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).