ALTERNATIVE FINANCING FORMS
FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND INVESTORS

Author: Tatjana Anderer

Gründerin des FYB-Verlag
News

NRW.BANK successfully placed its first Green Bond in the capi­tal market in 2023. The deve­lo­p­ment bank’s 14th green bond had a volume of one billion euros and was twice over­sub­scri­bed. With the current Green Bond, NRW.BANK is refi­nan­cing in parti­cu­lar those projects in North Rhine-West­pha­lia that help to miti­gate climate change and adapt to its consequences.

“The climate-neutral trans­for­ma­tion of the economy and society is an enorm­ous chall­enge. To master it, capi­tal flows must flow into sustainable projects,” says Michael Stöl­ting, member of NRW.BANK’s Mana­ging Board. “This is precis­ely where we come in with our Green Bonds, enab­ling inves­tors to parti­ci­pate in sustainable projects in North Rhine-Westphalia.”

The current Green Bond will focus on promo­ting the expan­sion of rene­wa­ble ener­gies. More than 450 million euros alone will be used to finance wind farms and photo­vol­taic systems. Just under 200 million each will go toward energy-effi­ci­ent buil­dings and the expan­sion of climate-friendly trans­por­ta­tion, inclu­ding e‑cars, street­cars, trains and battery trol­ley­bu­ses. 200 million has been earmarked for the rena­tu­ra­tion of the Emscher and Lippe rivers. This brings the total volume of funds commit­ted by NRW.BANK for the ecolo­gi­cal rene­wal of rivers to EUR 3.8 billion. Further funds are earmarked for the expan­sion of the fiber-optic broad­band network.

The effec­ti­ve­ness of the invest­ments is also shown by the analy­sis of the Wupper­tal Insti­tute for Climate, Envi­ron­ment and Energy, which was recently published for the two NRW.BANK.Green Bonds from 2021. Accor­din­gly, the calcu­la­ti­ons showed that the refi­nan­ced projects from the NRW.BANK.Green Bonds 2021 will save green­house gases amoun­ting to around 4.2 million tons of CO2 equi­va­lents over the ten-year term of the bond.

With the 14th Green Bond now issued, the total volume of NRW.BANK.Green Bonds issued rises to a total of eight billion euros. Lead mana­gers were Barclays, Crédit Agri­cole CIB, Deka­Bank and Deut­sche Bank. The company is listed in Düssel­dorf and in Luxem­bourg under ISIN: DE000NWB0AU2. The mini­mum deno­mi­na­tion is 1,000 euros.

With sustaina­bi­lity prin­ci­ples in mind, NRW.BANK has been issuing its own Green Bonds since 2013 and Social Bonds since 2020. It also invests in a sepa­rate Sustainable Invest­ment Port­fo­lio to supple­ment its invest­ment port­fo­lio with desi­gna­ted sustainable invest­ments. With a green refi­nan­cing curve, it offers funding reci­pi­ents the oppor­tu­nity to finance projects that are in line with the EU taxo­nomy for sustainable invest­ments at parti­cu­larly favorable condi­ti­ons. This green curve is laid down in NRW.BANK’s sustaina­bi­lity guide­lines. The same applies to the orien­ta­tion of the capi­tal market busi­ness, which is based on the prin­ci­ples of the Prin­ci­ples for Respon­si­ble Invest­ment (PRI), which NRW.BANK signed in Decem­ber 2020. This member­ship is a further contri­bu­tion to the holi­stic sustainable orien­ta­tion of the bank’s capi­tal market business.

The current issu­ance docu­ments for NRW.BANK’s funding programs can be found at nrwbank.de/investor-relations.

News

Munich ‑The Munich-based private equity inves­tor Family Trust Inves­tor has acqui­red a stake in Hyla Germany GmbH and was compre­hen­si­vely advi­sed by Oppen­hoff on the legal aspects of this transaction.

Hyla Germany GmbH is the exclu­sive distri­bu­tor in Germany and Austria of Hyla D.O.O., manu­fac­tu­rer of high-quality air and room clea­ning equip­ment under the “Hyla” brand. Toge­ther with Family Trust, foun­der Michael Hausen­blas and the manage­ment of Hyla Germany GmbH will pursue further growth stra­te­gies in the coming years — inclu­ding incre­asing brand aware­ness in German-spea­king count­ries, digi­tiz­ing inter­nal proces­ses, and addres­sing addi­tio­nal end markets, such as hospi­ta­lity and healthcare.

Family Trust Inves­tor, based in Munich, is an invest­ment company foun­ded in 2015 by expe­ri­en­ced private equity profes­sio­nals with an invest­ment focus on medium-sized compa­nies in German-spea­king countries.

Advi­sor Family Trust Inves­tor: Oppen­hoff & Part­ner Rechts­an­wälte Steu­er­be­ra­ter mbB

Lead Till Liebau (Private Equity/M&A) included Marcel Marko­vic (Private Equity/M&A), Dr. Wolf­gang Kotzur (Finance), Anja Dombrow­sky, Corne­lia-Cris­tina Scupra (both Labor Law), Marc Alex­an­der Häger, Caner Erta­so­glu (both Real Estate), Dr. Simon Spang­ler, Reneé Cherelle Eckruth (both Anti­trust and Commer­cial), Georg Leche­ler (IP), Dr. Jürgen Hartung (IT and Data Protec­tion) and Dr. Gunnar Knorr (Tax). On cross-border aspects, the Oppen­hoff team was supported by Kara­no­viæ & Part­ners (Slove­nia).

Oppen­hoff regu­larly advi­ses Family Trust, most recently on the acqui­si­tion of a majo­rity stake in the urban apes group and the novia group.

The full-service law firm Oppen­hoff finds indus­try-speci­fic solu­ti­ons for groups, large owner-mana­ged compa­nies and finan­cial inves­tors. More than 100 attor­neys advise on all major areas of busi­ness and tax law.

News

Munich, Germany — smart­bax, a biotech company deve­lo­ping next-gene­ra­tion anti­bio­tics, announ­ced the closing of a €1.2 million seed finan­cing round with Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim Venture Fund (BIVF) and High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF). Thus, smart­bax has so far raised a total of 1.9 million euros for the deve­lo­p­ment of inno­va­tive anti­bio­tics against multi-resistant bacteria.

With the new capi­tal, the company will advance its precli­ni­cal small mole­cule anti­bio­tic disco­very studies and expand its scien­ti­fic team to further deve­lop its inno­va­tive rese­arch plat­forms and find new solu­ti­ons against multi-drug resistant patho­gens. Unlike clas­si­cal anti-bacte­rial agents, smartbax’s product candi­da­tes act via a unique, dual-targe­ting mecha­nism. This not only inhi­bits essen­tial proces­ses in the energy meta­bo­lism of the multi-resistant bacte­ria, but also crea­tes a stimu­la­tion of the protein secre­tion of the bacte­ria, which leads to the self-diges­tion of the cells.

“The growing number of multid­rug-resistant infec­tions, which alre­ady account for 1.3 million deaths world­wide each year, high­lights the urgent need for new approa­ches to treat resistant infec­tions. We are convin­ced that with our diffe­ren­tia­ted approach we can over­come the limi­ta­ti­ons of curr­ently available anti­bio­tics and thus deve­lop effec­tive thera­peu­tics against both Gram-posi­tive and Gram-nega­tive bacte­ria,” said Dr. Robert Macsics, CEO and co-foun­der of smart­bax.

smart­bax was foun­ded in 2021 by Dr. Robert Macsics, Marco Jane­zic and Prof. Dr. Stephan Sieber and supported by initial start-up funding of 700,000 euros from the BIVF. The company’s scien­ti­fic foun­da­ti­ons are based on outstan­ding rese­arch results from Prof. Dr. Sieber’s working group at the Tech­ni­cal Univer­sity of Munich (TUM). These have alre­ady recei­ved the VIP+ Vali­da­tion Award from the German Fede­ral Minis­try of Educa­tion and Rese­arch and the m4 Award from the Bava­rian State Minis­try of Econo­mic Affairs, Regio­nal Deve­lo­p­ment and Energy.

“The inno­va­tive mecha­nisms of action explo­red by smart­bax may open new avenues in the fight against serious bacte­rial infec­tions. The approach also appears promi­sing to over­come exis­ting resis­tance mecha­nisms and makes rapid spread of new resis­tance unli­kely. I am plea­sed that we can accom­pany the scien­ti­fi­cally strong team of smart­bax on their way to meet a highly rele­vant socie­tal chall­enge”, explains Dr. Ange­lika Vlachou, Part­ner at HTGF.

“The deve­lo­p­ment of novel anti­bio­tics repres­ents a valuable contri­bu­tion to the fight against multid­rug-resistant bacte­rial infec­tions. The foun­ding team of smart­bax is pursuing a highly inno­va­tive approach, which offers the poten­tial for broad appli­ca­bi­lity in nume­rous dise­a­ses. We are plea­sed to accom­pany smart­bax in its further rese­arch acti­vi­ties and ther­eby support the deve­lo­p­ment of new and urgen­tly needed thera­peu­tic approa­ches in the field of bacte­rial infec­tious dise­a­ses,” says Dr. Sebas­tian Kreuz, Invest­ment Mana­ger of the BIVF.

About smart­bax

smart­bax is deve­lo­ping a new gene­ra­tion of anti­bac­te­rial agents to combat the incre­asing spread of multi-resistant bacte­ria. The team of experts is rely­ing on inno­va­tive solu­ti­ons that attack bacte­ria at diffe­rent sites simul­ta­neously, thus making it more diffi­cult for resis­tance to form. In addi­tion, the company specia­li­zes in the targe­ted acti­va­tion of enzy­ma­tic proces­ses in bacte­ria, which is a parti­cu­larly promi­sing approach in the context of biofilms that are diffi­cult to treat. Knowing that tomorrow’s resis­tance crisis can only be aver­ted by acting today, smart­bax 2021 was foun­ded in Munich with the goal of making inno­va­tive rese­arch appli­ca­ble to create novel anti­bio­tics that add real value to pati­ents worldwide.
Website link: https://www.smartbax.de

About the Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim Venture Fund

Since its incep­tion in 2010, Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim Venture Fund GmbH (BIVF) has been inves­t­ing in breakth­rough biotech­no­logy compa­nies in the thera­peu­tics field to foster inno­va­tion in biome­di­cal rese­arch. The BIVF seeks signi­fi­cant impro­ve­ments in pati­ent care through scien­ti­fic pionee­ring and its clini­cal appli­ca­tion by buil­ding long-term rela­ti­onships with scien­tists and entre­pre­neurs. The BIVF focu­ses on novel thera­peu­tic concepts charac­te­ri­zed by high unmet medi­cal need in the fields of immuno-onco­logy, rege­ne­ra­tive medi­cine, multi-resistant bacte­rial infec­tions and digi­tal health. This includes new plat­form tech­no­lo­gies that address previously unad­dressa­ble targets and new biolo­gi­cal entities.

The BIVF takes an active role within its port­fo­lio compa­nies — deli­ve­ring signi­fi­cant added value through its own scien­ti­fic and busi­ness exper­tise in drug deve­lo­p­ment. The BIVF has a volume of EUR 300 million, is repre­sen­ted by offices in Europe (Germany), the USA (Boston and San Fran­cisco) and China (Beijing and Hong Kong) and curr­ently over­looks a port­fo­lio of 40 companies.
www.boehringer-ingelheim-venture.com

About High-Tech Gründerfonds

The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start-ups with growth poten­tial and has supported more than 700 start-ups since 2005. With the launch of the fourth fund, HTGF has around 1.4 billion euros under manage­ment. The team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and start-up experts supports the young compa­nies with know-how, entre­pre­neu­rial spirit and passion. The focus is on high-tech start-ups in the fields of digi­tal tech, indus­trial tech, life scien­ces, chemis­try and rela­ted busi­ness areas. More than €4.5 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in more than 2,000 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. In addi­tion, the fund has alre­ady successfully sold shares in more than 170 companies.

The fund inves­tors in the public-private part­ner­ship include the German Fede­ral Minis­try for Econo­mic Affairs and Climate Protec­tion, KfW Capi­tal, the Fraun­ho­fer-Gesell­schaft and over 40 compa­nies from a wide range of industries.

Advi­sors to Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim Venture Fund (BIVF) and High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF): Green­Gate Part­ners provi­ded compre­hen­sive support to the two funds in struc­tu­ring and imple­men­ting the finan­cing round as well as in draf­ting and nego­tia­ting the rele­vant contrac­tual documents.

 

News

Wiesbaden/Berlin — BMH Betei­li­gungs-Manage­ment­ge­sell­schaft Hessen mbH and Compa­nisto GmbH have jointly inves­ted in Office for Micro Climate Culti­va­tion GmbH (OMC°C). The Frank­furt-based startup is deve­lo­ping a flexi­ble and loca­tion-inde­pen­dent product system that uses free-stan­ding verti­cal green spaces to improve climate resi­li­ence and air quality in urban centers. OMC°C will use the new finan­cial resour­ces to further deve­lop its product and service, prepare for market entry and further expand its team.

The company OMC°C was foun­ded by Nicola Statt­mann and Carlotta Ludig at the end of 2021 with the aim of coun­ter­ac­ting the incre­asing heating of urban centers on a large scale and in a timely manner. Their inno­va­tive “Climate Farming System” gree­ning system uses annual clim­bing plants that grow more than seven meters in height each year on free-stan­ding modu­les in a very short time. The resul­ting “plant sails” have a stan­dard size of 18 square meters and are capa­ble of cooling their surroun­dings by up to 2.5°C. Each module has six plant sails and gene­ra­tes 270 cubic meters of fresh air per day with its total sail area of 108 square meters. In addi­tion, one module can store around 0.5 tons of CO2 per year. The modu­les, which can be comple­ted in series, consist of a light­weight support struc­ture, substrate contai­ners, biode­gra­da­ble, hurri­cane-proof tendril nets and an auto­ma­ted irri­ga­tion system. They can be freely posi­tio­ned and cast shade where it is needed. Unlike trees, the modu­les do not require any earth space, as they are secu­red above ground with compa­ra­tively narrow screw foun­da­ti­ons or precast foun­da­tion elements.

The Climate Farming system is thus — in contrast to estab­lished gree­ning solu­ti­ons, espe­ci­ally facade and roof gree­ning — almost infi­ni­tely scalable and signi­fi­cantly more cost-effi­ci­ent. OMC°C also offers its custo­mers a one-stop solu­tion: in addi­tion to provi­ding the modu­les, the startup supports them with expert advice as well as with site plan­ning and then takes over all the neces­sary services — from sowing the seeds in the spring to coll­ec­ting the over­grown nets in the fall — as part of a green-as-a-service model. The Climate Farming system is prima­rily aimed at cities and muni­ci­pa­li­ties as well as compa­nies, espe­ci­ally from the real estate indus­try, which, for exam­ple, want to reduce energy consump­tion. want or need to reduce their carbon foot­print, lower air condi­tio­ning costs, or comply with new regulations.

OMC°C has alre­ady recei­ved seve­ral awards for its inno­va­tive system, inclu­ding third place at the Frank­furt Foun­ders’ Prize 2022, as well as various grants, inclu­ding from Hessen-Ideen, Frank­furt frischt auf and push! The project is also supported by, among others, the Frank­furt Econo­mic Deve­lo­p­ment Corpo­ra­tion, the German Weather Service and the Sencken­berg Society for Nature Rese­arch. The previous mile­sto­nes of deve­lo­ping the stand struc­ture and rank net, test­ing the irri­ga­tion system and substra­tes will now be follo­wed by the test­ing of a first proto­type in the summer of 2023 in a real labo­ra­tory in Frankfurt.

“We are on track to reach produc­tion readi­ness in the third quar­ter of 2023 and to move forward with the produc­tion setup. We plan to launch the product in Octo­ber of this year,” said Nicola Statt­mann and Carlotta Ludig, foun­ders of OMC°C. “We’re exci­ted to now be able to work with our new part­ners to make down­towns in parti­cu­lar gree­ner and more livable.”

“Espe­ci­ally for metro­po­li­tan areas, we have never needed inno­va­tive solu­ti­ons in the areas of climate protec­tion, climate resi­li­ence and urban biodi­ver­sity so urgen­tly. We are firmly convin­ced that OMC°C’s gree­ning system is one of the tech­no­lo­gies that will sustain­ably combine econo­mic and social added value,” says Jürgen ten Elsen, respon­si­ble invest­ment mana­ger at BMH, which mana­ges the Hessen Kapi­tal III (EFRE) GmbH fund, among others.

“The forward-looking busi­ness model as well as the strong and comple­men­tary network of OMC°C convin­ced us alre­ady at the first cont­act. In the further due dili­gence, we were convin­ced not only by the team, but also by the content of the offer: In our opinion, the gree­ning of urban infra­struc­tures carries not only imme­diate local bene­fits, but also a soci­ally rele­vant added value for an incre­asing aware­ness of climate protec­tion. The concept convin­ced not only Compa­nisto, but also the Compa­nists, who inves­ted in OMC°C with capi­tal and exper­tise,” adds Chris­toph Schwei­zer, Part­ner and Head of Invest­ment at Companisto.

About BMH

BMH Betei­li­gungs-Manage­ment­ge­sell­schaft Hessen mbH, based in Wies­ba­den, was foun­ded in 2001 and is a wholly owned subsi­diary of Landes­bank Hessen-Thürin­gen Giro­zen­trale (Helaba). Through Wirt­schafts- und Infra­struk­tur­bank Hessen (WIBank), BMH is actively invol­ved in the econo­mic deve­lo­p­ment acti­vi­ties of the State of Hesse. As a medium-sized invest­ment and venture capi­tal company, BMH bund­les public invest­ment inte­rests and finan­cing instru­ments for early-stage, growth and medium-sized compa­nies in Hesse. BMH curr­ently mana­ges seven invest­ment funds with a total inves­ted invest­ment volume of around 125 million euros. Since its foun­da­tion, BMH has inves­ted in a total of more than 500 compa­nies. The main areas of invest­ment include the soft­ware & IT, life scien­ces, mecha­ni­cal and plant engi­nee­ring, indus­trial goods, profes­sio­nal services and e‑commerce sectors. www.bmh-hessen.de

About Compa­nisto

Compa­nisto is the market-leading private inves­tor network in the D‑A-CH region and has been a leading venture capi­ta­list for startup invest­ments for seven years in a row. To date, around €191.1 million has been commit­ted via Compa­nisto in over 277 finan­cing rounds. Since 2018, Compa­nisto has expan­ded its network of curr­ently 138,000 private inves­tors with a digi­tally orga­ni­zed Busi­ness Angel Club. Around 2,000 busi­ness angels invest in the equity of compa­nies via Compa­nisto with invest­ments start­ing at EUR 10,000. The invest­ment process and invest­ment manage­ment were fully digitized.

 

News

Landshut/Berlin/Munich — Just in time for the company’s second anni­ver­sary, Reflex Aero­space is acce­le­ra­ting its course towards the first commer­cial space mission: The Berlin and Munich-based space start-up has booked a perma­nent rocket launch site for its demo satel­lite. The launch will take place in the fall of 2024 on a Falcon 9 rocket from SpaceX. The goal of the mission is to vali­date new tech­no­lo­gies in space for the first time. The demo satel­lite, which weighs appro­xi­m­ately 120 kilo­grams, is curr­ently under deve­lo­p­ment and will be assem­bled in Munich. The ‘micro factory’ there for the produc­tion of custo­mer-speci­fic satel­li­tes will open later this year.

These steps are supported by an expan­sion of the so-called seed finan­cing by a further 1.75 million euros (to a total of almost 9 million euros). In addi­tion to increa­ses from exis­ting inves­tors, Bayern Kapi­tal has joined the group of share­hol­ders through its EFRE Bayern inno­va­tion fund. As one of the most expe­ri­en­ced and active venture and growth inves­tors in the German high-tech finan­cing land­scape, Bayern Kapi­tal will use the invest­ment to finance, among other things, the estab­lish­ment of the first Micro Factory near Munich. Driven by expec­ted commer­cial order intake, seed funding is expec­ted to increase further during the year. In addi­tion, the Star­burst Acce­le­ra­tor — one of the most renow­ned Euro­pean acce­le­ra­tors for aero­space start-ups — will be on board in the future to support the deve­lo­p­ment of the inter­na­tio­nal busi­ness as Reflex Aerospace’s part­ner, espe­ci­ally in the USA as well as in France.

Walter Ball­hei­mer, CEO of Reflex Aero­space, welco­mes the current deve­lo­p­ment: “As a new space start-up, we are natu­rally eager to demons­trate the perfor­mance of our tech­no­lo­gies directly in space. We are ther­e­fore very plea­sed that this mile­stone is within reach with our first perma­nent rocket launch site. The increase in our finan­cing confirms the confi­dence of our inves­tors in this goal. With this tail­wind, we are driving forward the cons­truc­tion of our first Micro Factory, which we will open in Munich in the second half of 2023. In addi­tion, we are fully on track to nearly double our work­force across all sites to around 50 employees in 2023.”

Monika Steger, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Bayern Kapi­tal, adds: “We are very plea­sed to have Reflex Aero­space as another port­fo­lio company in the aero­space sector — in the field of “New Space” we are among the inves­tors from the very begin­ning and have alre­ady inves­ted in nume­rous exci­ting compa­nies such as Isar Aero­space, Quan­tum Systems and Orora­Tech. Reflex Aero­space has a promi­sing busi­ness model, and we are happy to support its further development.”

About Reflex Aerospace

Reflex Aero­space was foun­ded in 2021. The Berlin and Munich-based NewSpace start-up aims to moder­nize the market with high-perfor­mance satel­li­tes tail­o­red to indi­vi­dual requi­re­ments. Through soft­ware-based and secu­rity-opti­mi­zed product archi­tec­tures as well as custo­mer-orien­ted service offe­rings, the company meets the needs of its custo­mers signi­fi­cantly faster, chea­per and more flexi­bly than estab­lished and other NewSpace manu­fac­tu­r­ers. Toge­ther with its part­ner compa­nies Myna­ric, Isar Aero­space and SES, Reflex Aero­space is also a share­hol­der in the UNIO joint venture, which aims to estab­lish a Euro­pean satel­lite constel­la­tion for broad­band Inter­net. www.reflexaerospace.com

About Bayern Kapital

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

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

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

 

News

Hamburg — Oppen­hoff advi­sed MAI Marke­ting Auto­ma­tion Intel­li­gence Group GmbH (MAI Group) on the acqui­si­tion of xpose360 GmbH (xpose360), a specia­list agency for digi­tal perfor­mance marke­ting. MAI Group takes over all shares in xpose360, the previous share­hol­ders of xpose360 become share­hol­ders in MAI Group.

The MAI Group, head­quar­te­red in Hamburg, now compri­ses eight compa­nies: Crui­se­a­dors GmbH, DIGITALBERATUNG GmbH, Hanse CRM GmbH, Kamano GmbH, klaro media GmbH, Leonex Inter­net GmbH, media­worx berlin AG and xpose360 GmbH. They combine exten­sive exper­tise from various digi­tal areas under one roof. As a go-to digi­tal marke­ting part­ner with around 400 experts, MAI Group supports custo­mers and part­ners in digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion, both in the effi­ci­ent opti­miza­tion of core busi­ness and in the expan­sion of digi­tal busi­ness. It serves custo­mers such as A1 Tele­kom Austria, Alli­anz, ebay, RedBull, REWE, StepStone and Wacker Chemie.

The main inves­tor in the MAI Group is Auctus Capi­tal Part­ners AG.

Based in Augs­burg, xpose360 focu­ses on search engine opti­miza­tion, paid media, web analy­tics, program­ma­tic adver­ti­sing, affi­liate marke­ting, influen­cer marke­ting and digi­tal stra­tegy consul­ting. With the goal of incre­asing sales and traf­fic cente­red on the custo­mer jour­ney, they work in 23 count­ries for clients such as Haribo, Jochen Schwei­zer, mydays Group, yello, Schöf­fel and HypoVereinsbank.

Advi­sors MAI Group: Oppen­hoff & Part­ner Rechts­an­wälte Steu­er­be­ra­ter mbB

The Oppen­hoff team led by Anne Vins-Niet­ham­mer (photo © Oppen­hoff) included Moritz Bock (both M&A/Corporate), Marvin Roch­ner, Julia Höyng (both Real Estate), Georg Leche­ler, Dr. Patric Mau (both Intellec­tual Property), Dr. Hanna Schmidt, Patrick Schwarze (both IT&C), Anja Dombrow­sky, Corne­lia-Cris­tina Scupra (both Labor) and Dr. Gunnar Knorr (Tax).

About AUCTUS Capi­tal Partners

AUCTUS is the most active invest­ment company for small and medium-sized enter­pri­ses. With around 370 invest­ments in the last 20 years, we are the clear No. 1 in Germany. The focus of our invest­ments is on majo­rity share­hol­dings in compa­nies with annual sales of between 10 and 150 million euros. AUCTUS stands for sustainable orga­nic and also inor­ga­nic growth through acqui­si­ti­ons. We achieve this in a trus­ting part­ner­ship toge­ther with the manage­ment of our compa­nies. We specia­lize in buil­ding successful medium-sized groups of compa­nies — We create market leaders. The more than 20 expe­ri­en­ced AUCTUS invest­ment experts curr­ently manage around 46 plat­form invest­ments from various sectors of the economy. The sum of the plat­form holdings with a total of more than 150 indi­vi­dual compa­nies gene­ra­tes annual sales of well over 2 billion euros. Sales and earnings have been growing at >10% per year for years. www.auctus.com

 

News

Frank­furt a.M. — Private equity inves­tor Cinven has acqui­red MBCC Admix­tures, the concrete admix­tures busi­ness of MBCC Group, from Sika AG. McDer­mott Will & Emery advi­sed the new manage­ment of MBCC Admix­tures on the tran­sac­tion. MBCC Admix­tures is head­quar­te­red in Mann­heim, Germany, and employs more than 1,600 people at 35 produc­tion sites world­wide. The company supplies chemi­cals for concrete produc­tion and civil engineering.

The Swiss cons­truc­tion chemi­cals group Sika AG has subsi­dia­ries in 101 count­ries and gene­ra­ted annual sales of nearly CHF 10.5 billion in 2022 with 27,500 employees. Sika had acqui­red MBCC Group — the former cons­truc­tion chemi­cals busi­ness of BASF — in 2021. MBCC Group has more than 30,000 custo­mers and busi­ness part­ners around the world. It consists of some 70 compa­nies world­wide and employs around 7,500 cons­truc­tion experts in over 60 countries.

Advi­sor to the manage­ment of MBCC Admix­tures: McDer­mott Will & Emery, Frankfurt

Dr. Michael Cziesla (Lead, Corporate/M&A/Private Equity), Dr. Felix Ganzer (Private Equity/Capital Markets), Dr. Chris­tian Marz­lin (Coun­sel, Corporate/M&A/Private Equity)

About McDer­mott Will & Emery

McDer­mott Will & Emery is a leading inter­na­tio­nal law firm with more than 1,400 lawy­ers in more than 20 offices in Europe, North America and Asia. Our lawy­ers cover the entire spec­trum of commer­cial and corpo­rate law with their advice. The German prac­tice is mana­ged by McDer­mott Will & Emery Rechts­an­wälte Steu­er­be­ra­ter LLP. www.mwe.com

News

Dues­sel­dorf, Germany — UHB Consul­ting AG (“UHB”), backed by Main Capi­tal Part­ners (“Main”), takes another step to streng­then its market-leading posi­tion in the German health­care soft­ware segment with the acqui­si­tion of pallia­tive soft­ware provi­der Smart‑Q. The merger will enable both compa­nies to further acce­le­rate recent deve­lo­p­ments and provide both UHB and Smart‑Q custo­mers with a broa­der and more compre­hen­sive range of health­care soft­ware solu­ti­ons. This merger is the first add-on acqui­si­tion since the stra­te­gic part­ner­ship with Main Capi­tal in 2022.

Foun­ded in 2010 by Daniel Zenz in Bochum, Germany, Smart‑Q provi­des a specia­li­zed pati­ent docu­men­ta­tion plat­form, ISPC, to over 550 custo­mers, inclu­ding hospi­tals, hospi­ces and univer­si­ties. The company also offers pain docu­men­ta­tion soft­ware and media­tion and liti­ga­tion soft­ware for public insti­tu­ti­ons (e.g. ethics commit­tees). Smart‑Q’s custo­mers include leading medi­cal asso­cia­ti­ons, univer­si­ties, hospi­tals and private care providers.

UHB is a leading provi­der of inno­va­tive finan­cial manage­ment, logi­stics as well as disas­ter reco­very solu­ti­ons for the health­care indus­try, head­quar­te­red in St. Wolf­gang near Munich. With over 80 employees, the company serves more than 800 faci­li­ties that rely on UHB Consulting’s products and years of expe­ri­ence. Custo­mers include some of the largest hospi­tals and medi­cal centers in Germany.

The merger will enable the newly formed group to expand and enhance its value propo­si­tion to exis­ting custo­mers with a highly comple­men­tary product offe­ring. Through the merger, Smart‑Q’s custo­mers will be able to take advan­tage of UHB’s disas­ter backup systems, while Smart‑Q will add value to UHB’s clini­cal custo­mers with its pallia­tive care docu­men­ta­tion soft­ware. The part­ner­ship is ther­e­fore a logi­cal first step in UHB’s inor­ga­nic growth stra­tegy. Toge­ther, the group employs an outstan­ding team of more than 100 people and expects to gene­rate sales well in excess of EUR 15 million.

Thomas Unter­hasl­ber­ger, foun­der and CEO of UHB, says: “With Smart‑Q, we can streng­then UHB Consulting’s market-leading posi­tion in the field of pallia­tive care for hospi­tals and hospi­ces. This part­ner­ship will allow us to expand our product port­fo­lio and custo­mer base, which in turn will make us even more attrac­tive and valuable to our customers.”

Daniel Zenz, direc­tor and CEO of Smart‑Q, added, “We are plea­sed to join forces with UHB and are confi­dent that this move will create signi­fi­cant value for both compa­nies and our customers.”

Yves Souren, Invest­ment Direc­tor at Main Capi­tal Part­ners, summa­ri­zes, “Since our part­ner­ship with UHB, we have worked to comple­ment the company’s inno­va­tive port­fo­lio of products and services through targe­ted acqui­si­ti­ons. The stra­te­gic merger with Smart‑Q is the first step in UHB’s inor­ga­nic growth ambi­ti­ons and will enable the group to expand into adja­cent custo­mer segments and broa­den the product offe­ring for its custo­mers. We very much look forward to working with UHB and Smart‑Q and will conti­nue to support the group in streng­thening its leader­ship posi­tion in the health­care sector.”

About UHB Consul­ting AG

UHB Consul­ting AG is a provi­der of inno­va­tive, process-orien­ted and indi­vi­dual soft­ware solu­ti­ons for the health­care sector based in St. Wolf­gang near Munich. More than 800 faci­li­ties rely on UHB Consulting’s products and years of expe­ri­ence in health­care. The soft­ware solu­ti­ons offe­red stand for effi­ci­ency, user-friend­li­ness and a wide range of appli­ca­tion possi­bi­li­ties. Since 1998, UHB has been solving chal­len­ging proces­ses toge­ther with custo­mers and tail­oring the solu­ti­ons offe­red to their indi­vi­dual needs. Toge­ther with 80 employees and long-stan­ding sales part­ners, UHB crea­tes holi­stic solu­ti­ons and can look back on a successful company history. https://uhb-consulting.de

About Smart‑Q GmbH

Smart‑Q, foun­ded in 2010 by Daniel Zenz in Bochum, Germany, is a soft­ware provi­der specia­li­zing in medi­cal docu­men­ta­tion systems. The company serves more than 550 health­care clients. With the ISPC soft­ware, the company offers a solu­tion that is the ideal solu­tion for many AAPV and SAPV teams, hospice staff and hospi­tals in Germany and faci­li­ta­tes the daily work in pallia­tive docu­men­ta­tion. In addi­tion, Smart‑Q deve­lops survey instru­ments for mobile pain recor­ding in doctors’ offices and for medi­cal rese­arch. The company has 22 employees (FTE). https://www.smart‑q.de

About Main Capi­tal Partners

Main Capi­tal Part­ners is a leading soft­ware inves­tor in the Bene­lux, DACH region and Scan­di­na­via. Main has nearly 20 years of expe­ri­ence streng­thening soft­ware compa­nies and works closely with the manage­ment teams in its port­fo­lio as a stra­te­gic part­ner to achieve sustainable growth and outstan­ding soft­ware groups. Main employs 60 people and has offices in The Hague, Stock­holm, Düssel­dorf, Antwerp and an affi­lia­ted office in Boston. Main has more than €2.2 billion in assets under manage­ment and curr­ently holds stakes in more than 150 soft­ware compa­nies. Toge­ther, these compa­nies offer about 9,000. www.main.nl

News

Deer­field, Illi­nois; Boston, Massa­chu­setts; and New York, N.Y. — Baxter Inter­na­tio­nal Inc. (NYSE:BAX), a leading global medi­cal tech­no­logy company, today announ­ced that it has signed a binding agree­ment to sell its BioPharma Solu­ti­ons (“BPS”) busi­ness to Advent Inter­na­tio­nal (“Advent”), one of the largest and most expe­ri­en­ced global private equity inves­tors, and Warburg Pincus, a leading global growth investor.

Baxter will receive $4.25 billion in cash under the agree­ment. Net proceeds after taxes are curr­ently esti­ma­ted at appro­xi­m­ately $3.4 billion. The tran­sac­tion is expec­ted to close in the second half of 2023 and is subject to custo­mary regu­la­tory appr­ovals and the satis­fac­tion of other closing condi­ti­ons. Baxter intends to use the after-tax proceeds to reduce debt, consis­tent with the company’s stated capi­tal allo­ca­tion objec­ti­ves. For the full fourth quar­ter of 2023, Baxter expects the tran­sac­tion to reduce net income by appro­xi­m­ately $0.10 per share, with the total amount depen­dent on the timing of the tran­sac­tion closing. It is assu­med that this amount will be parti­ally offset by lower inte­rest payments as a result of the expec­ted debt repayment.

“Today is an important step in Baxter’s ongo­ing trans­for­ma­tion. It enables us to execute on our stra­te­gic prio­ri­ties, streng­then our focus and create addi­tio­nal value for all of our stake­hol­ders,” said José (Joe) E. Almeida, chair­man, presi­dent and chief execu­tive offi­cer at Baxter. “BPS has long been reco­gni­zed globally as a trus­ted and proven part­ner for services in the phar­maceu­ti­cal and biotech indus­tries. Advent Inter­na­tio­nal and Warburg Pincus have exten­sive expe­ri­ence working with inno­va­tive health­care compa­nies to help them achieve their goals and stra­te­gic prio­ri­ties. I am confi­dent that under their leader­ship, BPS will conti­nue to build on its leader­ship posi­tion, nurture its world-class work­force, invest in new skills and capa­bi­li­ties, and deli­ver modern as well as high-quality solu­ti­ons to its clients.”

BPS has been a leading provi­der of sterile manu­fac­tu­ring solu­ti­ons, paren­te­ral deli­very systems and custo­mi­zed services to the phar­maceu­ti­cal and biotech indus­tries for deca­des. As a stand-alone company and in part­ner­ship with Advent and Warburg Pincus, BPS will act as a leading inde­pen­dent end-to-end CDMO, offe­ring its clients a compre­hen­sive port­fo­lio of services from clini­cal rese­arch to commer­cial explo­ita­tion. BPS is well posi­tio­ned to acce­le­rate its go-to-market stra­tegy and clini­cal deve­lo­p­ment pipe­line, increase manu­fac­tu­ring scale and drive further product inno­va­tion. The propo­sed tran­sac­tion includes BPS’ manu­fac­tu­ring faci­li­ties and appro­xi­m­ately 1,700 employees in Bloo­ming­ton, Indiana, and Halle (West­pha­lia), Germany. BPS is expec­ted to gene­rate reve­nues of appro­xi­m­ately $600 million in full-year 2023.

“BPS is a premier company at the fore­front of the bio-pharma indus­try that we have been follo­wing closely for a number of years,” said John Maldo­nado, Mana­ging Part­ner at Advent (Photo © Advent) . “We believe this part­ner­ship will provide nume­rous growth oppor­tu­ni­ties through our deep indus­try know­ledge and exten­sive stra­te­gic resour­ces. We will help the company realize its full poten­tial and provide a high-quality, specia­li­zed and compre­hen­sive range of services to well-known custo­mers, inclu­ding Baxter, as a stand-alone company. We are exci­ted to part­ner with BPS and help its custo­mers deli­ver life-chan­ging thera­pies to pati­ents around the world.”

“BPS’ success and excel­lent repu­ta­tion in the phar­maceu­ti­cal sector posi­tion the company well to further expand its parti­cu­larly rele­vant services in a variety of thera­peu­tic areas, inclu­ding onco­logy, meta­bo­lic dise­a­ses and infec­tious dise­a­ses,” said TJ Carella, Mana­ging Direc­tor and Head of Health­care at Warburg Pincus. “We are plea­sed to be working with Advent and the outstan­ding team at BPS, which has impres­sive exper­tise and has built an indus­try-leading repu­ta­tion for quality and relia­bi­lity in the paren­te­ral drug supply chain.”

“We stron­gly believe in the company’s mission to part­ner with phar­maceu­ti­cal compa­nies around the world to provide the scien­ti­fic exper­tise, sterile solu­ti­ons and perso­na­li­zed support needed to address today’s major health­care chal­lenges. We look forward to conti­nuing the strong busi­ness that Baxter has built at BPS,” added Ruoxi Chen, Mana­ging Direc­tor at Warburg Pincus. “This invest­ment unders­cores our commit­ment to working with compa­nies deve­lo­ping inno­va­tive life scien­ces products and services around the world.”

“BPS has been excep­tio­nally successful in provi­ding high-quality services and products that meet the unique needs of phar­maceu­ti­cal and biotech clients world­wide,” said Carmine Petrone, mana­ging direc­tor on Advent’s Health­care team. “Toge­ther with our part­ners at Warburg Pincus, we have an exten­sive track record in carve-outs. We intend to leverage this expe­ri­ence in crea­ting a scalable, diver­si­fied plat­form to capi­ta­lize on the signi­fi­cant market oppor­tu­nity. We look forward to support­ing BPS’ contin­ued growth as the company does its part to bene­fit pati­ents around the world and conti­nues to help its custo­mers achieve their commer­cia­liza­tion goals.”

Advent has been inves­t­ing in the health­care sector for over 30 years. The private equity firm has made more than 50 invest­ments in 17 count­ries world­wide across a range of sub-sectors, inclu­ding phar­maceu­ti­cals, life scien­ces and medi­cal devices. Advent’s recent invest­ments in the health­care sector include Iodine Soft­ware and RxBe­ne­fits. In global phar­maceu­ti­cal services, Advent most recently inves­ted in BioDuro, GS Capsule, ICE Group, Suven Pharmaceuticals/Cohance Life­sci­en­ces and Syneos Health.

Since its incep­tion, Warburg Pincus has inves­ted more than $16 billion in more than 180 health­care compa­nies, inclu­ding Summit Health, Moder­ni­zing Medi­cine, Ensem­ble Health­care Part­ners and Global Health­care Exch­ange. Warburg Pincus is an active inves­tor in the life scien­ces sector and has inves­ted in Poly­plus, Norstella, Sotera Health and Bausch + Lomb, among others.

Perella Wein­berg Part­ners is acting as finan­cial advi­sor and Sulli­van & Crom­well is acting as legal coun­sel to Baxter. Moelis & Company LLC and Truist Secu­ri­ties are serving as finan­cial advi­sors and Cleary Gott­lieb Steen & Hamil­ton and Ropes & Gray are serving as legal advi­sors to Advent and Warburg Pincus.

About Baxter

Every day, milli­ons of pati­ents, care­gi­vers and health­care provi­ders rely on Baxter’s leading port­fo­lio of diagno­stic, criti­cal care, renal, nutri­tion, hospi­tal supplies and surgi­cal products used in homes, hospi­tals, physi­ci­ans’ offices and long-term care faci­li­ties. For more than 90 years, we have been at the criti­cal inter­sec­tion where medi­ci­nes and systems that save and sustain lives meet health­care provi­ders who make them happen. With products, digi­tal health solu­ti­ons and thera­pies available in more than 100 count­ries, Baxter employees world­wide are buil­ding on an exten­sive legacy of medi­cal inno­va­tion and driving the deve­lo­p­ment of impro­ved thera­pies. To learn more, visit www.baxter.com and follow us on Twit­ter, Linke­dIn and Facebook.

About Advent International

Foun­ded in 1984, Advent Inter­na­tio­nal is one of the largest and most expe­ri­en­ced global private equity inves­tors. The firm has inves­ted in more than 405 private equity invest­ments in 42 count­ries and had more than $92 billion in assets under manage­ment as of Decem­ber 31, 2022. With 15 offices in 12 count­ries, Advent has built a globally inte­gra­ted team of more than 290 private equity invest­ment profes­sio­nals in North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia. The company focu­ses on invest­ments in five core sectors, inclu­ding busi­ness and finan­cial services, health­care, indus­trial, retail, consu­mer goods and leisure, and technology.

After 35 years in the inter­na­tio­nal invest­ment busi­ness, Advent conti­nues to take the approach of working with manage­ment teams to deli­ver sustainable reve­nue and earnings growth for its port­fo­lio compa­nies. www.adventinternational.com

About Warburg Pincus

Warburg Pincus LLC is a leading global growth inves­tor. The company has more than $80 billion in assets under manage­ment. The company’s active port­fo­lio compri­ses more than 250 compa­nies and is highly diver­si­fied by growth phase, indus­try and region. Warburg Pincus is an expe­ri­en­ced part­ner for manage­ment teams seeking to build long-lived busi­nesses with sustainable value. Foun­ded in 1966, Warburg Pincus has laun­ched 21 private equity and 2 real estate funds that have inves­ted more than $109 billion in over 1,000 compa­nies in more than 40 count­ries. The company is head­quar­te­red in New York and has offices in Amster­dam, Beijing, Berlin, Hong Kong, Hous­ton, London, Luxem­bourg, Mumbai, Mauri­tius, San Fran­cisco, São Paulo, Shang­hai and Singa­pore. www.warburgpincus.com

News

Milan/London/Paris/Munich — Ambi­enta SGR SpA (“Ambi­enta”), one of the largest Euro­pean asset mana­gers focu­sed on envi­ron­men­tal sustaina­bi­lity, announ­ces the acqui­si­tion of a majo­rity stake in Previero N S.r.l. (“Previero”). The company is curr­ently mana­ged by the third gene­ra­tion of the foun­ding family. It will conti­nue to bene­fit from Previero’s exten­sive expe­ri­ence in the recy­cling sector, as the family will retain a signi­fi­cant stake in the company.

Foun­ded in 1922 and based in Anzano del Parco (Como, Italy), the company is a pioneer in the field of mecha­ni­cal plas­tics recy­cling, driving market inno­va­tion and setting quality bench­marks. Today, Previero is one of the few provi­ders of turn­key recy­cling solu­ti­ons. These include all pre-proces­sing (“from bale to flake”) and cover all types of plas­tics (PET bott­les, films, rubber). With around 110 employees, Previero is prima­rily active in R&D, engi­nee­ring and assembly/testing. Over the years, the company has deve­lo­ped a diffe­ren­tia­ted and inte­gra­ted value propo­si­tion that addres­ses the incre­asing need of global recy­clers to find tech­no­logy part­ners to help them deve­lop and commis­sion complete recy­cling facilities.

With its solu­ti­ons, Previero is making a signi­fi­cant contri­bu­tion to the recy­cla­bi­lity of plas­tics — a process that is still in its infancy, as only 15% of the plas­tic waste produ­ced world­wide is actually recy­cled. Howe­ver, this share is expec­ted to nearly double by 2040 due to stric­ter regu­la­ti­ons and brand commit­ment. Previero thus fits perfectly into Ambienta’s invest­ment stra­tegy, as it repres­ents both an invest­ment in envi­ron­men­tal protec­tion and resource effi­ci­ency. Previero’s turn­key recy­cling solu­ti­ons turn post-consu­mer waste and post-indus­trial waste into high-quality flakes, with posi­tive impacts on mate­ri­als reuse, CO2 emis­si­ons reduc­tion, and energy and land­fill space savings.

Tech­no­lo­gi­cal and regu­la­tory advan­ces, the alre­ady visi­ble acce­le­ra­tion of invest­ments in addi­tio­nal recy­cling capa­city world­wide, and the incre­asing demand for high-end solu­ti­ons to produce food-grade recy­cled mate­rial offer great oppor­tu­ni­ties for Previero. Ambi­enta aims to help the company capi­ta­lize on these oppor­tu­ni­ties and — by provi­ding finan­cial and manage­ment resour­ces, encou­ra­ging further invest­ment in physi­cal and human capi­tal, and broa­der colla­bo­ra­tion with the three Previero brot­hers — become an even stron­ger player in the global marketplace.

Previero is the first plat­form invest­ment of Ambienta’s latest fund, Ambi­enta IV. It is the largest Euro­pean private equity fund ever laun­ched, focu­sed exclu­si­vely on compa­nies that are driving posi­tive envi­ron­men­tal change in their respec­tive indus­tries. The fund closed in July 2022 after only six months of active marke­ting at the cap of 1.55 billion euros.

Mauro Roversi, Foun­ding Part­ner and Private Equity CIO at Ambi­enta, commen­ted: “Plas­tics are now ubiqui­tous in the modern economy, and their consump­tion is expec­ted to double again in the next 20 years. The need to increase the recy­cla­bi­lity of plas­tics is ther­e­fore beco­ming incre­asingly urgent. All global consu­mer pack­a­ging and retail compa­nies have commit­ted to achie­ving up to 50% recy­cled content in their pack­a­ging by 2030. Global invest­ment in addi­tio­nal recy­cling capa­city will ther­e­fore increase signi­fi­cantly over the next decade.”

Andrea Ventu­rini, Prin­ci­pal at Ambi­enta, added: “Previero is a pioneer in this field, outper­forming its compe­ti­tors in terms of quality and deli­very times, with outstan­ding R&D and engi­nee­ring capa­bi­li­ties. We look forward to working with the Previero family and contri­bu­ting to the company’s contin­ued growth and inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion, with the goal of estab­li­shing Previero as the world’s leading provi­der of inte­gra­ted and sustainable recy­cling solutions.”

Flavio Previero, Chair­man of Previero, added: “In Ambi­enta we have found a part­ner capa­ble of under­stan­ding the history and poten­tial of the company. Ambienta’s indus­trial and inter­na­tio­nal exper­tise will help us take advan­tage of the many oppor­tu­ni­ties ahead more quickly and effectively.”

Consul­tant Ambienta: 
McKin­sey (commer­cial due diligence)
Peder­soli (Law)
EY (finance and ESG) and GPBLex (tax and struc­tu­ring) advised.

About Ambi­enta
Ambi­enta is a Euro­pean envi­ron­men­tal sustaina­bi­lity inves­tor specia­li­zing in private equity, public markets and private credit. From Milan, London, Paris and Munich, Ambi­enta mana­ges assets of more than 3 billion euros. The focus is on inves­t­ing in private and publicly traded compa­nies that are driven by envi­ron­men­tal mega­trends and whose products or services improve resource effi­ci­ency and envi­ron­men­tal protection.

In private equity, Ambi­enta has made 64 invest­ments to date. In the public equity sector, Ambi­enta has laun­ched one of the world’s largest abso­lute return funds fully focu­sed on envi­ron­men­tal sustaina­bi­lity and mana­ges a whole range of other sustainable invest­ment products from low-risk multi-asset funds to long-only equity funds. Ambi­enta has also recently laun­ched a private credit stra­tegy, which — as with the other invest­ment clas­ses — focu­ses on envi­ron­men­tal sustaina­bi­lity. www.ambientasgr.com

News

Berlin — A YPOG team provi­ded compre­hen­sive tax, legal and regu­la­tory advice to HV Capi­tal, a leading early-stage and growth inves­tor in Europe, on the struc­tu­ring of Fund IX with a volume of more than €700 million- making it the largest fund ever laun­ched by HV Capi­tal in its 23-year history. Fund IX further expands HV Capital’s ability to invest in inno­va­tive tech compa­nies across all stages of growth. — This means that HV Capi­tal also outper­forms the semi-public High­tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF), which in Febru­ary raised just under half a billion euros, its largest fund since it was foun­ded 18 years ago.

The new gene­ra­tion of funds is divi­ded into two vehic­les, “Fund IX Venture” and “Fund IX Growth,” and will target compa­nies from seed stage to Series‑D and beyond, with initial ticket sizes ranging from €500,000 to €60 million. HV Capital’s team will focus on the next gene­ra­tion of high-growth compa­nies in various markets and across Europe.

Fund IX has been backed by insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors from Europe and the United States, enab­ling HV Capi­tal to conti­nue its 23-year invest­ment history. HV Capi­tal streng­thens its commit­ment to more diver­sity and sustaina­bi­lity within the venture capi­tal indus­try with Fund IX. HV has commit­ted to this with Fund IX in accordance with Article 8 of the EU Sustainable Finan­cing Disclo­sure Regu­la­tion (SFDR). Speci­fi­cally, the goal is for 33% of manage­ment posi­ti­ons in the port­fo­lio to be held by women by the end of the fund’s term. In addi­tion, 30% of the capi­tal raised is reser­ved for compa­nies that follow the sustaina­bi­lity and envi­ron­men­tal crite­ria of the Euro­pean Invest­ment Fund (EIF).

“Raising one of the largest funds in German venture capi­tal history in such a chal­len­ging global fund­rai­sing envi­ron­ment is a great success for HV Capi­tal, on which we warmly congra­tu­late the entire team,” said YPOG part­ner Helder Schnittker.

About HV Capital

HV Capi­tal is one of the leading early-stage and growth inves­tors in Europe. HV has many years of expe­ri­ence in iden­ti­fy­ing Euro­pean tech­no­logy pioneers with great poten­tial for success. This includes the first gene­ra­tion of German start­ups, which achie­ved a company valua­tion of over $1 billion, and more recent successful compa­nies such as Flix­bus, Enpal, SumUp and Isar Aero­space. HV Capi­tal is conti­nuously looking for more inno­va­tive start­ups across all indus­tries such as FinTech, SaaS, climate tech and consu­mer goods and has alre­ady inves­ted in around 225 inter­net and tech­no­logy companies.

HV Capi­tal supports start-ups with capi­tal between €500,000 and €60 million and is one of the few venture capi­ta­lists in Europe that can finance these compa­nies across all growth phases. HV Capi­tal has offices in Munich and Berlin and a team of more than 40 profes­sio­nals who bring diverse perspec­ti­ves and exper­tise in venture capital.
www.hvcapital.com

Further­more, a YPOG team led by Lenn­art Lorenz advi­sed HV Capi­tal on the gran­ting of a full BaFin license. This makes HV Capi­tal one of the first venture capi­tal fund mana­gers to operate under this chal­len­ging regu­la­tory regime, which is aimed at fund mana­gers mana­ging substan­tial assets. “With the BaFin full autho­riza­tion, new regu­la­tory terri­tory was ente­red. The fact that HV Capi­tal is one of the first venture capi­tal fund mana­gers to receive such full autho­riza­tion is an expres­sion of its estab­lished presence in the German market,” says YPOG part­ner Lenn­art Lorenz.

Advisor:inside HV Capi­tal: YPOG

Dr. Helder Schnitt­ker (Co-Lead) (Structuring/Tax), Part­ner, Berlin Dr. Stephan Bank (Co-Lead) (Structuring/Corporate), Part­ner, Berlin Lenn­art Lorenz (Co-Lead) (Regu­la­tory), Part­ner, Hamburg
Dr. Florian Wilbrink (Struc­tu­ring), Senior Asso­ciate, Berlin
Dr. Michael Fili­po­wicz (Struc­tu­ring), Senior Asso­ciate, Berlin Andreas Rodin (Struc­tu­ring), Asso­cia­ted Part­ner, Berlin
Axel Zirn (Struc­tu­ring), Asso­ciate, Berlin
Wolf­ram Dickers­bach (Tax), Asso­ciate, Berlin
David Wittek (Tax), Senior Asso­ciate, Cologne
Andreas Korten­dick (Tax), Part­ner, Cologne
Florian Thrun (Regu­la­tory), Asso­ciate. Hamburg/ Cologne
Anto­nia von Treu­en­feld (Regu­la­tory), Asso­ciate, Berlin
Stefa­nie Nagel (Regu­la­tory), Senior Asso­ciate, Berlin
Advisor:inside HV Capi­tal (full authorization)
Lenn­art Lorenz (Lead) (Regu­la­tory), Part­ner, Hamburg Stefa­nie Nagel (Regu­la­tory), Senior Asso­ciate, Berlin Florian Thrun (Regu­la­tory), Asso­ciate. Hamburg/ Cologne
Dr. Niklas Ulrich (Regu­la­tory), Senior Asso­ciate, Hamburg

About YPOG
YPOG is a specia­list tax and commer­cial law firm opera­ting in the core areas of Funds, Tax and Tran­sac­tions. The YPOG team advi­ses a wide variety of clients. These include emer­ging tech­no­logy compa­nies and family-run medium-sized enter­pri­ses as well as corpo­ra­ti­ons and private equity/venture capi­tal funds. YPOG is one of the leading addres­ses for venture capi­tal, private equity and fund struc­tu­ring in Germany. The firm and its part­ners are natio­nally and inter­na­tio­nally ranked by JUVE, Best Lawy­ers, Legal 500, Focus, and Cham­bers and Part­ners. Today, YPOG has more than 100 expe­ri­en­ced lawyers,

News

Berlin — The startup Blin­kist has a new owner, it is acqui­red by the Austra­lian conti­nuing educa­tion startup Go1. There is talk of a purchase price of around Euro 200 million. “The team and the brand will conti­nue to exist after the tran­sac­tion,” explains foun­der and CEO Holger Seim (photo right). The Berlin-based startup offers summa­ries of current nonfic­tion books in short text sections (“blinks”) or in audio form and has so far prima­rily targe­ted end customers.

As a leader in lear­ning and deve­lo­p­ment, Go1’s open plat­form provi­des the world’s largest compa­nies and their employees access to high-quality trai­ning and deve­lo­p­ment in a single solu­tion. With this acqui­si­tion, Go1 is laying the foun­da­tion for a new and inno­va­tive model of lifel­ong lear­ning that aims to engage lear­ners in their daily lives, both profes­sio­nally and personally.

Andrew Barnes, Go1’s co-CEO, said, “The combi­na­tion of Go1 and Blin­kist offers some­thing not found in any corner of the corpo­rate lear­ning market: a conti­nuous lear­ning expe­ri­ence that serves profes­sio­nal goals while being perso­nally engaging.”

Toge­ther, the compa­nies will serve lear­ners holi­sti­cally and create a model that is unpar­al­le­led in the market­place. Through the merger, the compa­nies plan to acce­le­rate the growth of Blin­kist for Busi­ness and leverage Blinkist’s exper­tise in enga­ging lear­ners outside the workplace.

The new owner Go1 from Bris­bane mainly focu­ses on compa­nies, and Blin­kist has also been repre­sen­ted in this segment for about one and a half years. Howe­ver, “Blin­kist for Busi­ness” has so far accoun­ted for the far smal­ler part of the busi­ness. Another diffe­rence: Blin­kist crea­tes the content itself, while Go1 cura­tes it from other provi­ders. “That’s how we came toge­ther,” says Seim, whose startup part­ners with Go1 to offer its own summa­ries through the platform.

We have known each other for a long time

“Go1 foun­der Andrew Barnes and I have known each other for seve­ral years,” says Seim, who will be COO of the Austra­lian company. The need to work with another vendor was obvious. “There is signi­fi­cant conso­li­da­tion in the market. We oursel­ves were not able to support a take­over. Go1, howe­ver, had a well-filled ‘war chest’,” says Seim. Nearly $400 million has flowed into the company since its foun­ding in 2015, accor­ding to Crunchbase.

Blin­kist was foun­ded in 2012 and is used by over 26 million people world­wide. It finds the most rele­vant and impactful books and podcasts and distills them down to their core ideas, which can be read or listened to in 15-minute expl­ana­ti­ons called blinks. In addi­tion to indi­vi­dual lear­ners, over 1,500 orga­niza­ti­ons around the globe have alre­ady chosen Blin­kist for Busi­ness to support their teams where they need it — anytime, anywhere.

News

Bonn — The Inves­tor Advi­sory Board has appoin­ted Romy Schnelle (44) to the manage­ment board of High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF). Toge­ther with Dr. Alex von Fran­ken­berg and Guido Schlit­zer, she thus takes over the manage­ment of one of the leading fund compa­nies for seed invest­ments in Europe. HTGF laun­ched its fourth fund as recently as Febru­ary and now mana­ges total capi­tal of around EUR 1.4 billion. With the appro­xi­m­ately 500 million euros from Fund IV, the HTGF team can now invest even more capi­tal per start-up.

Romy Schnelle has been part of the startup ecosys­tem for 20 years and brings a great enthu­si­asm for inno­va­tion. She has been working for HTGF since 2008, most recently as a part­ner in the Digi­tal Tech divi­sion. Toge­ther with her team, she is curr­ently respon­si­ble for around 30 invest­ments with a focus on climate tech, digi­tal health, fintech, AI and SaaS. It has alre­ady successfully sold ten compa­nies from its own port­fo­lio, inclu­ding Stocard to Klarna and Kiwi­grid to Innogy, LG Elec­tro­nics and Aqton. With her exten­sive start-up expe­ri­ence as well as rele­vant exper­tise in busi­ness deve­lo­p­ment, fund­rai­sing and corpo­rate finance, Schnelle has contri­bu­ted signi­fi­cantly to the deve­lo­p­ment of HTGF’s Indus­trial and Digi­tal Tech port­fo­lio. She is also an advi­sory board member in start-ups and chair­wo­man of the invest­ment commit­tee of TX Group, one of the leading media houses in Switzerland.

Before joining HTGF, she co-foun­ded the Fraun­ho­fer spin-off IOSONO, now Barco Audio Tech­no­lo­gies, with mp3 inven­tor Prof. Karl­heinz Bran­den­burg. She began her career in busi­ness deve­lo­p­ment at the Fraun­ho­fer Insti­tute for Digi­tal Media Tech­no­logy. Schnelle studied media science at the Tech­ni­cal Univer­sity of Ilmenau.

“With her proven exper­tise and many years of expe­ri­ence in buil­ding inno­va­tive compa­nies, Romy Schnelle will drive the further deve­lo­p­ment of HTGF toge­ther with her manage­ment colle­agues. As one of the first women in the venture capi­tal scene over 15 years ago, she thus also acts as a role model and now brings this valuable perspec­tive to the manage­ment team as well. We are very much looking forward to working with them,” says Anna Christ­mann, Commis­sio­ner for Digi­tal Economy & Start-ups at the Fede­ral Minis­try of Econo­mics and Climate Protection.

“We are very plea­sed to have been able to recruit a highly compe­tent invest­ment profes­sio­nal from the ranks of HTGF for the posi­tion of Mana­ging Direc­tor. Romy Schnelle is an expe­ri­en­ced mana­ger with a proven network, who has convin­cin­gly prevai­led in the appli­ca­tion process. Toge­ther with Dr. Alex von Fran­ken­berg, Guido Schlit­zer and the team, she will write the next chap­ter in the success story of High-Tech Grün­der­fonds,” Dr. Matthias Koeh­ler, Chair­man of the Inves­tor Advi­sory Board and Minis­te­rial Direc­tor, Fede­ral Minis­try of Econo­mics and Climate Protection

“It is with great enthu­si­asm that I, as Mana­ging Direc­tor, will conti­nue to successfully shape the start-up ecosys­tem with HTGF as Germany’s most active seed fund. I would like to thank the Advi­sory Board very much for the trust they have placed in my work. I am looking forward to working with my manage­ment colle­agues, the part­ners and the entire HTGF team. Toge­ther we will lead High-Tech Grün­der­fonds respon­si­bly and entre­pre­neu­ri­ally into the future,” Romy Schnelle (Photo © HTGF), Mana­ging Direc­tor of High-Tech Gründerfonds.

About High-Tech Gründerfonds

The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start-ups with growth poten­tial and has supported more than 700 start-ups since 2005. With the launch of the fourth fund, HTGF has around 1.4 billion euros under manage­ment. The team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and start-up experts supports the young compa­nies with know-how, entre­pre­neu­rial spirit and passion. The focus is on high-tech start-ups in the fields of digi­tal tech, indus­trial tech, life scien­ces, chemis­try and rela­ted busi­ness areas. More than €4.5 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in more than 2,000 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. In addi­tion, the fund has alre­ady successfully sold shares in 170 companies.
Fund inves­tors in the public-private part­ner­ship include the German Fede­ral Minis­try for Econo­mic Affairs and Climate Protec­tion, KfW Capi­tal, and 45 compa­nies from a wide range of industries.

News

Raisting/Hanover — NORD Holding Unter­neh­mens­be­tei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft mbH (“NORD Holding”) has sold its majo­rity share­hol­ding in hg medi­cal, a leading contract manu­fac­tu­rer of high-quality ortho­pe­dic implants, to Astorg Mid-Cap (“Astorg”).

hg medi­cal is a leading provi­der of high-quality ortho­pe­dic implants with a focus on lower extre­mi­ties, upper extre­mi­ties and the spine. With state-of-the-art faci­li­ties in Germany and the U.S., the company diffe­ren­tia­tes itself as a leading provi­der in the extre­mi­ties segment. The compre­hen­sive range of services is geared to the ever-chan­ging needs of custo­mers and includes design and deve­lo­p­ment, proto­ty­p­ing, vali­da­tion and produc­tion of complex and high-quality implants.

The company works closely with physi­ci­ans and hospi­tals to ensure that implants meet pati­ent care requi­re­ments. hg medical’s excel­lent repu­ta­tion is based on compre­hen­sive tech­ni­cal know-how, high-quality manu­fac­tu­ring and outstan­ding custo­mer service. Through part­ner­ships with fast-growing chal­len­ger and blue-chip OEMs and a strong custo­mer focus, hg medi­cal has reali­zed excep­tio­nal growth over the past 16 years.

With the acqui­si­tion of hg medi­cal by NORD Holding in 2020, hg medi­cal, led by CEO and foun­der Johan­nes Hagen­meyer, COO Craig Bluett, and CFO Jürgen Stef­fen­sen, has been posi­tio­ned as a global leader in the ortho­pe­dic implant market.

Andre Seidel, part­ner of NORD Holding (photo © Nord­hol­ding), explains: “We are very proud and impres­sed by the deve­lo­p­ment of hg medi­cal in recent years. NORD Holding’s health­care team, NORD Holding’s opera­ti­ons team, and manage­ment have taken hg medi­cal to the next level by impro­ving finan­cial trans­pa­rency, opti­mi­zing proces­ses, and incre­asing produc­tion capa­city for future growth. We are also very plea­sed because hg medi­cal was one of our first invest­ments based on our dedi­ca­ted health­care invest­ment approach.”

In view of the incre­asing global demand for ortho­pe­dic implants, hg medi­cal is very well posi­tio­ned to conti­nue on its growth path and main­tain its posi­tion as a leading supplier in the indus­try. Astorg’s invest­ment will enable the company to further expand its capa­city and range of services to meet the growing demand for outsour­ced manu­fac­tu­ring in the ortho­pe­dic sector.

Consul­tant NORD Holding:
TD Cowen (M&A)
Milbank (Legal)
Alva­rez & Marsal (Commer­cial)
Deloitte (Finan­cial)
Flick Gocke Schaum­burg and Alva­rez & Marsal (Tax)
TAUW (ESG)

About hg medical

hg medi­cal, based in Rais­ting, Germany, is a leading contract manu­fac­tu­rer of high-quality ortho­pe­dic implants with a focus on lower extre­mi­ties, upper extre­mi­ties and in the spine area. hg medical’s custo­mers deve­lop products that improve the quality of life for many pati­ents world­wide. hg medi­cal supports them in successfully imple­men­ting their ideas in a highly compe­ti­tive envi­ron­ment. www.hg-medical.de

About Astorg

Astorg is a Euro­pean private equity company with a assets under manage­ment of over € 20 billion. Astorg works with entre­pre­neurs and manage­ment teams to acquire market-leading, global compa­nies head­quar­te­red in Europe, provi­ding them with the stra­te­gic guidance, corpo­rate leader­ship and capi­tal they need to achieve their growth objec­ti­ves. Astorg has a strong entre­pre­neu­rial culture, a long-term share­hol­der perspec­tive and a lean decis­ion-making body. Astorg has valuable indus­try exper­tise in health­care, soft­ware and tech­no­logy, busi­ness services, and tech­no­logy-based indus­trial compa­nies. The offices are loca­ted in London, Paris, New York, Frank­furt, Milan and Luxembourg.

About NORD Holding

With over 50 years of history and assets under manage­ment of € 3.0 billion, NORD Holding is one of the leading private equity and asset manage­ment compa­nies in Germany. 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 parts/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.

On the part of NORD Holding, the tran­sac­tion was imple­men­ted by André Seidel, Jan-Phil­ipp Wilckens, David Wöss­ner and Nico­las Eiden­mül­ler. www.nordholding.de

News

Frank­furt a.M. — McDer­mott Will & Emery has acqui­red U.S.-based Belden Inc. on the acqui­si­tion of the Sichert Group, head­quar­te­red in Berlin. The Sichert Group specia­li­zes in the deve­lo­p­ment and produc­tion of control cabi­nets for network opera­tors in the tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons and trans­port indus­tries. In addi­tion to Bert­hold Sichert GmbH & Co. Metall­werk KG and Bert­hold Sichert GmbH, the Group also includes the Polish subsi­diary Bert­hold Sichert Sp.zo.o.

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. In the USA, the company is one of the largest manu­fac­tu­r­ers of high-speed elec­tro­nic cables.

The McDer­mott team led by part­ner Norman Wasse has alre­ady advi­sed Belden on seve­ral occa­si­ons on invest­ments in the tech sector, such as the acqui­si­tion of the NetMo­dule Group and the take­over of macmon secure GmbH.

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

Norman Wasse (Photo © MDW), LL.M. (Corporate/M&A, Lead), Dr. Deniz Tschamm­ler (Commercial/Regulatory, Frankfurt/Munich), Dr. Gudrun Germa­kow­ski (Düssel­dorf), Dr. Chris­tian Rolf (both Labor Law), Dr. Johan­nes Honzen (Real Estate), Carina Kant (Coun­sel, Düsseldorf/Cologne), Dr. Laura Stamm­witz (Coun­sel), Timo­thy Carson (Coun­sel, Washing­ton, DC; all Anti­trust), Dr. Chris­tian Masch (IP/IT, Munich), Marcus Fischer (Coun­sel, Tax); Asso­cia­tes: Dr. Marion von Grön­heim (Corporate/M&A), Simon Apelojg (IP, Munich), Dr. Anja Bert­rand, Max Kütt­ner (both Anti­trust, Düssel­dorf), Lukas Deutz­mann (Cologne/Düsseldorf), Ilva Woeste (Munich; both Labor Law), Dr. Lea Hach­meis­ter, Alex­an­dra-Sophie Heberle (both Healthcare/Regulatory), Hannah Henseling, Tina Knecht (both Real Estate), Dr. Tim Weill (Public Law, Düsseldorf)

About McDer­mott Will & Emery
McDer­mott Will & Emery is a leading inter­na­tio­nal law firm with more than 1,400 lawy­ers in more than 20 offices in Europe, North America and Asia. Our lawy­ers cover the entire spec­trum of commer­cial and corpo­rate law with their advice. The German prac­tice is mana­ged by McDer­mott Will & Emery Rechts­an­wälte Steu­er­be­ra­ter LLP. www.mwe.com/de/

News

Landshut/Augsburg — In the course of selling the entire company, Bayern Kapi­tal GmbH also sells its shares in the IT start-up qbilon. The Augs­burg-based company offers a plat­form for the auto­ma­tic capture, analy­sis and opti­miza­tion of hybrid IT land­scapes. The buyer is Nurem­berg-based Paess­ler AG, an expe­ri­en­ced specia­list in IT moni­to­ring. As one of the most expe­ri­en­ced tech inves­tors in Germany, Bayern Kapi­tal had inves­ted in qbilon toge­ther with other inves­tors only a year ago and has since supported the company in its growth.

qbilon GmbH was foun­ded in 2019 by four compu­ter science PhD students as part of an EXIST rese­arch trans­fer project at the Univer­sity of Augs­burg and will conti­nue to be head­quar­te­red in Augs­burg after the sale. With its moni­to­ring plat­form, qbilon enables the inte­gra­tion of a variety of data sources, inclu­ding cloud plat­forms such as AWS or Azure, IT moni­to­ring and manage­ment solu­ti­ons such as Paess­ler PRTG or Dyna­trace, and virtua­liza­tion tools such as vSphere. Custo­mers can also import gene­ric data such as CSV or JSON to easily inte­grate older infor­ma­tion. For compa­nies, this means full trans­pa­rency of their entire IT envi­ron­ment and more resi­li­ence in their IT opera­ti­ons, with the choice between cloud and on-premi­ses solu­ti­ons. Hybrid IT land­scapes are captu­red auto­ma­ti­cally and live data allows indi­vi­dual data analy­sis for effi­ci­ent opti­miza­tion while mini­mi­zing fail­ure risks. qbilon’s custo­mers include major compa­nies in the auto­mo­tive, utili­ties and manu­fac­tu­ring indus­tries, such as KTR Systems, among others.

“We provide compa­nies with compre­hen­sive know­ledge about their IT land­scapes — complete, auto­ma­tic and easy to under­stand, resul­ting in signi­fi­cantly less work, lower costs and increased secu­rity,” says Dr. Mela­nie Langer­meier, co-CEO and co-foun­der of qbilon. “The decis­ion to join Paess­ler Group makes a lot of sense, as our IT visi­bi­lity tools and the network insights and intel­li­gence Paess­ler provi­des to its custo­mers are a great fit. We look forward to provi­ding our joint custo­mers with a compre­hen­sive know­ledge of their IT land­scapes to increase effi­ci­ency and save resour­ces.” Other foun­ders of qbilon are Dr. Simon Lohmül­ler, Dr. Thomas Dries­sen and Dr. Julian Kienberger.

500,000 users in 170 countries

Paess­ler AG was foun­ded in 1997 and offers IT moni­to­ring solu­ti­ons for compa­nies in all indus­tries — from small and medium-sized enter­pri­ses to large corpo­ra­ti­ons. Paess­ler products help users to opti­mize their IT, OT and IoT infra­struc­tures and ther­eby reduce their energy consump­tion and emis­si­ons. The main product is the Paess­ler PRTG moni­to­ring solu­tion, which is used by more than 500,000 users in around 170 count­ries world­wide. The company curr­ently employs 350 people from over 25 countries.

“Today marks an exci­ting mile­stone in our history and future,” says Helmut Binder, CEO of Paess­ler. “Our passion is to give our custo­mers the visi­bi­lity they need into their IT land­scape to opti­mize their resour­ces. qbilon is an excel­lent fit with our corpo­rate culture and our goals. Both compa­nies will bene­fit from mutual syner­gies in the areas of deve­lo­p­ment and tech­no­logy, sales and marke­ting, and opera­ti­ons. We will work closely toge­ther to expand our offe­rings to exis­ting and new custo­mers, and I am exci­ted about the oppor­tu­ni­ties that will arise from this colla­bo­ra­tion. I am very happy to welcome the qbilon team to the Paess­ler family.”

Bayern Kapi­tal parti­ci­pa­ted in 2022

Bayern Kapi­tal GmbH had parti­ci­pa­ted in a seed finan­cing round for qbilon in June 2022. The funds came from the Bava­rian Capi­tal Inno­va­tion Fund (EFRE), which is also supported by EU funds. Other inves­tors were the Bava­rian family offices Vetos GmbH and DI Betei­li­gungs GmbH. “Alre­ady in the first talks, the team of qbilon had convin­ced us. The coope­ra­tion with the foun­ders and the private inves­tors was very posi­tive,” explains Monika Steger, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Bayern Kapi­tal. “The projects carried out and the custo­mers acqui­red were promi­sing. They have shown that there is a great need for IT moni­to­ring on the market. The merger with the Nurem­berg-based company Paess­ler will allow addi­tio­nal markets to be opened up and the successful path to be continued.”

About qbilon

qbilon was foun­ded in 2019 by four former PhD students of the Univer­sity of Augs­burg. During their work with large enter­pri­ses, they found that compa­nies struggle with buil­ding a meaningful data­base for criti­cal IT decis­i­ons. Based on their rese­arch findings, they deve­lo­ped an inno­va­tive approach to meet this chall­enge. qbilon’s soft­ware solu­tion finally brings light to orga­ni­cally grown, hybrid IT land­scapes. The auto­ma­tic coll­ec­tion and linking of exis­ting data enables IT decis­ion-makers to stream­line and opti­mize their IT land­scape to end up with IT that perfectly fits their needs. In times when digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion and expo­nen­tial IT growth are key issues in large compa­nies, qbilon wants to do its part to keep IT effi­ci­ent and mana­geable. Since IT staff are often over­worked, our soft­ware effec­tively reli­e­ves IT staff of tedious manual docu­men­ta­tion work — paving the way to an IT land­scape that is always up-to-date and consistent.
www.qbilon.io

About Bayern Kapital

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

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

News

Berlin — BMH BRÄUTIGAM compre­hen­si­vely advi­sed the share­hol­ders of Viso­tec GmbH on the sale to Heidel­berg Engi­nee­ring. For over 30 years, Heidel­berg Engi­nee­ring has colla­bo­ra­ted with scien­tists, physi­ci­ans and indus­try part­ners to deve­lop inno­va­tive solu­ti­ons for ophthal­mo­logy that enable physi­ci­ans to improve pati­ent care. Heidel­berg Engineering’s growing product port­fo­lio includes confo­cal micro­scopy, laser scan­ning, opti­cal cohe­rence tomo­gra­phy (OCT), real-time image proces­sing and analy­sis, multi­mo­dal image data manage­ment solu­ti­ons (PACS), elec­tro­nic pati­ent data manage­ment, and data mining.

Viso­tec GmbH is deve­lo­ping simple and afforda­ble OCT diagno­stics for impro­ved and perso­na­li­zed treat­ment of pati­ents with age-rela­ted macu­lar dege­ne­ra­tion (AMD). The inno­va­tive solu­tion enables auto­ma­tic exami­na­tion of the retina with a compact and easy-to-use device. This allows the pati­ent to regu­larly check for dise­ase acti­vity and, if neces­sary, see an ophthal­mo­lo­gist in time for treatment.

The merger enables Viso­tec to combine its exper­tise in state-of-the-art full-field OCT tech­no­logy for remote diagno­sis with Heidel­berg Engineering’s global reach and indus­try leader­ship. Visotec’s proprie­tary OCT tech­no­logy can be inte­gra­ted into the secure data exch­ange envi­ron­ment of the HEIDELBERG EYE EXPLORER plat­form and offers enorm­ous poten­tial in the field of outpa­ti­ent care.

BMH BRÄUTIGAM regu­larly advi­ses on tran­sac­tions in the tech­no­logy sector and has parti­cu­lar exper­tise and indus­try know­ledge in the tech­no­logy sector.

Advi­sor to the share­hol­ders of Viso­tec GmbH: BMH BRÄUTIGAM
Till Wans­le­ben (Photo © BMH), Bastian Rein­schmidt, Maxi­mi­lian Frink, Arthur Buch­holz (all Corpo­rate / M&A), Dr. Jan Böhle (IP), Dr. Sebas­tian Krieg (Tax)

www.bmh-partner.com

News

Munich/ Berlin — Berlin-based 3B Phar­maceu­ti­cals GmbH has signed an exclu­sive license agree­ment with Novar­tis Inno­va­tive Thera­pies AG as licen­see. Under the agree­ment, Novar­tis recei­ves world­wide deve­lo­p­ment and commer­cia­liza­tion rights for diagno­stic and thera­peu­tic appli­ca­ti­ons of parts of 3BP’s FAP targe­ting peptide radio­li­gand tech­no­logy. The tech­no­logy targets fibro­blast acti­va­tion protein (FAP), a promi­sing ther­ano­stic target due to its expres­sion in a variety of cancers. In 3BP’s radio­li­gand tech­no­logy, the peptide is combi­ned with a radio­ac­tive isotope that, depen­ding on the type of isotope, enables either imaging or thera­peu­tic applications.

Under the agree­ment, 3BP will receive an initial payment of $40 million and up to $425 million in deve­lo­p­ment, regu­la­tory and commer­cial mile­stone payments, in addi­tion to tiered royal­ties on net sales.

About 3BP

3B Phar­maceu­ti­cals rese­ar­ches and deve­lops targe­ted radio­phar­maceu­ti­cals that provide targe­ted and
perso­na­li­zed approach to the treat­ment of cancer. Our pepti­des and pepti­do­mime­tics represent
excel­lent tumor-speci­fic targets and are linked via chela­tion to thera­peu­tic and diagnostic
radio­iso­to­pes coupled via a chela­ting agent. As a leader in peptide disco­very and opti­miza­tion, 3BP has built a tech­no­logy plat­form that spans from hit iden­ti­fi­ca­tion to early clini­cal deve­lo­p­ment. www.3b-pharma.com

3BP is a long-stan­ding client of Ellen Berg­mann. The mandate has been in place since the company was foun­ded in 2008. Ellen Berg­mann has parti­cu­lar exper­tise in advi­sing biotech and phar­maceu­ti­cal compa­nies on complex licen­sing and deve­lo­p­ment agree­ments, espe­ci­ally in the field of radio­phar­maceu­ti­cals. She has successfully advi­sed 3BP on previous licen­sing and deve­lo­p­ment agree­ments, e.g. the prede­ces­sor agree­ment to the current deal with Novar­tis between 3BP and the US company Clovis Onco­logy Inc. and in the licen­sing and rese­arch agree­ment between 3BP and the Swiss phar­maceu­ti­cal company Debio­ph­arm Inter­na­tio­nal SA.

Advi­sor 3B Phar­maceu­ti­cals: Green­Gate Part­ners Rechts­an­walts­ge­sell­schaft mbH

Ellen Berg­mann, LL.M. (Lawyer, Partner)

About Green­Gate Partners
Green­Gate Part­ners is a tech­no­logy law firm with parti­cu­lar exper­tise around tran­sac­tions and venture capi­tal. From our offices in Berlin, Hamburg and Munich, expe­ri­en­ced lawy­ers offer their clients first-class advice at eye level.

News

Munich — The Munich-based auto­mo­tive start-up 4.screen has closed a Series A finan­cing round of 21 million euros. The round is led by lead inves­tors Conti­nen­tal Corpo­rate Venture Capi­tal and S4S Ventures and.

4.screen is a plat­form for real-time inter­ac­tion with drivers. The Munich-based start-up was foun­ded in 2020 by three former BMW experts for digi­tal products. 4.screen enables compa­nies to inter­act with drivers directly through their navi­ga­tion screens, lever­aging ground­brea­king in-car tech­no­logy. By using vehicle sensor data such as loca­tion, engine type, car brand, and fuel level or charge status, the 4.Screen plat­form provi­des drivers with contex­tual infor­ma­tion about nearby busi­nesses and places such as parking lots, restau­rants, or stores. In the process, plat­form custo­mers bene­fit from compre­hen­sive and target-group-speci­fic targe­ting opti­ons that cannot be reached by alter­na­tive in-car channels.

4.screen is alre­ady working successfully with seve­ral car manu­fac­tu­r­ers in Europe, inclu­ding Audi, Skoda and Merce­des-Benz. The plat­form alre­ady has seve­ral million active users. The company counts over 60 global consu­mer brands among its custo­mers, inclu­ding Shell and McDo­nalds, for exam­ple. With the funding, the start-up is now aiming for further expan­sion in the EU and North America over the course of the year.

Advi­sor Conti­nen­tal VC as lead inves­tor: POELLATH

Dr. Sebas­tian Gerlin­ger, LL.M. (Part­ner, Lead, M&A/VC)
Chris­tian Tönies, LL.M. Eur. (Part­ner, M&A/VC)
Chris­tine Funk, LL.M. (Coun­sel, IP/IT)
Markus Döll­ner, LL.M. (London) (Senior Asso­ciate, M&A/VC)
Ludwig Niller (Asso­ciate, M&A/VC)

News

Allen­dorf — The mega deal of the year: heating manu­fac­tu­rer Viess­mann sells its air condi­tio­ning divi­sion, inclu­ding the lucra­tive heat pumps, to US compe­ti­tor Carrier Global for 12 billion euros.

Germany’s future hope in the heat pump busi­ness moves to America. What are the goals of the inter­na­tio­nally opera­ting company? What was once a family busi­ness in Connec­ti­cut is now a global player in the heating equip­ment busi­ness. Carrier Global is said to have appro­xi­m­ately 52,000 employees around the world, compared to 14,500 at Viess­mann in Hesse. Much larger, he said, is the U.S. company based in Palm Beach. World­wide acqui­si­ti­ons from Asia to Europe confirm the giant’s expan­sion efforts.

Advi­sor VIESSMANN Group: Henge­ler Muel­ler

Cororate/ M&A: Dr. Matthias Hent­zen, Thomas Meurer (both part­ners, both lead, Düssel­dorf), Dr. Jan Häller (asso­ciate, Frank­furt), Dr. Johan­nes Fütte­rer, Julia Redbrake, Bene­dikt Mertens (all asso­cia­tes, Düsseldorf),
IP/IT: Dr. Wolf­gang Kellen­ter (Part­ner), Dr. Matthias Roth­kopf, Dr. Astrid Harm­sen, Dr. Andrea Schlaffge, (all Coun­sel), Johan­nes Jäkle (Asso­ciate, all Düsseldorf),
Tax Law: Dr. Matthias Schei­fele (Part­ner, Munich), Dr. Sebas­tian Adam (Frank­furt), Dr. Isabella Zimmerl (Munich, both Associates),
Labor Law: Dr. Chris­tian Hoefs (Part­ner), Dr. Andreas Kaletsch (Asso­ciate, both Frankfurt),
Anti­trust: Dr. Thors­ten Mäger (Part­ner), Dr. Anja Balitzki (Coun­sel), Sara Junge­welter (Asso­ciate, all Düsseldorf),
Public Commer­cial Law: Dr. Vera Jung­kind (Part­ner), Dr. Moritz Rade­ma­cher (Coun­sel), Dr. Sandra Plötz (Asso­ciate, all Düsseldorf),
FDI: Jan Schül­ting (Asso­ciate, Düsseldorf),
Compli­ance: Dr. Constan­tin Lauter­wein (Part­ner), Dr. Melena Krause (Asso­ciate, both Berlin),
Capi­tal Markets: Dr. Dirk Busch (Part­ner), Caspar Haar­mann (Coun­sel, both Düsseldorf),
Finan­cing: Dr. Daniel Weiß (Part­ner), Nükhet Tanri­kulu (Asso­ciate, both Frankfurt),
US Law: Davis Polk.

Advi­sor Carrier: Linklaters

Link­la­ters’ cross-prac­tice inter­na­tio­nal team was led by Corpo­rate Part­ners Derek Tong in London and Dr. Timo Engel­hardt in Munich. The tran­sac­tion is the largest in the German M&A market so far this year.

The expan­ded team includes experts from all prac­tice groups, inclu­ding Matthew Devey (Part­ner, Employ­ment Law, Frank­furt), Dr. Julia Schön­bohm (Part­ner, IP/Dispute Reso­lu­tion, Frank­furt), Dr. Chris­tian Hunde­sha­gen (Part­ner, Tax Law, Frank­furt), Anna Mitchell (Part­ner, Anti­trust & Invest­ment Control, London), Chris­toph Barth (Part­ner, Anti­trust & Invest­ment Control, Düssel­dorf), Dr. Julia Grot­haus for ESG (Part­ner, Dispute Reso­lu­tion, Frank­furt), Dr. Rupert Belling­hau­sen (Part­ner, Dispute Reso­lu­tion, Frank­furt), Dr. Daniel Pauly, Michael Leicht (both Part­ners, TMT, Frank­furt) and Wolf­ram Krüger (Part­ner, Real Estate, Frankfurt).

Link­la­ters regu­larly advi­ses Carrier, most recently on the sale of Chubb in 2020 and the outright acqui­si­tion of Toshiba Carrier Corpo­ra­tion from Toshiba.

News

Munich — Climate tech start-up Reverion raises €8.5 million to acce­le­rate produc­tion of its flexi­ble power plants. UVC Part­ners, Green Gene­ra­tion Fund, Extan­tia Capi­tal, Doral Energy-Tech Ventures and biome­thane trader Land­wärme GmbH are among the inves­tors.

The fresh capi­tal will be used to expand produc­tion of 100 kilo­watt and 500 kilo­watt biogas power plants. In addi­tion, Reverion will receive €12 million in rese­arch funding, which will be used for further deve­lo­p­ment of the equip­ment. The start-up is a spin-off of the Tech­ni­cal Univer­sity of Munich (TUM) and parti­ci­pa­ted in the XPRENEURS incu­ba­tion program of Unter­neh­mer­TUM, Europe’s largest center for inno­va­tion and start-ups.

With Reverion’s new tech­no­logy, biogas plant opera­tors can increase their reve­nue by up to 400 percent from the same amount of biomass. The company’s upco­ming Series A finan­cing aims to further increase produc­tion and posi­tion itself for market demand for giga­watt-scale rene­wa­ble capa­city.

100 percent more effi­ci­ency and no harmful CO2 emis­si­ons

Reverion plans to replace as many conven­tio­nal power plants as possi­ble world­wide with its tech­no­logy. The first target market is exis­ting biogas plants. Today, these are powered by gas engi­nes that achieve only a very low effi­ci­ency of 40 percent at most, offer limi­ted storage opti­ons, and emit milli­ons of tons of CO2 annu­ally. Reverion’s modu­lar power plants, on the other hand, double the effi­ci­ency of elec­tri­city gene­ra­tion from 40 to 80 percent compared to conven­tio­nal tech­no­logy. Since the small power plants can also run “back­wards” (rever­si­bly), a rene­wa­ble natu­ral gas substi­tute or green hydro­gen can be gene­ra­ted and stored from a tempo­rary surplus of wind and solar power to make the grid more flexi­ble. Another advan­tage is that Reverion’s modern power plants can be opera­ted CO2-nega­tively when using biogas.

The paten­ted carbon-nega­tive fuel cell tech­no­logy has alre­ady found nume­rous custo­mers today. “We alre­ady have pre-orders of over 60 million euros that we want to fulfill,” explains Felix Fischer, co-foun­der and COO. “Our goal is to break even by ente­ring volume produc­tion and rapidly scaling the number of units ship­ped.“

EU Commis­sion targets acce­le­rate Reverion’s market entry

Rapid action is also requi­red to ensure that Germany can achieve the EU Commission’s targets for the energy tran­si­tion (Net Zero Act) in the fore­seeable future. Reverion can make an important contri­bu­tion to achie­ving these goals. “Our tech­no­logy addres­ses four of the eight curr­ently stated goals: Impro­ving energy storage, expan­ding elec­tro­ly­sis proces­ses and fuel cells, incre­asing the use of biogas and biome­thane, and carbon storage. We are ther­e­fore confi­dent that a rapid and compre­hen­sive market entry will give Germany and the EU a compe­ti­tive edge in highly flexi­ble and carbon-nega­tive energy supply,” explains Stephan Herr­mann, co-foun­der and CEO.

Estab­lished indus­tries must coope­rate

Access to capi­tal is para­mount when ente­ring mass produc­tion, and close colla­bo­ra­tion with estab­lished indus­try is criti­cal to success. This is exactly where UVC Part­ners can assist as an expe­ri­en­ced hard­ware inves­tor. “We looked at various start-ups in this field. The foun­ding team of Reverion convin­ced us because they have deve­lo­ped an outstan­ding tech­no­logy over the last years and successfully tested it in a pilot plant. With our large network toge­ther with Unter­neh­mer­TUM, we can bring part­ners, suppli­ers and exper­tise to the table to further scale the tech­no­logy,” explains Johan­nes von Borries, Mana­ging Direc­tor at UVC Partners.

About UVC Partners

UVC Part­ners is a Munich and Berlin-based early-stage venture capi­tal firm inves­t­ing in Euro­pean B2B start-ups in the fields of enter­prise soft­ware, indus­trial tech­no­lo­gies and mobi­lity. The fund gene­rally invests between €0.5 and €10 million at the outset and up to €30 million in total per company. The port­fo­lio compa­nies bene­fit from the exten­sive invest­ment and exit expe­ri­ence of the manage­ment team as well as from the close coope­ra­tion with Unter­neh­mer­TUM, Europe’s leading inno­va­tion and start-up center. With over 400 employees and more than 100 indus­try part­ners, Unter­neh­mer­TUM can draw on many years of expe­ri­ence in buil­ding young compa­nies. This colla­bo­ra­tion gives UVC Part­ners the oppor­tu­nity to provide start­ups with unique access to talent, indus­try clients and other finan­cial partners.

About Reverion

Reverion GmbH is a spin-off of the Tech­ni­cal Univer­sity of Munich. The start-up is deve­lo­ping the tech­no­logy, which was successfully vali­da­ted as part of a rese­arch project, to commer­cial matu­rity and is marke­ting it as a plant manu­fac­tu­rer. The contai­ner-based plants can replace conven­tio­nal gas engi­nes with their low effi­ci­en­cies and can also be opera­ted with hydro­gen in addi­tion to biogas. In addi­tion, plants produce pure CO2 as a bypro­duct of elec­tri­city gene­ra­tion, so they can operate CO2-nega­tively. In parti­cu­lar, howe­ver, they are rever­si­ble, so that surplus rene­wa­ble elec­tri­city from wind and photo­vol­taics can also be conver­ted into hydro­gen or methane as a substi­tute for natu­ral gas in the same plants. The tech­no­logy ther­e­fore combi­nes all the essen­tial core elements — increased effi­ci­ency, CO2-nega­tive opera­tion and large-scale seaso­nal energy storage — that are still needed for successful imple­men­ta­tion of the energy tran­si­tion, in a single plant. www.reverion.com

News

Hamburg, Germany — YPOG advi­sed LI.FI Service GmbH on the $17.5 million Series A funding round led by Coin­Fund and Super­scrypt. The Berlin-based startup enables banks, fintechs and hedge funds to auto­ma­ti­cally exch­ange crypto assets between multi­ple blockchains.

Bloc­ce­le­rate, L1 Digi­tal, Circle, Factor, Perri­don, Theta Capi­tal, Three Point Capi­tal, Abra and nearly 20 angel inves­tors also parti­ci­pa­ted in the funding round.
The capi­tal from this funding round will be used to acce­le­rate the deve­lo­p­ment of the LI.FI- offe­ring across addi­tio­nal block­chains, decen­tra­li­zed exch­an­ges (DEXs) and cross-chain bridges. Further, it also aims to expand sales, busi­ness deve­lo­p­ment, marke­ting and other services, as well as streng­then the connec­tion between tradi­tio­nal finance and DeFi in a meaningful way to inte­grate these insti­tu­ti­ons into the finan­cial markets of the future.

A YPOG team led by Stefan Rich­ter and Ferdi­nand Cadmus provi­ded compre­hen­sive tax and legal advice to the start-up during the finan­cing round, which included an equity invest­ment as well as a token investment.

About LI.FI

LI.FI is a multi-chain liqui­dity and data portal that provi­des access to nearly 20 block­chains, enab­ling the move­ment of assets and exch­ange of data by brin­ging toge­ther infra­struc­ture solu­ti­ons such as cross-chain bridges, rele­vant data sources and decen­tra­li­zed exch­an­ges, enab­ling seam­less compa­ti­bi­lity for plat­forms and users. Based in Berlin, LI.FI was foun­ded by a team of DeFi experts and has quickly become the leading liqui­dity aggre­ga­tor in the block­chain space. www.li.fi.com

Consul­tant LI.FI: YPOG

Stefan Rich­ter (Co-Lead) (Tax, Fintech/DLT), Part­ner, Hamburg
Ferdi­nand Cadmus (Co-Lead) (Tran­sac­tions, Fintech/DLT), Senior Asso­ciate, Hamburg Dr. Frede­rik Gärt­ner (Tran­sac­tions, Fintech/DLT), Part­ner, Berlin
Daniel Resas (Tran­sac­tion, Fintech/DLT), Special Coun­sel, Hamburg/Berlin
Andreas Lange (Tax, Fintech/DLT), Senior Asso­ciate, Hamburg

About YPOG

YPOG is a specia­list tax and commer­cial law firm opera­ting in the core areas of Funds, Tax and Tran­sac­tions. The YPOG team advi­ses a wide variety of clients. These include emer­ging tech­no­logy compa­nies and family-run medium-sized enter­pri­ses as well as corpo­ra­ti­ons and private equity/venture capi­tal funds. YPOG is one of the leading addres­ses for

News

Boston/ Munich — Charles­bank Capi­tal Part­ners acqui­res Maltego Tech­no­lo­gies GmbH through the Charles­bank Tech­no­logy Oppor­tu­ni­ties Fund from the invest­ment company Maxburg Betei­li­gun­gen III GmbH & Co KG, which was advi­sed by Maxburg Capi­tal Part­ners. Kirk­land & Ellis advi­sed Charles­bank on this transaction.

Maltego’s soft­ware is used by compa­nies world­wide, inclu­ding half of the DOW 30 compa­nies, for data visua­liza­tion and link analy­sis purpo­ses. Foun­ded in 2008, the company has more than 100 employees and is head­quar­te­red in Munich.

Charles­bank Capi­tal Part­ners, based in Boston and New York, is a middle-market private invest­ment firm that has raised more than $15 billion in capi­tal since its incep­tion. Charles­bank focu­ses on manage­ment-led buyouts and growth capi­tal finan­cings and also enga­ges in credit and tech­no­logy investments.

Maxburg Capi­tal Part­ners is an invest­ment manage­ment company focu­sed on the German-spea­king region. Foun­ded by three part­ners with many years of expe­ri­ence as entre­pre­neurs and inves­tors in public and private equity, Maxburg focu­ses on long-term corpo­rate invest­ments with the aim of achie­ving lasting and sustainable value growth. — Based on seve­ral funds and a total fund volume of € 600 million, Maxburg has an excep­tio­nally flexi­ble invest­ment mandate: We actively invest across the entire range of capi­tal struc­tures — from equity to near-equity finan­cing opti­ons such as mezza­nine and mezza­nine-like forms of invest­ment. www.maxburg.com

Advi­sors to Charles­bank Capi­tal Part­ners: Kirk­land & Ellis, Munich

Dr. Hendrik Braun (Private Equity/M&A, Lead Part­ner); Asso­cia­tes: Dr. Thomas Horn­ber­ger, Julia Jung (both Private Equity/M&A)
Kirk­land & Ellis, Boston: Larissa Cespe­des-Yaffar (M&A), Dave Gusella (Private Equity/M&A)
Kirk­land & Ellis, New York: Michael Movso­vich, P.C. (Private Equity/M&A)

About Kirk­land

Kirk­land & Ellis is one of the leading firms for high-cali­ber legal services, with more than 3,000 lawy­ers in 18 cities in the U.S., Europe and Asia. The Munich team advi­ses with a focus on private equity, M&A, corpo­rate law, capi­tal markets, restruc­tu­ring, finan­cing and tax law. www.kirkland.com.

News

Colo­gne — Oppen­hoff advi­sed the BMV Group on its realignment and acqui­si­tion of the von den Hoff Group. The von den Hoff compa­nies will be taken over by a newly foun­ded subsi­diary, BMV Holding GmbH & Co. KG.

BMV Betei­li­gungs- und Besitz­ge­sell­schaft GmbH & Co. KG, head­quar­te­red in Hamburg, is an asso­cia­tion of medium-sized specia­list buil­ding mate­ri­als trading compa­nies. It main­ta­ins and estab­lishes part­ner­ship alli­ances with natio­nal and regio­nal suppli­ers. The share­hol­ders of the BMV Group are active throug­hout Germany.

The von den Hoff Group opera­tes specialty buil­ding mate­ri­als stores with loca­ti­ons in Düren, Aachen, Erft­stadt, Bonn and Sankt Augus­tin. It includes the roofing supplies Helmut von den Hoff GmbH & Co KG, H. von den Hoff GmbH & Co KG and J. Karl Voll­mar GmbH & Co. In addi­tion, a share in the alumi­num and steel profile system special whole­sa­ler HOBA Alu-Produkte Vertriebs GmbH belongs to the acqui­red group of companies.

By acqui­ring the compa­nies, which had previously been family-owned, the BMV Group was able to obtain a co-share­hol­der from its own circle and thus streng­then the diver­sity in the medium-sized buil­ding mate­ri­als trade.

“The tran­sac­tion is a novelty in the German Mittel­stand, as it is the first time that an alli­ance company acqui­res a member of its own. With this acqui­si­tion, Mittel­stand is secu­ring the diver­sity and contin­ued exis­tence of medium-sized buil­ders’ merchants,” says Dr. Phil­ipp Hein­richs, Junior Part­ner in the Corpo­rate Law / M&A depart­ment at Oppenhoff.

The Oppen­hoff team led by Dr. Phil­ipp Hein­richs (Corporate/M&A) included Marvin Roch­ner, Julia Höyng (both Real Estate), Dr. Daniel Dohrn, Renée Cherelle Eckruth (both Anti­trust), Marc Krischer and Hanjo Prond­zinski (both Tax). The exter­nal advi­sor was Ulrich Wald­schmidt (Dr. Gehre-Treu­hand GmbH).

About Oppen­hoff

The full-service law firm Oppen­hoff finds indus­try-speci­fic solu­ti­ons for groups, large owner-mana­ged compa­nies and finan­cial inves­tors. More than 100 attor­neys advise on all major areas of busi­ness and tax law.

News

Düssel­dorf — The share­hol­ders of m.Doc GmbH have sold 51% of the company to CompuGroup Medi­cal SE & Co. KGaA. ARQIS advi­sed m.Doc GmbH on this transaction.

m.Doc deve­lops pati­ent portals and other digi­tal appli­ca­ti­ons for clinics, reha­bi­li­ta­tion and care faci­li­ties. Foun­ded in 2016, the company has loca­ti­ons in Colo­gne and Lisbon and employs around 110 people. m.Doc’s focus is on digi­tiz­ing ever­y­day hospi­tal life, inte­gra­ting pati­ents into admi­nis­tra­tive and medi­cal proces­ses before, during and after inpa­ti­ent treat­ment, and provi­ding far-reaching relief and support for medi­cal staff. The tech­ni­cal basis for m.Doc’s appli­ca­ti­ons is the Smart Health plat­form, which combi­nes m.Doc’s modu­lar pati­ent portal with services such as video consul­ta­ti­ons, appoint­ment bookings, medi­ca­tion plans, treat­ment records and much more. The inter­ope­ra­bi­lity of the m.Doc plat­form with all common hospi­tal infor­ma­tion systems will be further advan­ced for the bene­fit of custo­mers and partners.

CompuGroup Medi­cal will further deve­lop m.Doc’s pati­ent portal and inte­grate it into its systems. In addi­tion, CompuGroup Medi­cal will expand the CLICKDOC solu­tion for appoint­ment bookings and video consul­ta­ti­ons and leverage syner­gies for messen­ger solu­ti­ons. The tran­sac­tion is an important mile­stone on the way to a fully digi­tal inpa­ti­ent and outpa­ti­ent pati­ent jour­ney and opti­mi­zes refer­rals from office-based physi­ci­ans to hospitals.

The ARQIS team around Jörn-Chris­tian Schulze has many years of expe­ri­ence in accom­pany­ing tran­sac­tions in the health­care and tech­no­logy sector. ARQIS was recom­men­ded by one of the share­hol­ders as advi­sor for the transaction.

Advi­sors to m.Doc GmbH: ARQIS (Düssel­dorf)
Dr. Jörn-Chris­tian Schulze, Foto (Lead; M&A), Thomas Chwa­lek (M&A); Coun­sel: Jens Knip­ping (Tax); Asso­cia­tes: Laura Ally Rizzi, Katrin Ludwig, Seve­rin Stef­fens (all M&A), Jasmin Grünen (Tax); Legal Specia­list: Qing Xia (M&A)

  • m.doc GmbH: Dr. Sabine Scholz, Head of Legal Department-
  • Flick Gocke Schaum­burg (Bonn): Dr. Phil­ipp Rulf (M&A), Dr. Thomas Belz (Tax)
  • Honert (Munich): Dr. Thomas Gräd­ler, LL.M. (taxes)
  • WMCF (Finan­cial Consul­ting, Munich): Ulf Böni­cke, Gerrit Hauck, Gian­marco Luso, Iuliana Bitca
News

Munich — Early­bird Venture Capi­tal has led a €3.2 million seed funding round for Berlin-based food tech startup Nosh.bio. In addi­tion to lead inves­tor Early­bird Venture Capi­tal, the Ameri­can fund Clear Current Capi­tal, Grey Silo Ventures and Good Seed Ventures parti­ci­pa­ted in the round. With the fresh capi­tal, Nosh.bio will conti­nue to commer­cia­lize its first product, deve­lop R&D proces­ses and expand produc­tion capacity.

Nosh.bio was foun­ded in 2022 by Tim Fron­zek, form­erly co-foun­der of rebuy.com, and Felipe Lino, former Novo­zy­mes rese­ar­cher and global R&D mana­ger at AB-InBev, with the goal of helping shape the food indus­try of tomor­row. The company uses natu­ral, fermen­ted myco­pro­tein to bring highly func­tional, healthy and clean-label ingre­di­ents to market at the same price as animal-based ingre­di­ents. Nosh.bio ingre­di­ents have binding, gelling and textu­ri­zing proper­ties and are expec­ted to replace chemi­cal addi­ti­ves in the future, enab­ling, for exam­ple, the produc­tion of meat substi­tute products with a single ingredient.

BMH BRÄUTIGAM conti­nuously advi­ses Early­bird on invest­ments (most recently on the finan­cing round of Green­lyte) and was able to further streng­then and expand the client relationship.

Advi­sor Early­bird: BMH BRÄUTIGAM

Bastian Rein­schmidt, Dr. Jan Böhle, Lisa-Marie Sarucco (all Venture Capital)

Advi­sor nosh.bio: Osborne Clarke

News

Munich, Germany — Ariceum Thera­peu­tics (Ariceum) successfully closes a Series A expan­sion finan­cing, raising an addi­tio­nal EUR 22.75 million for Ariceum on top of the EUR 25 million Series A finan­cing announ­ced in June 2022.

With this, Ariceum, a priva­tely held biotech­no­logy company based in Berlin, Germany, aims to advance its clini­cal pipe­line of next-gene­ra­tion radio­phar­maceu­ti­cals and further expand the company, with a focus on its proprie­tary peptide deri­va­tive sato­reo­tide, as well as a pipe­line of other projects. New inves­tors Andera Part­ners and Early­bird Venture Capi­tal join exis­ting inves­tor Pureos Bioven­tures in expan­sion financing.

Olivier Litzka from Andera Part­ners and Chris­toph Mass­ner from Early­bird Venture Capi­tal become addi­tio­nal members of Ariceum’s advi­sory board.

Baker McKen­zie advi­sed Ariceum Thera­peu­tics on all legal aspects rela­ted to the finan­cing. “Toge­ther with our client and our team of specia­li­zed corporate/M&A and life scien­ces lawy­ers, we have succee­ded in secu­ring further finan­cing for Ariceum, paving the way for the deve­lo­p­ment of thera­pies for pati­ents suffe­ring from certain diffi­cult-to-treat cancers,” commen­ted Julia Braun, LL.M., the lead part­ner on the transaction.

Legal advi­sor Ariceum Thera­peu­tics: Baker McKenzie

Lead: Julia Braun (Corporate/M&A, Part­ner, Munich)
Erik Kuhn (Asso­ciate, Munich), Anna Dzik (Asso­ciate, Munich)

About Baker McKenzie

Complex busi­ness chal­lenges require a holi­stic response across diffe­rent markets, sectors and juris­dic­tions. Baker McKenzie’s solu­ti­ons for clients are accom­pa­nied by seam­less advice, under­pin­ned by in-depth prac­tice and indus­try know­ledge as well as excel­lent local market insights. In more than 70 offices world­wide, we work with our clients to provide solu­ti­ons for a connec­ted world.

News

Düssel­dorf — The Deloitte Legal team advi­sed Düssel­dorf-based RP Digi­tal GmbH, a subsi­diary of Rhei­ni­sche Post Medi­en­gruppe, on its 49 percent stake in best it AG.

Berlin-based best it AG digi­ti­zes busi­ness models and sales proces­ses of brands, manu­fac­tu­r­ers and retail­ers in both the B2B and B2C sectors in a sustainable and value-adding manner. It specia­li­zes in the deve­lo­p­ment and distri­bu­tion of soft­ware and licen­ses, as well as in consul­ting for compa­nies in the field of e‑commerce. In doing so, best it AG covers the entire value chain from e‑commerce, custo­mer enga­ge­ment, data & content manage­ment (PIM & CMS), UX & design to online marketing.

RP Digi­tal GmbH, the central digi­tal unit of Rhei­ni­sche Post Medi­en­gruppe, is expan­ding its digi­tal agency busi­ness with this tran­sac­tion to include the e‑commerce compo­nent. In the future, it will provide its regio­nal market part­ners with a digi­tal, scalable plat­form and deve­lop it further to offer the best custo­mer expe­ri­ence in the media busi­ness, dyna­mi­cally expand digi­tal custo­mer rela­ti­onships (end custo­mers and adver­ti­sers), and mone­tize them optimally.

Deloitte Legal provi­ded compre­hen­sive tran­sac­tional legal advice to RP Digi­tal GmbH. Rhei­ni­sche Post Medi­en­gruppe regu­larly relies on the support of Deloitte Legal for its M&A transactions.

Advi­sors RP Digi­tal GmbH: Deloitte Legal Germany
Dr. Michael von Rüden (Part­ner, Lead, Corporate/M&A), Thilo Hoff­mann (Part­ner, Corporate/M&A), Maxi­mi­lian Giep­mann (Asso­ciate, Corporate/M&A, all Düsseldorf)
Deloitte Legal Austria: Dr. Stefan Zischka (Part­ner), Chris­tina Feis­trit­zer (Asso­ciate, both Labor Law, both Vienna)

About Deloitte

Deloitte Legal refers to the legal advice prac­ti­ces of the member compa­nies of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limi­ted, its affi­lia­tes or affi­lia­tes that provide legal services.
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 more equi­ta­ble 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 415,000 employees live the mission state­ment “making an impact that matters” every day: www.deloitte.com/de

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