Euro 175 million Series F for Pennylane with Blackstone Growth

Frank­furt a. M. — Will­kie Farr & Gallag­her LLP has advi­sed Blackstone Growth (“BxG”) on its invest­ment in the Series F finan­cing round of French fintech company Pennylane SAS (“Pennylane”), which builds and opera­tes an inte­gra­ted finan­cial manage­ment and accoun­ting plat­form aimed prima­rily at small and medium-sized enter­pri­ses and accoun­ting firms.

Pennylane was valued at appro­xi­m­ately EUR 3.5 billion (fully diluted) in the EUR 175 million Series F finan­cing round. As part of the invest­ment, BxG acqui­red addi­tio­nal shares in exis­ting Pennylane compa­nies. Pennylan­e’s plat­form acts as a unified “finan­cial opera­ting system” where busi­ness owners and their accoun­tants can colla­bo­rate in a shared workspace. It uses auto­ma­tion and AI to reduce manual tasks such as data entry, bank recon­ci­lia­tion, docu­ment proces­sing and tran­sac­tion cate­go­riza­tion. Pennylane also offers busi­ness account func­tion­a­lity and payment tools, often in part­ner­ship with licen­sed finan­cial insti­tu­ti­ons, so custo­mers can make payments, manage tran­sac­tions and even issue profes­sio­nal payment cards — all on the same platform. 

Blackstone Growth is an expe­ri­en­ced growth equity inves­tor with offices in New York City (head­quar­ters), San Fran­cisco, London and Tel Aviv, acqui­ring and inves­t­ing in compa­nies with proven busi­ness models in the follo­wing five sectors: Finan­cial Services, Consu­mer Products, Enter­prise Soft­ware, Health­care and Consu­mer Technology.

Advi­sor to Blackstone: Will­kie Farr & Gallag­her LLP

The Will­kie team was led by part­ner Dr. Kamyar Abrar (Frank­furt) and compri­sed part­ners Ed Fernan­dez, Hugo Noce­rino (both Paris), Dr. Michael Ilter (Frank­furt), coun­sel Sebas­tian Bren­ner (Frank­furt) and asso­ciate Sylvain Bureau (Paris).

About WILLKIE

Will­kie Farr & Gallag­her LLP provi­des leading legal solu­ti­ons to complex, busi­­ness-criti­­cal issues that span markets and indus­tries. Our appro­xi­m­ately 1,300 lawy­ers in 16 offices world­wide provide inno­va­tive, prag­ma­tic and sophisti­ca­ted legal services in around 45 areas of law. — www.willkie.com