqui­res Audimex AG through Main Port­fo­lio company Blika Solu­ti­ons AB. The sellers are Audimex foun­ders and board members, Stefan Berch­told and Markus Höver­mann; both remain on the manage­ment team and retain a partial stake via Blika.

Main Capi­tal Part­ners had acqui­red the Swedish soft­ware deve­lo­per Blika in Octo­ber 2021 and is now reali­zing its first add-on acqui­si­tion with the take­over of Audimex. The goal is to build an inter­na­tio­nal soft­ware group specia­li­zing in solu­ti­ons for gover­nance, risk and compli­ance (GRC) processes.

Audimex AG has been deve­lo­ping and distri­bu­ting soft­ware solu­ti­ons for inter­nal audi­ting and compli­ance since 1999. Blika Solu­ti­ons AB offers a modu­lar SaaS system that helps multi­na­tio­nal compa­nies comply with complex tax, legal and trans­fer pricing regulations.

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

The McDer­mott team, led by Norman Wasse and Dustin Schwerdt­fe­ger, regu­larly advi­ses Main Capi­tal Part­ners on M&A tran­sac­tions and financings.

Advi­sing Main Capi­tal Part­ners: McDer­mott Will & Emery, Frankfurt
Norman Wasse, LL.M., Photo (Lead, Corporate/M&A), Dr. Marion von Grön­heim, Lisa Schick­ling (both Asso­cia­tes, Corporate/M&A), Dustin Schwerdt­fe­ger, Markus Hunken­schrö­der (Asso­ciate; both Finan­cing, both Düssel­dorf), Dr. Johan­nes Honzen, Hannah Henseling (Asso­ciate; both Real Estate), Dr. Gudrun Germa­kow­ski, Dr. Thomas Gennert (both Düssel­dorf), Fran­ziska Leub­ner (Munich), Lukas Deutz­mann (Cologne/Düsseldorf; both Asso­cia­tes; all Labor Law), Dr. Heiko Kermer, Marcus Fischer (Coun­sel; both Tax Law), Dr. Chris­tian L. Masch, Isabella Kätzl­meier (Asso­ciate; both IT/IP, Munich), Dr. Lukas Wasylow-Neuhaus (Public Law, Düssel­dorf), Chris­tine Corkran Kret­kow­ski (Corporate/M&A, Washing­ton, DC).

Advo­kat­fir­man Vinge KB, Stock­holm: Jonas Johans­son, Per Kling, Egil Svens­son (Swedish law)

About McDer­mott Will & Emery
McDer­mott Will & Emery a leading inter­na­tio­nal law firm with over 1,200 lawy­ers in 22 offices in Europe, North America and Asia. We part­ner with leaders around the world to advance missi­ons, break barriers, and shape markets — regard­less of prac­tice or indus­try boun­da­ries. 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

Munich — The foun­der of the former profi.com AG busi­ness solu­ti­ons (“Profi­com”), Heiko Worm, sold his shares to the owner-mana­ged invest­ment company EOS Part­ners GmbH (“EOS”) in March 2022. With the change of owner­ship, “profi.com AG busi­ness solu­ti­ons” beco­mes “profi­com GmbH”. Mario Schulze, the current member of the Execu­tive Board, will conti­nue to manage profi­com GmbH’s opera­ti­ons as Mana­ging Director.

In the future, all of this will take place under the umbrella of IT Solu­ti­ons Holding, which curr­ently includes profi­com GmbH as well as mod IT Services GmbH. The latter was also sold to EOS in May 2021. POELLATH provi­ded legal advice to EOS in the context of the tran­sac­tion regar­ding the estab­lish­ment of a manage­ment parti­ci­pa­tion model.

Foun­ded in 2000 and based in Dres­den, profi­com GmbH is a specia­li­zed IT service provi­der for IT auto­ma­tion, cloud & DevSe­cOps. The company’s custo­mer base includes well-known DAX compa­nies, successful medium-sized enter­pri­ses and inno­va­tive start-ups. Profi­com employs around 80 people at its sites in Dres­den and Munich.

EOS Part­ners GmbH is a long-term orien­ted invest­ment company focu­sing on medium-sized compa­nies in the DACH region that have unique selling propo­si­ti­ons, sustainable custo­mer rela­ti­onships and high growth poten­tial. EOS supports its port­fo­lio compa­nies in streng­thening their product and service port­fo­lios, which is often linked to further invest­ments such as bolt-on acqui­si­ti­ons. The company’s current equity under manage­ment amounts to around 200 million euros.

POELLATH provi­ded legal advice to EOS in the context of the tran­sac­tion regar­ding the estab­lish­ment of a manage­ment parti­ci­pa­tion model with the follo­wing Munich team:

Dr. Bene­dikt Hohaus, Photo (Part­ner, Manage­ment Participation/ Private Equity)
Silke Simmer, LL.M. (Senior Asso­ciate, Manage­ment Participation/ Private Equity)

About EOS Capital

EOS Capi­tal Part­ners is an owner-mana­ged invest­ment company focu­sing on medium-sized compa­nies in the D/A/CH region. — We part­ner with healthy compa­nies that have real USPs and sustainable custo­mer rela­ti­onships. We like situa­tions where we can help strong teams acce­le­rate growth and streng­then the busi­ness model, for exam­ple. We believe every good company can become even better. We provide flexi­ble capi­tal, sector and opera­tio­nal exper­tise and a rele­vant network. www.eoscp.com

 

News

London/ Frank­furt — Bird & Bird LLP has advi­sed M‑League Pte Ltd (“Mobile Premier League or MPL”) on the acqui­si­tion of Berlin-based Game­Du­ell GmbH (“Game­Du­ell”) inclu­ding its inter­na­tio­nal subsidiaries.

Mobile Premier League is one of the worl­d’s largest mobile eSports and skill gaming plat­forms with more than 70 games in its app for iOS and Android. Foun­ded by Sai Srini­vas (pictu­red right) and Shubh Malho­tra (pictu­red left) in 2018, MPL has grown in a short time with over 90 million users in India, Indo­ne­sia and the US.

Game­Du­ell is one of the most estab­lished gaming studios in Europe and has been successfully active in the online world for over ten years with more than 70 multi­player titles. The studio deve­lops multi­player games for the inter­na­tio­nal market and uses inno­va­tive open-source tech­no­lo­gies to create rich gaming expe­ri­en­ces across plat­forms, iOS, Android, Face­book and its own websites. MPL’s expan­sion into Europe unders­cores the company’s stra­tegy to be present in key global markets.
Simon Fiel­der, Lead Part­ner, commen­ted, “We are deligh­ted to have advi­sed MPL on such a signi­fi­cant acqui­si­tion for the gaming sector. Mobi­li­zing an inter­na­tio­nal team to tackle complex, cross-border issues has demons­tra­ted our excel­lent global network and Bird & Bird’s one-firm culture.”

Advi­sor MPL: Bird & Bird

Part­ner Simon Fiel­der (Corpo­rate, London), Part­ner Dr. Kai Kerger and Senior Asso­ciate Johanna Schind­ler (both Corpo­rate, Frank­furt) all lead, Legal Direc­tor Simon Gough (Tax, London), Asso­ciate Tamara Böhmert (Corpo­rate, Frank­furt), Part­ner Dr. Niels Lutz­höft, LL.M. Asso­cia­tes Dr. Chris­toph Hendel, Simon Hembt and Victo­ria Dehnert (all Commercial/Regulation, Frank­furt), Part­ner Dr. Barbara Geck and Asso­cia­tes Fran­ziska Fied­ler and Carina Seum (all Labor Law, Frank­furt), Part­ner Dr. Michael Jüne­mann, Coun­sel Johan­nes Wirtz, LL.M and Asso­cia­tes Julia Fröh­der and Timo Förs­ter (all Finance & Finan­cial Regu­la­tion, Frank­furt), Part­ner Dr. Stephan Wald­heim and Asso­ciate Tamy Tietze (both Anti­trust, Düssel­dorf), Part­ner Mascha Grund­mann and Asso­cia­tes Julia Präger and Manuela Muelot (all IP/Trademark, Frank­furt), Part­ner Dr. Chris­to­pher Maier­hö­fer (Patent Law, Munich), Part­ner Jörg-Alex­an­der Paul and Asso­ciate Oliver Belitz (IT/DP, Frank­furt), Part­ner Stéphane Leri­che and Asso­ciate Pauline Pilain (Commer­cial, Paris), Part­ner Alex­andre Vuchot and Asso­ciate Morgane Basque (Commer­cial, Paris).

News

Hano­ver / Frank­furt a. M. — The invest­ment company NORD Holding is laun­ching a small cap fund with a target volume of appro­xi­m­ately € 125 million. This is accom­pa­nied by the opening of a new office in Frank­furt am Main with a small cap team that has been well estab­lished for many years. Equity invest­ments of up to € 25 million per invest­ment in medium-sized compa­nies in the DACH region with an EBITDA of up to € 5 million (majo­rity invest­ments and selec­tive mino­ri­ties) are to be made.

NORD Holding, with its more than 50-year history and successful track record in the mid cap segment, is expan­ding its acti­vi­ties in the German-spea­king small cap sector. The new small cap vehicle will be provi­ded with € 50 million by NORD Holding so that the first invest­ments can be made imme­dia­tely. The target volume of the new small cap fund is € 125 million, which will be provi­ded by NORD Holdin­g’s exis­ting inves­tor network and new fund investors.

The stra­te­gic expan­sion of the NORD Holding acti­vi­ties is a conti­nua­tion of the successful growth course of the tradi­tio­nal company from Hano­ver. Most recently, NORD Holding was alre­ady one of the most active German medium-sized inves­tors in 2020 and 2021.

The value crea­tion approach for the stra­te­gic further deve­lo­p­ment of the port­fo­lio compa­nies and the focus on sectors and digi­tiza­tion will also be pursued by the small cap team in the future. Thus, the new port­fo­lio compa­nies bene­fit from the broad exper­tise of the entire NORD Holding organization.

For the new office in Frank­furt am Main a complete team around Jan Markus Drees could be won. In addi­tion to him, Maxi­mi­lian Fink­bei­ner, Johan­nes Fleck (photo) and Marga­rita Decker are also moving to NORD Holding. The team has a successful track record and many years of collaboration.

Andreas Bösen­berg (photo left), Mana­ging Direc­tor of NORD Holding, says: “Setting up a dedi­ca­ted small cap fund is the logi­cal deve­lo­p­ment of NORD Holdin­g’s successful growth course. We are plea­sed to welcome our new colleagues.”

About NORD Holding

With a history of more than 50 years and assets under manage­ment of € 2.5 billion, NORD Holding is one of the leading private equity and asset manage­ment compa­nies in Germany (www.nordholding.de). The focus is on the busi­ness areas of direct invest­ments and fund investments.

The focus of the direct busi­ness is on the struc­tu­ring and finan­cing of corpo­rate succes­sion models, the acqui­si­tion of group divisions/subsidiaries and the expan­sion finan­cing of medium-sized compa­nies. In contrast to most other finan­cial inves­tors, who only manage time-limi­ted funds, NORD Holding acts as a so-called “ever­green fund” with no time limit and invests from its own balance sheet. The company is curr­ently invol­ved with more than 15 compa­nies in Germany and other German-spea­king countries.

The Fund Invest­ments busi­ness unit targets the micro and small cap segment of mid-market-orien­ted private equity funds in Europe. The focus here is on primary, secon­dary and co-invest­ments. NORD Holding focu­ses stron­gly on buyout mana­gers newly estab­lished on the market, opera­tio­nal invest­ment stra­te­gies and also regu­larly acts as an anchor investor.

News

Berlin — Raue has compre­hen­si­vely advi­sed German air cab company Volo­c­op­ter on a Series E finan­cing round worth €153 million. Volo­c­op­ter plans to use the new capi­tal to acce­le­rate certi­fi­ca­tion of the elec­tric passen­ger air cab and its launch in initial cities.

The first signing of the Series E finan­cing round was led by new South Korean inves­tor WP Invest­ment. In addi­tion, Honey­well also parti­ci­pa­ted for the first time. Many exis­ting inves­tors, inclu­ding Atlan­tia, Whysol and btov Part­ners, also re-inves­ted in this finan­cing round. Even before the latest round of finan­cing, the company had surpas­sed the magic unicorn mark for start­ups with a valua­tion of around EUR 1.5 billion.

Raue advi­sed Volo­c­op­ter, as in the previous finan­cing rounds, in a lead role and compre­hen­si­vely on the Series E finan­cing, in parti­cu­lar on the corpo­rate, avia­tion, foreign trade and regu­la­tory aspects of the project.

About Volo­c­op­ter

Volo­c­op­ter brings Urban Air Mobi­lity (UAM) to the worl­d’s mega­ci­ties and aims to improve the quality of life for people in cities with a whole new kind of mobi­lity. To this end, Volo­c­op­ter is working with part­ners to deve­lop a sustainable and scalable UAM ecosys­tem, inclu­ding infra­struc­ture and opera­ti­ons. Volo­c­op­ter’s family of air vehic­les offers passen­gers (Volo­City and Volo­Con­nect) and goods (Volo­Drone) fast, safe and emis­sion-free flights directly to their destination.

Advi­sor Volo­c­op­ter GmbH, Essen/Bruchsal: Raue, Berlin

Prof. Dr. Andreas Nelle (Part­ner, Lead, Corporate/M&A, PE/VC), Dr. Michael Gläs­ner (Coun­sel, Corporate/M&A, PE/VC), Fabian Massen­berg (Senior Asso­ciate, Corporate/ M&A, PE/VC), Dr. Michael Berg­mann (Part­ner, Foreign Trade Law, Anti­trust Law), Dr. Peter Roegele (Coun­sel, for Finan­cial Market Regu­la­tion / Invest­ment Law), Dr. Johan­nes Modest (Asso­ciate, Foreign Trade Law, Anti­trust Law).

About Raue

Raue is an inter­na­tio­nally active law firm based in Berlin. She provi­des compre­hen­sive advice to natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal compa­nies and public enti­ties on invest­ment projects, tran­sac­tions, regu­la­tory issues and conten­tious dispu­tes. www.raue.com.

News

Frank­furt a.M. — McDer­mott Will & Emery has appoin­ted Belden Inc. on the complete acqui­si­tion of the NetMo­dule Group. As a result of the stra­te­gic merger, NetMo­dule will become part of Belden’s Indus­trial Network Solu­ti­ons (INS) busi­ness unit. Remo Viscardi, CEO of NetMo­dule AG, forms the new dual leader­ship toge­ther with Dr. Thomas Nies­sen, VP Busi­ness Deve­lo­p­ment INS.

Network infra­struc­ture provi­der Belden Inc. head­quar­te­red in St. Louis, USA, was foun­ded in 1902 and opera­tes manu­fac­tu­ring faci­li­ties in North and South America, Europe and Asia.

NetMo­dule AG, head­quar­te­red in Bern, is a leading manu­fac­tu­rer of commu­ni­ca­tion products for M2M and IoT. Foun­ded in 1998, the company now has offices in Basel and Winter­thur and subsi­dia­ries in Frank­furt and Hong Kong.

Against the back­ground of its proven exper­tise in the tech sector, the McDer­mott team led by part­ner Norman Wasse had alre­ady advi­sed Belden on the acqui­si­tion of network secu­rity soft­ware provi­der macmon secure GmbH.

Advice to Belden Inc.: McDer­mott Will & Emery, Frankfurt

Norman Wasse, LL.M. (Lead), Dr. Marion von Grön­heim, Lisa Schick­ling (both Asso­cia­tes; all Corporate/M&A), Dr. Kian Tauser, Dr. Gero Burwitz (Munich), Marcus Fischer (Coun­sel), Dr. Isabella Dennin­ger (Asso­ciate, Munich; all Tax), Dr. Deniz Tschamm­ler (Commercial/Regulatory, Munich), Dr. Oliver Hahn­elt, LL.M., Dr. Niko­las Kout­sós (Coun­sel), Markus Cejka, LL.M. (Asso­ciate; all Finance), Dr. Maxi­mi­lian Clos­ter­meyer, Tina Zeller, Elena Platte, LL.M. (both Asso­cia­tes; all Real Estate), Dr. Gudrun Germa­kow­ski, Lukas Deutz­mann (Asso­ciate; both Labor Law, both Düssel­dorf), Dr. Chris­tian L. Masch, Isabella Kätzl­meier (Asso­ciate; both IT/IP, both Munich), Chris­tian Krohs (Anti­trust, Düsseldorf/Cologne), Thomas P. Conag­han, Chris­tine Corkran Kret­kow­ski (both Corporate/M&A, both Washing­ton, DC), Timo­thy S. Shuman (Tax, Washing­ton, DC)
Loyens & Loeff, Zurich: Andreas Hinsen (Corporate/M&A), Fabian Sutter (Tax), Gilles Pitschen (Corporate/M&A)

News

Hamburg / Borken / Waltrop — The netgo group (“netgo”), a fast-growing IT provi­der with bran­ches in many parts of Germany, is once again expan­ding its port­fo­lio of services: Follo­wing seve­ral acqui­si­ti­ons in the past two years, ckn Compu­ter GmbH & Co. KG (“ckn Compu­ter”) from Waltrop, a proven specia­list for the DATEV ecosys­tem as well as IT solu­ti­ons with a focus on tax consul­ting firms and audi­tors, is now joining the group. The sellers of the majo­rity shares are ckn foun­ders and share­hol­ders Oliver Günter and Stefan Koch-Niehus — both will remain on board as mana­ging directors.

ckn Compu­ter was foun­ded in 1988 and, toge­ther with its subsi­diary Diva­con, has sites in Düssel­dorf and Kassel in addi­tion to its head­quar­ters in Waltrop. Through the conti­nuous deve­lo­p­ment of its service and sales network, ckn has estab­lished itself as a high-perfor­mance IT service provi­der, parti­cu­larly in the Rhine-Ruhr region and in central Germany. Thanks to its compre­hen­sive port­fo­lio of services, the company is uniquely posi­tio­ned among its custo­mers, with a focus on tax consul­ting firms and audi­ting compa­nies. Its services include the setup and ongo­ing opera­tion of complex IT infra­struc­tures and local networks for server systems, clients, prin­ting and copy­ing systems. With the inno­va­tive cloud solu­tion “ckn PART­NERasp”, the most important compon­ents of IT can be outsour­ced to the protec­ted DATEV data center. The company, which is one of the largest and most important part­ners for DATEV and its clients thanks to its maxi­mum certi­fi­ca­tion as a “Solu­tion Part­ner”, curr­ently employs around 70 people.

Water­land Private Equity has held a majo­rity stake in netgo group, which was foun­ded in 2007, for more than two years. Since the part­ner­ship was laun­ched, netgo has been able to signi­fi­cantly expand its presence in the highly frag­men­ted German market for IT service provi­ders through a targe­ted buy & build stra­tegy. With a total of eight acqui­si­ti­ons since Water­lan­d’s entry, netgo has both broa­dened its port­fo­lio of IT services for SMEs and gained new custo­mers and market share throug­hout Germany, and now reports group sales of over EUR 300 million.

With ckn, netgo is expan­ding its port­fo­lio to include solu­ti­ons that opti­mally meet the special requi­re­ments of tax consul­tancies, busi­ness law firms and their clients in parti­cu­lar. In addi­tion, the Group is comple­men­ting its range of services in the DATEV field, above all with the areas of DATEV payroll and docu­ment manage­ment as well as the appli­ca­tion service provi­der and hosting busi­ness in DATEV infra­struc­tures. As a result, the fast-growing group will operate in the future as one of the largest provi­ders of DATEV IT outsour­cing solu­ti­ons active throug­hout Germany.

“ckn Compu­ter is an important part of netgo’s stra­te­gic road­map towards a one-stop store for medium-sized custo­mers and, with its comple­men­tary loca­ti­ons in Waltrop and Kassel, once again streng­thens the group’s presence across Germany,” comm­ents Dr. Cars­ten Rahlfs, Mana­ging Part­ner of Water­land, on the acquisition.

Dr. Oliver Mauss, CEO of netgo group, adds: “With ckn, we will be by far the largest provi­der of DATEV IT outsour­cing solu­ti­ons nati­on­wide and will be able to address the needs of tax consul­ting firms, audi­ting compa­nies and their clients even better with group-wide expertise.”

“For ckn, beco­ming part of a strong group like netgo means the contin­ued deve­lo­p­ment of our long-term, entre­pre­neu­rial success; custo­mers and part­ners will bene­fit from the streng­thening in service and offe­ring. We are very much looking forward to the coope­ra­tion,” says Stefan Koch-Niehus, mana­ging part­ner at ckn.

Water­land alre­ady has exten­sive expe­ri­ence in the digi­ta­liza­tion, IT and tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons sectors: the Water­land port­fo­lio in these areas in the DACH region includes GOD (soft­ware deve­lo­p­ment), enreach (unified commu­ni­ca­ti­ons), Skay­link (cloud services) and Netrics (enter­prise IT).

About Water­land

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

Water­land has consis­t­ently outper­for­med with its invest­ments since its incep­tion in 1999. The firm ranks fifth globally in the 2020 HEC/Dow Jones Private Equity Perfor­mance Rankings and eighth among global private equity firms in the 2020 Preqin Consis­tent Perfor­mers in Global Private Equity & Venture Capi­tal Report.

News

Wetz­lar / Rüssels­heim / Bad Homburg — ELIQUO WATER GROUP GmbH, specia­list for muni­ci­pal water and waste­wa­ter tech­no­logy, takes over all shares of the Gesell­schaft für Elektro‑, Auto­ma­ti­sie­rungs- und Leit­tech­nik mbH (GEAL mbH) in the course of the perspec­tive age succes­sion. For GEAL, the tran­sac­tion process was exclu­si­vely mana­ged by the M&A consul­ting boutique Nach­fol­ge­kon­tor. The previous owners, Chris­tian Schön and Michael Wein­del, will initi­ally conti­nue to run the busi­ness to ensure an opti­mal transition.

The company GEAL specia­li­zes in the auto­ma­tion of water and waste­wa­ter faci­li­ties, as well as remote moni­to­ring and control of trans­por­ta­tion and infra­struc­ture networks. GEAL, head­quar­te­red in Rüssels­heim, Hesse, was foun­ded in 1996 by five former employees of the elec­tri­cal company AEG. In addi­tion to the plan­ning, deli­very, programming, assem­bly, instal­la­tion and commis­sio­ning of control and process control systems, the service scope also includes the coor­di­na­tion of suppli­ers and a 24/7 on-call service.

Mana­ging part­ners of GEAL are Chris­tian Schön and Michael Wein­del. Schön is the last of the five foun­ding part­ners, having alre­ady reti­red four of the five foun­ders. Wein­del has been streng­thening the company since 2001 and has been a member of the manage­ment team since 2006. In order to secure the succes­sion of the company, Schön and Wein­del sell the company to ELIQUO in a share deal. In the future, GEAL will comple­ment ELIQUO’s port­fo­lio. Estab­lished on the market as a group of compa­nies since 2014 and with many deca­des of expe­ri­ence, ELIQUO, as one of the largest German muni­ci­pal plant cons­truc­tors for water and waste­wa­ter tech­no­logy with its more than 500 employees, bund­les the Euro­pean acti­vi­ties of SKion Water GmbH in this field.

“The long-term perspec­tive of our employees and custo­mers was parti­cu­larly important to us,” says Chris­tian Schön, Mana­ging Direc­tor at GEAL. “Through a regu­la­ted tran­si­tion and the extre­mely good coope­ra­tion with ELIQUO in the tran­sac­tion process, we look forward to a future full of oppor­tu­ni­ties.” “With ELIQUO, we were able to find an ideal part­ner for the succes­sion at GEAL,” explains Sebas­tian Wissig, who, along with Phil­ipp Spel­kus, is the project mana­ger at Nach­fol­ge­kon­tor. “The syner­gies of the two compa­nies and the level of part­ner­ship were alre­ady clear in the initial discus­sions — toge­ther they form a stable foun­da­tion for provi­ding opti­mum support to the custo­mers of both companies.”

Gauke Reit­sma, CEO of ELIQUO, explains: “Our auto­ma­tion team is perfectly comple­men­ted by GEAL. GEAL’s custo­mers, in turn, can now also bene­fit from our range of services in the field of mecha­ni­cal and elec­tri­cal engi­nee­ring, e.g. control cabi­net cons­truc­tion. In addi­tion, digi­tal networ­king is beco­ming incre­asingly important for the infra­struc­ture of muni­ci­pal water and waste­wa­ter plants. GEAL’s in-depth exper­tise in the field of digi­ta­liza­tion enables us to expand this compe­tence in-house. This puts us in an even better posi­tion for the future. We are very plea­sed to welcome the GEAL team to the Group.”

About Nach­fol­ge­kon­tor / sonn­tag corpo­rate finance

Nach­fol­ge­kon­tor GmbH, in asso­cia­tion with sonn­tag corpo­rate finance GmbH, is one of the leading M&A consul­ting firms in the German SME sector. The team of almost 30 experts accom­pa­nies medium-sized entre­pre­neurs exclu­si­vely through the entire sales process. “Our task is to safe­guard life’s work,” is how we see oursel­ves. In doing so, custo­mers bene­fit from a unique approach that has won multi­ple awards from the busi­ness press, and which protects the iden­tity of their compa­nies to a special degree. Thanks to their excel­lent access to medium-sized compa­nies, Nach­fol­ge­kon­tor and sonn­tag corpo­rate finance have also estab­lished them­sel­ves as a strong part­ner at the side of renow­ned natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal major compa­nies and inves­tors in acqui­si­ti­ons. — www.nachfolgekontor.de / www.sonntagcf.com

ELIQUO WATER GROUP
As a subsi­diary of SKion Water GmbH, ELIQUO bund­les all acti­vi­ties of muni­ci­pal water, waste­wa­ter and sludge treat­ment in Europe. With more than 500 employees and over 30 years of expe­ri­ence in the market, the company focu­ses on plant engi­nee­ring. ELIQUO’s products and services include ther­mal pres­sure hydro­ly­sis (THD), vacuum degas­sing of digested sludge, sludge drying, the 3. and 4th treat­ment stage, energy effi­ci­ency projects and nutri­ent reco­very solu­ti­ons. ELIQUO’s mission is to reduce the carbon foot­print of water­works and waste­wa­ter treat­ment plants and to sustain­ably protect our most precious resource: Water. — www.eliquowater.com

SKion Water
SKion Water GmbH is a tech­no­logy and solu­ti­ons provi­der foun­ded by entre­pre­neur Susanne Klat­ten, as well as a plant manu­fac­tu­rer in muni­ci­pal and indus­trial water and waste­wa­ter tech­no­logy. In addi­tion, SKion Water invests in inno­va­tive water tech­no­logy compa­nies, provi­ded that the respec­tive tech­no­logy fits into the port­fo­lio. In addi­tion to ELIQUO, Ovivo, Envi­ro­wa­ter Group, Paques, Ecopre­neur, ADASA, inCTRL and Matten are other opera­ting subsi­dia­ries of SKion Water. — www.skionwater.com

 

News

Munich — The listed Lindab Group, a leading venti­la­tion company in Europe is acqui­ring the German Felde­rer AG. A multi­di­sci­pli­nary team of Deloitte Legal advi­sed Felde­rer Holding GmbH and Klaus-Phil­ipp Felde­rer, CEO and owner of Felde­rer, on the sale of all shares in Felde­rer AG to Lindab Group. The tran­sac­tion is subject to regu­la­tory appr­ovals and is expec­ted to close in the second quarter.

Felde­rer AG is one of the largest distri­bu­tors of venti­la­tion and air condi­tio­ning tech­no­logy in Germany. It was foun­ded in 1979 and is based in Feld­kir­chen near Munich. The company gene­ra­tes annual sales of around EUR 70 million and employs 160 people.

The listed Lindab Group, as a leading venti­la­tion company in Europe, deve­lops, manu­fac­tures and markets products and systems for a healthy indoor climate. The Lindab Group achie­ved sales of appro­xi­m­ately EUR 965 million in 2021 and is estab­lished in 20 count­ries with around 4,500 employees.

“Toge­ther with Lindab there are great deve­lo­p­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties for Felde­rer AG in the German market, which will bene­fit our custo­mers, our part­ners and our employees. We look forward to a dyna­mic coope­ra­tion with our strong and sustainable part­ner Lindab,” says Klaus-Phil­ipp Felderer.

Advi­sor Lindab Group: Proven­tis Partners

Proven­tis Part­ners advi­ses Lindab Group on its stra­te­gic expan­sion in the German market for venti­la­tion tech­no­logy. In this capa­city, Proven­tis Part­ners initia­ted and supported the tran­sac­tion as exclu­sive buyside M&A advi­sor. The Proven­tis Part­ners tran­sac­tion team: Ulrich Schnei­der (Part­ner, Hamburg) and Henrik Huchel (Analyst, Hamburg).

Advi­sor Felde­rer AG: Deloitte Legal

The Deloitte Legal team led by Eike Fietz (photo) consis­ted of Simon Maier (both Corpo- rate/M&A, Munich) and Dr. Marc Spiel­ber­ger (Labor Law, Munich). Dr. Michael Reich (Pinsent Masons) advi­sed Felde­rer from an anti­trust perspective.

The buyer was advi­sed by the law firms kallan (tran­sac­tion) and ROCAN (anti­trust).

News

Munich, March 3, 2022 — Silver­fleet Capi­tal has advi­sed its port­fo­lio company, Pumpen­fa­brik Wangen GmbH to Atlas Copco Group. The closing of the tran­sac­tion is subject to anti­trust clearance and is expec­ted for the second quar­ter of 2022.

Silver­fleet Capi­tal is a pan-Euro­pean private equity firm specia­li­zing in buy-to-build stra­te­gies of mid-market compa­nies in the UK, France, Germany, Bene­lux and Scandinavia.

Pumpen­fa­brik Wangen (photo) deve­lops and sells indus­trial pumps for the biogas and waste­wa­ter sectors as well as the food, beverage and cosme­tics indus­tries. The company employs 265 people and has produc­tion faci­li­ties in Germany as well as a global sales and service network.

The Atlas Copco Group is a leading inter­na­tio­nal provi­der of sustainable indus­trial produc­ti­vity solu­ti­ons, head­quar­te­red in Stock­holm with opera­ti­ons in more than 180 count­ries. In 2020, Atlas Copco achie­ved sales of 10 billion euros with around 40,000 employees.

Advi­sor Silver­fleet Capi­tal: McDer­mott Will & Emery, Munich

Dr. Tobias Kopp­mann (Lead), Thomas Sauer­milch (New York; both Corporate/M&A), Dr. Henrik Holz­ap­fel (Düssel­dorf), Dr. Richard Gräbe­ner (both IP Liti­ga­tion), Chris­tian Krohs (Anti­trust, Düsseldorf/Cologne), Raymond Paretzky (Coun­sel, Trade, Agri­cul­ture & EU Regu­la­tory, Washing­ton, DC), Dr. Chris­tian Rolf (Labor, Frank­furt), Marcus Fischer (Coun­sel), Nina Siewert (both Tax, both Frank­furt), Dr. Deniz Tschamm­ler (Regu­la­tory), Dr. Claus Färber (Coun­sel, Data Protec­tion). Deniz Tschamm­ler (Regu­la­tory), Dr. Claus Färber (Coun­sel, Data Protec­tion); Asso­cia­tes: Matthias Wein­gut, Benja­min Macie­jew­ski, Bene­dikt Gloß­ner, Dr. Fabian Appa­doo, Ana A. Koff, Nicole Yoon (both New York; all Corporate/M&A), Dr. Maxi­mi­lian Kiemle (IP Liti­ga­tion, Düssel­dorf), Max Kütt­ner (Anti­trust, Düssel­dorf), Ilva Woeste (Labor Law)

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