Mega deal: Finnish elevator manufacturer Kone takes over TK Elevator

Munich — The Finnish eleva­tor manu­fac­tu­rer Kone is taking over its German compe­ti­tor TK Eleva­tor. The finan­cial inves­tors Advent and Cinven are recei­ving five billion euros in cash and Kone shares worth 15.2 billion euros for the company. The tran­sac­tion implies an enter­prise value of 29.4 billion euros inclu­ding debt. This makes the tran­sac­tion the largest majo­rity spon­­sor-led private equity tran­sac­tion in Europe to date. 

The combi­ned company would gene­rate annual sales of around EUR 20.5 billion, of which around 65% would come from service and moder­niza­tion, achieve an adjus­ted EBIT of more than EUR 2.7 billion (exclu­ding syner­gies) and have a main­ten­ance port­fo­lio of around 3.2 million units.

Kirk­land & Ellis has advi­sed Advent and Cinven on the comple­tion of an agree­ment to combine TK Eleva­tor (“TKE”) and KONE in a tran­sac­tion invol­ving cash and KONE shares as consideration.

TKE is a global leader in the field of verti­cal trans­por­ta­tion and urban mobi­lity. The company has around 50,000 employees and over 1,000 loca­ti­ons world­wide. TKE became inde­pen­dent after the spin-off from Thys­sen­krupp AG in 2020. KONE is a global leader in the eleva­tor and escala­tor indus­try with more than 60,000 employees in around 70 count­ries. KONE’s Class B shares are listed on Nasdaq Helsinki Ltd. in Finland. 

Advi­sors to Advent and Cinven: Kirk­land & Ellis, Munich

Prof. Dr. Benja­min Leyen­de­cker (photo © Kirk­land), Dr. Philip Goj (both lead, both Private Equity/M&A), Dr. Michael Ehret (Tax); Asso­cia­tes: Dr. Marcus Comman­deur, Dr. Fried­rich Focke, Fabian Water­höl­ter, Lisa Müller, Dr. Sabrina Seitz, Chiara Schmid (all Private Equity/M&A), Emma­nuel Götz (Tax)
Kirk­land & Ellis, London:
Adrian Maguire, Dan Clarke (both Private Equity/M&A), Antoine Lebi­en­venu (Capi­tal Markets), Chris­to­pher Shield, Thomas Raftery (both Debt Finance), Mavnick Nerwal, Sivanti Deva­ku­mar (both Tax), André Duminy (Tech­no­logy & IP Tran­sac­tions); Asso­cia­tes: Charles Hébert, Bene­dict Wilson, Saniya Sidhu, Albert Planella i Obach (all Private Equity/M&A), Aram Vale­syan, Aman Nath, Zoe O’Log­bon (all Debt Finance), Ellen Ronayne (Tax), Asmita Singhvi (Tech­no­logy & IP Transactions)

About Kirk­land

With more than 4,000 lawy­ers in 23 cities in the USA, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, Kirk­land & Ellis is one of the leading law firms for high-cali­­ber legal services. The German team specia­li­zes in private equity, M&A, restruc­tu­ring, corpo­rate and capi­tal markets, finan­cing and tax. For more infor­ma­tion, please visit kirkland.com.