ALTERNATIVE FINANCING FORMS
FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND INVESTORS

Author: Tatjana Anderer

Gründerin des FYB-Verlag
News

Frank­furt a. M. — commerce­tools GmbH, a port­fo­lio company of Insight Part­ners, has acqui­red the composable front-end provi­der Fron­ta­stic GmbH. Foun­ded in 2017, Fron­ta­stic is a composable front-end plat­form that enables busi­ness and deve­lo­p­ment teams to create unique commerce sites. Within a short time Fron­ta­stic has successfully estab­lished itself as the new stan­dard for commerce frontends. Will­kie Farr & Gallag­her LLP advi­sed commerce­tools GmbH on this transaction.

Foun­ded in Munich, commerce­tools is a leading plat­form for next-gene­ra­tion B2C and B2B commerce, offe­ring advan­ced tech­no­logy that enables compa­nies to over­come the limi­ta­ti­ons of tradi­tio­nal commerce plat­forms. commerce­tools has intro­du­ced a modu­lar, API and cloud-based commerce plat­form that lever­a­ges micro­ser­vices to give busi­nesses the flexi­bi­lity and speed they need to deli­ver excep­tio­nal digi­tal commerce expe­ri­en­ces. This solu­tion, now known as “head­less commerce,” is the foun­da­tion for modern tech­no­logy systems. commerce­tools has offices in the US, Europe and Asia Paci­fic and employs over 300 people. commerce­tools’ soft­ware has been imple­men­ted by compa­nies in a variety of indus­tries, from retail and manu­fac­tu­ring to tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons and fashion.

Advi­sor commerce­tools GmbH: Will­kie advi­sed on all aspects of the transaction

The Will­kie team was led by the part­ners Dr. Kamyar Abrar (photo ) and Miriam Steets (both Corporate/M&A, Frank­furt) and included part­ner Dr. Bettina Bokeloh (Tax, Frank­furt), coun­sel Wulf Kring (Tax) and Wolf­gang Münchow (Corporate/M&A, both Frank­furt) and asso­cia­tes Sebas­tian Bren­ner, Nils Bock, Phil­ipp Oehler­king (all Corporate/M&A) and Dr. Nadine Kramer (Labor Law, all Frankfurt).

Advi­sor commerce­tools GmbH: KNPZ Rechts­an­wälte advi­sed on IP issues

The KNPZ team was led by part­ner Dr. Kai-Uwe Plath and included asso­cia­tes Jan Schä­fer, Matthias Struck and Dr. Enno ter Haze­borg (all Hamburg).

About Will­kie Farr & Gallag­her LLP

Will­kie Farr & Gallag­her LLP is an inter­na­tio­nal law firm of more than 1,000 lawy­ers with offices in Brussels, Chicago, Frank­furt, Hous­ton, London, Los Ange­les, Milan, New York, Palo Alto, Paris, Rome, San Fran­cisco and Washing­ton. www.willkie.com

News

Colo­gne, Germany — Global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright has advi­sed Modern Times Group MTG AB (MTG) on the sale of ESL Gaming to Savvy Gaming Group (SGG). ESL Gaming is valued at an enter­prise value of $1.05 billion. MTG holds 91.46 percent of ESL Gaming.

ESL Gaming is the world’s largest inde­pen­dent esports company (Photo © ESL Gaming). Follo­wing the tran­sac­tion, MTG will fully focus on acce­le­ra­ting the growth of its pure-play gaming busi­ness. MTG intends to distri­bute at least 40 percent of the net proceeds to its share­hol­ders, while the rema­in­der of the proceeds will be used to streng­then MTG’s posi­tion in the global gaming market and to further imple­ment its buy-and-build strategy.

SGG also acqui­res FACEIT at the same time and will merge the two compa­nies into the leading global plat­form in the compe­ti­tive gaming sector — the ESL FACEIT Group. The tran­sac­tion is subject to regu­la­tory appr­oval, which includes an anti­trust and foreign trade review.

The Norton Rose Fulbright team was led by London part­ners Sean Murphy and Clemen­tine Hogarth and Frank­furt part­ner Nils Rahlf.

“The sale of ESL will enable MTG to focus on its gaming busi­ness and we are plea­sed to have successfully part­ne­red with MTG on this exci­ting tran­sac­tion. Norton Rose Fulbright’s M&A prac­tice has had a dyna­mic start to 2022, and we expect this to conti­nue,” says Nils Rahlf.

The Norton Rose Fulbright team also included senior asso­cia­tes Victo­ria Scopes and Jan-Peter Heise and asso­cia­tes Jessica Berke­ley and Rebecca Lander.

Addi­tio­nal support was provi­ded by London part­ners Michael Black, Mike Knap­per, Domi­nic Stut­taford and Michael Allis­ton, Frank­furt part­ner Tino Duttiné and Hamburg part­ner Tim Scha­per, as well as senior asso­cia­tes Kyle Rains­ford and Alex Redbourne.

The law firm has alre­ady advi­sed MTG on the acqui­si­tion of shares in Inno­Ga­mes GmbH (Inno­Ga­mes) and on the acqui­si­tion of Hutch Games Ltd (Hutch).

About ESL Gaming

Colo­gne — ESL Gaming is the world’s leading esports company. For more than two deca­des, we have been shaping the indus­try and leading esports and gaming inno­va­tion globally across the most popu­lar video games, crea­ting a compre­hen­sive ecosys­tem with oppor­tu­ni­ties for play­ers to go from zero to hero, and for fans to witness the best stories esports has to offer.

About MTG

Stock­holm — MTG is a pure-play esport and gaming invest­ment company. We have a port­fo­lio of compa­nies in two verti­cals, esport and gaming, compri­sing some of the stron­gest brands in the indus­try. MTG stri­ves to be the part­ner of choice for esport and gaming entre­pre­neurs, brin­ging indus­trial exper­tise, know-how and finan­cial flexi­bi­lity. We have an active owner­ship approach, working in close colla­bo­ra­tion with our port­fo­lio compa­nies to drive long-term profi­ta­bi­lity and sustainable growth. www.mtg.com

About Norton Rose Fulbright

Norton Rose Fulbright is a global busi­ness law firm. With more than 4,000 lawy­ers in over 50 offices world­wide in Europe, the United States, Canada, Latin America, Asia, Austra­lia, Africa and the Middle East, we advise leading natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal companies.

We offer our clients compre­hen­sive advice in all major indus­tries. These include Finan­cial Insti­tu­ti­ons; Energy; Infra­struc­ture, Mining and Commo­di­ties; Trans­por­ta­tion; Tech­no­logy and Inno­va­tion; and Life Scien­ces and Health­care. Our global Risk Advi­sory Group combi­nes this exten­sive indus­try expe­ri­ence with its exper­tise in legal, regu­la­tory, compli­ance and gover­nance matters. This enables us to provide our clients with prac­ti­cal solu­ti­ons to the legal and regu­la­tory risks they face.

The Swiss asso­cia­tion Norton Rose Fulbright helps to coor­di­nate the acti­vi­ties of Norton Rose Fulbright members, but does not provide legal advice to clients. Norton Rose Fulbright has offices in more than 50 cities world­wide, inclu­ding London, Hous­ton, New York, Toronto, Mexico City, Hong Kong, Sydney and Johan­nes­burg. For more infor­ma­tion, visit nortonrosefulbright.com/legal-notices.

 

News

Nurem­berg — At the begin­ning of the new finan­cial year 2022, the Max Bögl Group has streng­the­ned its posi­tion in the field of hori­zon­tal dril­ling tech­no­logy by acqui­ring the renow­ned company BFT Bohr- und Fräs­tech­nik GmbH from Saal an der Saale from its sole share­hol­der Dipl.-Ing. Uwe Hey. Max Bögl thus expands its service port­fo­lio by an important compo­nent. BFT GmbH has more than thirty years of expe­ri­ence in tren­chl­ess pipe­line cons­truc­tion. In addi­tion to press dril­ling and pilot pipe jack­ing, hori­zon­tal direc­tional dril­ling (HDD) will in future also be ancho­red in Max Bögl’s exten­sive range of services.

Under the manage­ment of Dipl.-Ing. Uwe Hey and his twenty-strong team, as well as the exis­ting modern equip­ment pool, BFT GmbH ideally comple­ments the port­fo­lio of Max Bögl’s Pipe Jacking/HDD divi­sion in the Infra­struc­ture busi­ness unit with its exper­tise. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price.

During the acqui­si­tion of BFT GmbH, Max Bögl was accom­pa­nied throug­hout the entire process and provi­ded with compre­hen­sive legal advice by a team of law firm THEOPARK in Nurem­berg specia­li­zing in M&A tran­sac­tions under the leader­ship of part­ner Gernot Gies­ecke (photo). THEOPARK has been working for the Max Bögl group of compa­nies in the field of commer­cial law, in parti­cu­lar in the areas of M&A as well as corpo­rate law, since its foundation.

Consul­tant Max Bögl Group: THEOPARK, Nuremberg
Gernot Gies­ecke, Part­ner (Lead Part­ner, Corpo­rate Law, M&A)
Rainer Schaaf, LL.M., Part­ner (M&A)

About THEOPARK

THEOPARK is a commer­cial law firm specia­li­zing in corpo­rate law, M&A, insol­vency law and tax law, based in Nurem­berg. The 6 foun­ding part­ners advise natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal compa­nies, inves­tors and insol­vency admi­nis­tra­tors on all commer­cial law issues. www.theopark.com.

 

News

Wend­lin­gen — Crédit Mutuel Equity, the inter­na­tio­nal direct invest­ment company of Crédit Mutuel Alli­ance Fédé­rale, is inves­t­ing addi­tio­nal capi­tal in CF Group, incre­asing its mino­rity stake in the company. The CF Group is loca­ted in Wend­lin­gen am Neckar and is one of the two largest compa­nies in Europe for the produc­tion and equip­ment of swim­ming pools. Crédit Mutuel Equity has held a stake in the company since the end of 2019. Finan­cial details of the tran­sac­tion were not disclosed.

Sébas­tien Neiss (photo), Mana­ging Direc­tor of Crédit Mutuel Equity in Germany, said: “We only invest equity from the Crédit Mutuel Alli­ance Fédé­rale balance sheet, so we have a free hand in how we use the proceeds from dispo­sals of port­fo­lio compa­nies. Each year, we reinvest around one-third of these proceeds in the exis­ting port­fo­lio of more than 330 compa­nies around the world in which we have a stake. We use the remai­ning two-thirds for new invest­ments. The advan­tage of our ‘pati­ent capi­tal’ is its great flexi­bi­lity: We are able to accom­pany compa­nies over time hori­zons that are tail­o­red to their respec­tive projects and thus enable us to create value for all stake­hol­ders — manage­ment, share­hol­ders and employees. Ther­e­fore, it is wort­hwhile for us to increase our invest­ments both in chal­len­ging phases and when growth pros­pects are parti­cu­larly posi­tive, e.g. through exter­nal growth projects. CF Group has deve­lo­ped extra­or­di­na­rily successfully since our invest­ment and the further pros­pects are also very good. With addi­tio­nal capi­tal, we want to do our part to leverage the company’s long-term deve­lo­p­ment potential.”

CF Group was formed from the 2019 merger of Germany’s Chemo­form AG and France’s FIJA Group. The tran­sac­tion took place with the support of Crédit Mutuel Equity, which also acqui­red a stake in the newly crea­ted company. Since then, CF Group has acqui­red three more compa­nies, inclu­ding the acqui­si­tion of a majo­rity stake in Dr. Nüsken Chemie GmbH, in which it alre­ady held a mino­rity stake.

Cedrik Mayer-Klenk, CEO of Chemo­form AG, added: “For many years now, we have been pursuing a growth stra­tegy in which we open up new markets or addi­tio­nal distri­bu­tion chan­nels by acqui­ring comple­men­tary compa­nies or long-stan­ding coope­ra­tion part­ners. Having the finan­cial strength and M&A exper­tise of an active mino­rity share­hol­der expe­ri­en­ced in such proces­ses in the back­ground helps us a lot. We have become faster in decis­ion-making and more profes­sio­nal in the execu­tion of acqui­si­ti­ons and can main­tain a very solid equity ratio even with ambi­tious growth.”

Advi­sor to the tran­sac­tion: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek
Dr. Rainer Hersch­lein, Bene­dikt Raisch

About CF Group

CF Group is a leading Euro­pean company for swim­ming pool tech­no­logy, main­ten­ance and water treat­ment. The company was formed by the merger of Chemo­form AG, foun­ded in Wend­lin­gen (Germany) in 1962, and the FIJA Group, foun­ded in Brécé (France) in 1975. With its multi-brand port­fo­lio, CF Group covers the entire spec­trum from cons­truc­tion, equip­ment and main­ten­ance to clean­li­ness, hygiene and care of private and public pools. The group employs more than 1,000 people, opera­tes in more than 40 count­ries world­wide and gene­ra­tes sales of more than 300 million euros annu­ally. www.chemoform.com

About Crédit Mutuel Equity

Crédit Mutuel Equity bund­les the inter­na­tio­nal direct invest­ment busi­ness of the French banking group Crédit Mutuel Alli­ance Fédé­rale. The subsi­diary offers medium-sized compa­nies solu­ti­ons in all areas of equity financing.

At Crédit Mutuel Equity, the focus is on the rela­ti­onship and close coope­ra­tion between the expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment team and the execu­ti­ves in the port­fo­lio compa­nies. With the long-term perspec­tive of a fund-inde­pen­dent “ever­green” approach, the company has alre­ady been successful for 40 years.

Crédit Mutuel Equity curr­ently has around 3.5 billion euros of equity inves­ted, and its port­fo­lio consists of more than 330 compa­nies. Since 2016, the company has expan­ded its acti­vi­ties to Canada (Mont­real and Toronto), USA (New York and Boston), Germany (Frank­furt) and Switz­er­land (Geneva and Zurich). www.creditmutuel-equity.eu

About Crédit Mutuel Alli­ance Fédérale

Crédit Mutuel Alli­ance Fédé­rale is one of France’s leading banks, with more than 75,000 employees1 serving over 29 million customers1. With a network of around 4,500 branches1, Crédit Mutuel Alli­ance Fédé­rale offers a compre­hen­sive range of services for private custo­mers, the self-employed and compa­nies of all sizes. With equity of EUR 51.8 billion2 and a CET1 ratio of 18.3%2 , the Group is one of the best-capi­ta­li­zed banks in Europe.

The Crédit Mutuel Alli­ance Fédé­rale is compo­sed of the Crédit Mutuel sub-asso­cia­ti­ons Centre Est Europe (Stras­bourg), Sud-Est (Lyon), Ile-de-France (Paris), Savoie-Mont Blanc (Annecy), Midi-Atlan­tique (Toulouse), Loire-Atlan­tique and Centre Ouest (Nantes), Centre (Orlé­ans), Normandy (Caen), Dauphiné-Viva­rais (Valence), Médi­ter­ra­néen (Marseille), Anjou (Angers), Massif Central (Cler­mont-Ferrand), Antil­les-Guyane (Fort-de-France) and Nord Europe (Lille).

Crédit Mutuel Alli­ance Fédé­rale also includes Caisse Fédé­rale de Crédit Mutuel, Banque Fédé­ra­tive du Crédit Mutuel (BFCM) and all its subsi­dia­ries, inclu­ding CIC, Euro-Infor­ma­tion, Assu­ran­ces du Crédit Mutuel (ACM), Targ­obank, Cofi­dis, Banque Euro­pé­enne du Crédit Mutuel (BECM), Banque de Luxem­bourg, Banque Trans­at­lan­tique and Homiris.

News

Dresden/ Berlin — The Series C finan­cing of Dres­den-based robo­tics soft­ware company Wandel­bots has a total volume of $84 million. This brings Wandel­bots’ total funding to $123 million. The New York-based venture capi­tal and private equity firm Insight Part­ners, which holds stakes in compa­nies such as Blin­kist, N26, HelloFresh, BlaB­la­Car, Twit­ter and Shop­ify, has joined as a new inves­tor. In addi­tion, exis­ting inves­tors 83North, Micro­soft, Next47, Paua, Atlan­tic Labs and EQT also parti­ci­pa­ted in the finan­cing round. — A YPOG team co-led by Benja­min Ullrich and Emma Peters provi­ded compre­hen­sive legal advice to Wandel­bots on its latest finan­cing round.

The no-code approach of Wandel­bots allows appli­ca­tion experts to teach their robots inde­pendently without having to have programming know­ledge. An initial product, Wandel­bots Teaching, is based on agno­stic soft­ware with an easy-to-use inter­face that works the same for every robot — regard­less of manu­fac­tu­rer or appli­ca­tion. Wandel­bots Teaching enables compa­nies of all sizes to advance their auto­ma­tion with indus­trial robots.

The solu­tion is expec­ted to be used in all robots world­wide in the near future and will be available for every poten­tial use case. To this end, the robo­tics soft­ware company is inves­t­ing in acce­le­ra­ted product deve­lo­p­ment. In addi­tion to buil­ding new go-to-market orga­niza­ti­ons in North America and Asia, Wandel­bots is also aiming for global expan­sion. As a next step, Wandel­bots plans to expand and open up its robo­tics soft­ware plat­form. Provi­ders of auto­ma­tion solu­ti­ons and soft­ware deve­lo­pers can then use the tech­no­logy to deve­lop their own solu­ti­ons in the shor­test possi­ble time without being tied to a speci­fic manufacturer.

Consul­tant Wandel­bots: YPOG

Dr. Benja­min Ullrich (Co-Lead, Corporate/Transactions), Partner
Emma Peters (Co-Lead, Corporate/Transactions), Senior Associate
Dr. Bene­dikt Flöter (IP/IT), Asso­cia­ted Partner

About Wandel­bots

Wandel­bots belie­ves that the world will be a better place if people can focus on their crea­ti­vity and hand over mono­to­nous work to robots. ‘Robots for the people’ — that is the company’s motto. It repres­ents the mission to empower every human to work with robots. For this, Wandel­bots offers the simp­lest solu­tion for robot programming ‘Wandel­bots Teaching’ and an over­ar­ching deve­lo­per plat­form for robo­tics. Curr­ently, robots from Univer­sal Robots & Yaskawa are being used with Wandel­bots tech­no­logy at compa­nies such as BMW, Bayer, VW, Fraun­ho­fer, Schaeff­ler, Rotop and Vitesco. Wandel­bots has part­ner­ships with leading OT system inte­gra­tors in Europe such as Gibas, Alumo­tion, Heiden­bluth and Sojka. Wandel­bots employs more than 140 people from 17 count­ries — its head­quar­ters are in Dres­den, Germany.

About Insight Partners

Insight Part­ners is a leading global venture capi­tal and private equity firm that invests in high-growth tech­no­logy and soft­ware scale-up compa­nies driving trans­for­ma­tive change in their indus­tries. Insight Part­ners, foun­ded in 2005, has inves­ted in more than 400 compa­nies world­wide and has recei­ved more than $30 billion in capi­tal commit­ments through a number of funds. Insight’s mission is to find, fund and successfully part­ner with visio­nary leaders by provi­ding them with prac­ti­cal, real-world soft­ware exper­tise to drive their long-term success. Through its people and port­fo­lio, Insight fosters a culture based on the belief that ScaleUp compa­nies and growth create oppor­tu­ni­ties for all.

About YPOG
YPOG is a specia­list tax and commer­cial law firm, opera­ting in the core areas of corpo­rate, funds, liti­ga­tion, tax, tran­sac­tions, IP/IT and nota­rial services. 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. www.ypog.law

News

Karls­ruhe — HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons raises €12 million in Series A. Quan­to­na­tion, a VC fund specia­li­zing in quan­tum compu­ting, leads the funding round. The alre­ady invol­ved inves­tors UVC Part­ners, btov Indus­trial Tech­no­lo­gies and High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) invest again.

HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons is a spin-off of the Karls­ruhe Insti­tute of Tech­no­logy (KIT) and, as part of the Q‑Exa consor­tium, provi­des the soft­ware for the first quan­tum compu­ter manu­fac­tu­red in Germany.

With the new capi­tal, HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons intends to streng­then its cloud plat­form HQS Quan­tum Assis­ted Design as well as expand its open source library Active Space Finder.

HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons, Europe’s leading startup for complex quan­tum simu­la­ti­ons, closes a Series A funding round. Toge­ther with new rese­arch funding, HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons is thus raising over 12 million euros. French quan­tum VC fund Quan­to­na­tion leads the finan­cing round as a new inves­tor. The alre­ady parti­ci­pa­ting VC funds UVC Part­ners, btov Indus­trial Tech­no­lo­gies and HTGF reaf­firm their commit­ment through rene­wed investments.

The market for quan­tum tech­no­logy has been growing rapidly for seve­ral years and reached a new record high last year. In Germany, HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons is driving the key tech­no­logy forward as part of the Q‑Exa consor­tium, among others. The inter­di­sci­pli­nary project aims to install the first German-made quan­tum compu­ter at the Leib­nitz Compu­ting Center before the end of this year. Like most large-scale compu­ting centers, the High Perfor­mance Compu­ting Center of the Bava­rian Academy of Scien­ces uses signi­fi­cant porti­ons of its compu­ting power to solve quan­tum mecha­ni­cal problems. HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons provi­des the neces­sary software.

With the capi­tal from the new finan­cing round, HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons intends to further streng­then its posi­tion as a leading Euro­pean soft­ware provi­der in the field of quan­tum simu­la­tion. Foun­ded by four quan­tum physi­cists, the startup has been deve­lo­ping effi­ci­ent quan­tum algo­rithms for mate­ri­als, chemi­cal and phar­maceu­ti­cal rese­arch since 2017. The new round of funding will enable HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons to further deve­lop its Quan­tum Assis­ted Design cloud plat­form and expand its open-source Active Space Finder library.

For its Quan­tum Assis­ted Design cloud plat­form, HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons is deve­lo­ping unique soft­ware opti­mi­zed for use on current quan­tum compu­ters. In the near future, it will enable rese­arch groups and compa­nies without access to their own quan­tum hard­ware to perform the same quan­tum simu­la­ti­ons that HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons enables with its soft­ware at the Leib­niz Compu­ting Center. With the open source library Active Space Finder, HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons is the only company in the world working on a solu­tion to the so-called Active Space Problem. Only the solu­tion of this problem enables prac­ti­cal use of quan­tum compu­ters for mate­rial simulation.

“The new round of finan­cing gives us the boost we need to further expand our team, streng­then our foun­da­tion and serve our custo­mers’ needs even more effi­ci­ently. The fact that our inves­tors have reaf­firmed their trust in us and that Quan­to­na­tion, the most renow­ned VC fund in the indus­try, has joined us shows that we are on the right track,” says Michael Martha­ler, Mana­ging Direc­tor of HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons.

The enorm­ous poten­tial as well as the recent advan­ces in tech­no­logy are attrac­ting more and more capital.

“Quan­tum simu­la­tion is on the verge of brin­ging signi­fi­cant commer­cial value to indus­trial appli­ca­ti­ons and we believe HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons is best posi­tio­ned to deli­ver on this promise,” Yann Fiebig, Prin­ci­pal at HTGF.

Benja­min Erhart of UVC Part­ners also assu­mes this: “We believe that HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons will become the leading Euro­pean player in quan­tum simu­la­tion and bring great bene­fits to our society.”

Quan­to­na­tion, the world’s first VC fund specia­li­zing in quan­tum tech­no­logy, leads the finan­cing round.

“We want to advance the deve­lo­p­ment of quan­tum tech­no­lo­gies and their use in commer­cial products. High perfor­mance compu­ting is an exci­ting market for this and we are confi­dent that HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons is deve­lo­ping the right products for quan­tum-level chemi­cal and physi­cal simu­la­ti­ons to make a huge impact in these indus­tries,” Chris­to­phe Jurc­zak of Quan­to­na­tion.

btov Indus­trial Tech­no­lo­gies remains invested.

“We look forward to helping the HQS team bring available quan­tum compu­ting to the mate­ri­als science and phar­maceu­ti­cal indus­tries,” said Chris­tian Reit­ber­ger, part­ner btov.

Co-foun­der and COO of HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons Iris Schwenk is convin­ced that this goal is within reach with the new round of funding: “When we star­ted in 2017, we were four scien­tists who wanted to build a bridge between acade­mia and indus­try in quan­tum compu­ting. Today, with more than 30 talen­ted scien­tists from a wide range of disci­pli­nes, we are the leading quan­tum startup in Europe — and we’re just getting started.”

About HQS Quan­tum Simulations
HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons was foun­ded in 2017 as a spin-off of the Karls­ruhe Insti­tute of Tech­no­logy (KIT) and deve­lops soft­ware for the simu­la­tion of quan­tum systems. The startup’s soft­ware works on conven­tio­nal compu­ters, but can be easily trans­fer­red to quan­tum compu­ters. HQS Quan­tum Simu­la­ti­ons’ goal with this approach is to enable compa­nies and rese­ar­chers to quickly and effi­ci­ently tran­si­tion their simu­la­tion work­flow to quan­tum compu­ting as it beco­mes available.

About High-Tech Gründerfonds
The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start-ups with growth poten­tial. With a volume of around EUR 900 million spread across three funds and an inter­na­tio­nal part­ner network, HTGF has supported more than 650 start-ups since 2005. His team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and start-up experts supports the young compa­nies with know-how, entre­pre­neu­rial spirit and passion. The focus is on high-tech start-ups in the fields of digi­tal tech, indus­trial tech, life scien­ces, chemis­try and rela­ted busi­ness areas. More than EUR 3.5 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in more than 1,800 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. In addi­tion, the fund has alre­ady successfully sold shares in more than 150 companies.

Inves­tors in the public-private part­ner­ship include the German Fede­ral Minis­try of Econo­mics and Climate Protec­tion, KfW Capi­tal, the Fraun­ho­fer-Gesell­schaft and the compa­nies ALTANA, BASF, Bayer, Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim, B.Braun, Robert Bosch, BÜFA, CEWE, Deut­sche Bank, Deut­sche Post DHL, Dräger, 1+1 AG, EVONIK, EWE AG, FOND OF, Haniel, Hettich, Knauf, Körber, LANXESS, media + more venture Betei­li­gungs GmbH & Co. KG, PHOENIX CONTACT, QIAGEN, RWE Gene­ra­tion SE, SAP, Schufa, Schwarz Gruppe, STIHL, Thüga, Vector Infor­ma­tik, WACKER and Wilh. Werhahn KG.

 

News

Freiburg/Berlin/Paris — INERATEC wins stra­te­gic inves­tors to increase produc­tion capa­city for synthe­tic fuels from CO2 and green hydro­gen into the mega­ton range. With the new share­hol­ders from the energy, avia­tion and ship­ping indus­tries, INERATEC is crea­ting the frame­work for signi­fi­cant corpo­rate growth.

The law firm Fried­rich Graf von West­pha­len & Part­ner (FGvW) advi­sed the French groups ENGIE and SAFRAN on the 20 million Euro Series A finan­cing round of Inera­tec GmbH. ENGIE and SAFRAN have each inves­ted in Inera­tec through their invest­ment compa­nies ENGIE New Ventures (ENV) and Safran Corpo­rate Ventures. In addi­tion to ENGIE and SAFRAN, five other inves­tors, inclu­ding the German MPC Group, parti­ci­pa­ted in the financing.

The finan­cing consor­tium consists of the current inves­tors High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF), Extan­tia Capi­tal, FO Holding and Planet A as well as the new part­ners Engie, Safran and MPC.

The growth capi­tal will enable Inera­tec to further expand the produc­tion of carbon-neutral synthe­tic fuels and plan a pionee­ring indus­trial plant in Frank­furt Höchst.

Inera­tec GmbH, foun­ded in 2014 out of KIT and head­quar­te­red in Karls­ruhe, is a leading manu­fac­tu­rer of modu­lar chemi­cal plants for the produc­tion of synthe­tic fuels, which are used in avia­tion, among other appli­ca­ti­ons. In addi­tion, the plants can produce synthe­tic natu­ral gas, chemi­cal feedstocks and methanol.

INERATEC has alre­ady opened the world’s largest pilot plant for the produc­tion of sustainable e‑kerosene in Emsland, Lower Saxony, in 2021. Now the company is plan­ning an indus­trial pionee­ring plant for the produc­tion of sustainable synthe­tic fuels near Frank­furt Airport start­ing in 2022. Up to 4.6 million liters of INERATEC e‑Fuels are to be produ­ced annu­ally from up to 10,000 tons of bioge­nic CO2 and rene­wa­ble elec­tri­city. The company will further expand its leading posi­tion in the field of power-to-liquid.

ENGIE, head­quar­te­red in La Défense in the French capi­tal Paris, is a listed energy group with over 150,000 employees and around 60 billion euros in annual sales. ENV is an ENGIE invest­ment fund endo­wed with 180 million euros that invests in start-ups rele­vant to the energy transition.

The Safran tech­no­logy group, also listed on the stock exch­ange and head­quar­te­red in Paris, is a leading supplier to the inter­na­tio­nal aero­space indus­try and gene­ra­tes annual sales of around 16.5 billion euros with appro­xi­m­ately 80,000 employees.

Engie and Safran were advi­sed by a cross-office M&A team of Fried­rich Graf von West­pha­len & Part­ner led by Dr. Barbara Mayer (photo). CMS was active on the oppo­site side.

Advi­sors to Engie & Safran: Fried­rich Graf von West­pha­len & Part­ner, Freiburg
Dr. Barbara Mayer, Part­ner (Lead Part­ner, Corpo­rate, M&A, Freiburg)
Chris­tian Burmeis­ter, Senior Asso­ciate (Corpo­rate, M&A, Berlin)

Advi­sors to Inera­tec: CMS, Berlin

About INERATEC

INERATEC’s tech­no­logy is making a signi­fi­cant contri­bu­tion to achie­ving the Paris climate targets by provi­ding a sustainable solu­tion for the avia­tion, marine, auto­mo­tive and chemi­cal indus­tries. Sustainable e‑fuels can defos­si­lize these sectors. To turn this vision into reality, produc­tion capa­ci­ties for CO2-neutral fuels and chemi­cals must be expan­ded rapidly.

INERATEC was awarded the Next Economy Award of the German Sustaina­bi­lity Award. The award reco­gni­zes foun­ders whose inno­va­tive busi­ness models are actively shaping the tran­si­tion to a more sustainable economy.

News

Munich / Mülheim an der Ruhr / Nurem­berg — The multi family holding company Liberta Part­ners announ­ces that it has ente­red into an agree­ment to acquire ght GmbH Elek­tro­nik im Verkehr (“ght”) through Liberta Part­ners Fund II (“Liberta”). The tran­sac­tion is expec­ted to close in the first quar­ter of 2022. ght will be inte­gra­ted into a holding struc­ture toge­ther with Kienzle Auto­mo­tive GmbH (“Kienzle”), which has alre­ady been part of Liberta’s port­fo­lio since 2020.

The service port­fo­lio of Kienzle and ght includes products and services for all aspects of digi­tal and analog tacho­graphs. The two compa­nies, with a total of 13 loca­ti­ons in Germany and 186 employees, are the largest VDO sales compa­nies and thus market leaders. At the same time, ght Mana­ging Direc­tor Herbert Wert­h­ner will become the new CEO and share­hol­der of Kienzle Betei­li­gungs GmbH (“Holding”). Corne­lius von Ples­sen, CFO of Kienzle Auto­mo­tive, will serve as CFO of the holding company in the future. Liberta Part­ners will support the Group with its opera­tio­nal and stra­te­gic know-how and, toge­ther with the manage­ment, will invest speci­fi­cally in future tech­no­lo­gies in order to realize further growth potential.

Kienzle and ght offer complex tele­ma­tics systems and services for control­ling vehicle fleets. The mutual service port­fo­lio also includes services rela­ted to the digi­tal tacho­graph, the archi­ving of tacho­graph data, the retro­fit­ting of assis­tance systems for commer­cial vehic­les, and services for cab compa­nies. In addi­tion, ght is estab­lished in the southern German market as a system house for cash regis­ter systems, parking tech­no­logy and parking space manage­ment, tank tech­no­logy and access systems.

Further inter­nal growth and acqui­si­ti­ons planned

Nils von Wietz­low, Part­ner at Liberta and respon­si­ble for succes­sion solu­ti­ons, said: “We are deligh­ted to have been able to bring toge­ther two market leaders in auto­mo­tive services, ght and Kienzle. The two compa­nies also comple­ment each other excel­lently in the tele­ma­tics and systems tech­no­logy busi­ness areas, and we see concrete expan­sion and cross-selling poten­tial in all segments. We will actively support Kienzle and ght in their inter­nal and exter­nal growth plans.”

Herbert Wert­h­ner, CEO of Kienzle Betei­li­gungs GmbH, empha­si­zed: “The inno­va­tive cultures of ght and Kienzle Auto­mo­tive are an excel­lent fit. With Liberta Part­ners, we also have an owner at our side who supports us stra­te­gi­cally and makes it easier for us to invest in future technologies.”

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

About KIENZLE Auto­mo­tive GmbH
KIENZLE Auto­mo­tive GmbH (“Kienzle”) is the leading German provi­der for sales and service of networked devices and systems in the auto­mo­tive after­mar­ket envi­ron­ment. From 6 of its own commer­cial vehicle work­shops (5 in North Rhine-West­pha­lia and 1 in Baden-Würt­tem­berg), Kienzle, as the largest VDO system part­ner within Germany, serves around 770 contrac­tually bound service part­ners and a total of over 10,000 commer­cial custo­mers. In the area of data manage­ment and fleet tele­ma­tics, Kienzle works with estab­lished soft­ware deve­lo­pers to create custo­mer-speci­fic evalua­tions and readout opti­ons. This has enab­led Kienzle to estab­lish itself in the public trans­port sector, for exam­ple. For more infor­ma­tion, please visit: www.kienzle.de

About ght GmbH Elec­tro­nics in traffic
Based in Bava­ria, ght GmbH | Elek­tro­nik im Verkehr (“ght”) is a future-orien­ted trading and service company offe­ring appli­ca­ti­ons and systems in the auto­mo­tive and systems engi­nee­ring sectors. As VDO’s specia­list dealer part­ner, around 500 certi­fied § 57b specia­list work­shops are affi­lia­ted with ght in Bava­ria. More than 10,000 custo­mers have an active busi­ness rela­ti­onship with ght. Espe­ci­ally in the field of archi­ving and tele­ma­tics solu­ti­ons for commer­cial fleets, ght is the leading provi­der in Bava­ria. In addi­tion, ght is also a system house for cash regis­ter systems, parking tech­no­logy, parking space manage­ment, tank tech­no­logy, access systems and access control systems and is an estab­lished player in the southern German market. For more infor­ma­tion, please visit: www.ght.de

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

News

Stutt­gart — A team led by Stutt­gart-based part­ner Dr. Hermann Ali Hinde­rer provi­ded legal advice to Stor­sko­gen Deutsch­land GmbH on the acqui­si­tion of A & K — Die frische Küche GmbH, a leading manu­fac­tu­rer of ultra-fresh ready meals, which also opera­tes a deli­very service (meals-on-wheels) through its subsi­diary Casino Services. The company will be inte­gra­ted into Storskogen’s Products busi­ness area in the Indus­try segment.

Follo­wing the acqui­si­tion of SF Tooling Group at the end of 2021, this is alre­ady the second tran­sac­tion within a short period of time in which Heuking has advi­sed Storskogen.

Stor­sko­gen acqui­res and opera­tes well-mana­ged and profi­ta­ble medium-sized compa­nies in the busi­ness areas of indus­try, trade and services in Nort­hern Europe, the DACH region and the UK. As of Septem­ber 30, 2021, Stor­sko­gen consis­ted of 94 busi­ness units with a total of around 7,000 employees and annual sales of appro­xi­m­ately 1.8 billion euros.

A & K — Die frische Küche GmbH, head­quar­te­red in Reck­ling­hau­sen and with loca­ti­ons in Wupper­tal and Alsdorf, employs around 150 people and gene­ra­ted sales of 16 million euros in 2021. Every day, around 20,000 meals are cooked in the company’s own Cook & Chill kitchen with ten produc­tion lines. Meals are deli­vered to various insti­tu­ti­ons and house­holds around the sites via the subsi­diary Casino Service, a meals-on-wheels company.

Advi­sors to Stor­sko­gen Deutsch­land GmbH: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek

Dr. Hermann Ali Hinde­rer, LL.M. (Lead Part­ner, Corporate/M&A), Stuttgart
Dr. Alex­an­der Schott, Anika Lisa Dasch­mann (both Corporate/M&A), both Stuttgart
Dr. Juliane Reichelt, Ferhat Kayhan (both Real Estate), both Stuttgart
Antje Münch, LL.M. (IP, Media & Tech­no­logy), Stuttgart
Chris­toph Hexel, Laura-Feli­cia Bokranz, LL.M (both Labor Law), both Düsseldorf

News

Karls­ruhe — Menold Bezler has advi­sed Jacob Elek­tro­nik GmbH, based in Karls­ruhe, on the regu­la­tion of the company’s succes­sion via a manage­ment buy-out. The busi­ness shares of the foun­ding family have been taken over by the exis­ting manage­ment team.

Jacob Elek­tro­nik GmbH is a leading online retailer for IT and consu­mer elec­tro­nics with a turno­ver of over 350 million euros in 2021 and around 400 employees. The family busi­ness was foun­ded in 1990 by Thomas Jacob.

Menold Bezler advi­sed the manage­ment of Jacob Elek­tro­nik GmbH on the legal and tax aspects of the MBO. M&A and finan­cing advice was covered by Winter­gerst Socie­tät für Unternehmer-Beratung.

Advi­sors Jacob Elek­tro­nik GmbH: Menold Bezler (Stutt­gart)
Vladi­mir Cutura, Foto (Part­ner), Thomas Futte­rer (both Corporate/M&A), Albrecht Bacher (Part­ner, Audit) Nico Haldy (Part­ner), Clemens Mauch (both Tax), Roman Becker (Part­ner, Banking & Finance)

Winter­gerst Socie­tät für Unter­neh­mer-Bera­tung: Bernd Grupp (Part­ner), Chris­tian Schar­fen­ber­ger (Direc­tor), Nico Weber (Analyst)

About Menold Bezler
Menold Bezler is a part­ner­ship-struc­tu­red commer­cial law firm based in Stutt­gart. More than 120 profes­sio­nals offer legal advice, tax advice, audi­ting and busi­ness manage­ment advice from a single source. Our clients include well-known medium-sized compa­nies, listed corpo­ra­ti­ons, the public sector and its compa­nies as well as non-profit orga­niza­ti­ons. More at www.menoldbezler.de.

News

Munich — © GFJ ESG Acqui­si­tion I SE (GFJ), the first German listed SPAC (Special Purpose Acqui­si­tion Company) speci­fi­cally for sustainable tech­no­lo­gies, and tado GmbH (tado), a Euro­pean market leader for intel­li­gent indoor climate manage­ment, have signed a mutually exclu­sive letter of intent and agreed on the terms of a merger. tado GmbH is being fully advi­sed by Allen & Overy LLP.

The stock market vehicle under the name GFJ ESG Akqui­si­tion I SE was laun­ched by ex-Klöck­ner mana­ger Gisbert Rühl toge­ther with inves­tor Florian Frit­sch and former Relayr CEO Josef Brun­ner. The focus of the shell company is on Euro­pean green­tech compa­nies. — At the launch of their GFJ-Spacs, the trio of foun­ders stated that they wanted to raise a sum of between 125 and 150 million euros with the acqui­si­tion. It is unknown how much it should be in the case of Tado.

Follo­wing the successful comple­tion of the busi­ness combi­na­tion, tado will be listed on the Frank­furt Stock Exch­ange and is expec­ted to trade as tado SE. In connec­tion with the merger, GFJ will raise addi­tio­nal capi­tal in a private invest­ment in public equity (PIPE) tran­sac­tion. It is curr­ently assu­med that tado will be valued at an enter­prise value of around EUR 450 million as part of the transaction.

tado is a Euro­pean market leader for intel­li­gent indoor climate manage­ment based in Munich. As the only multi-vendor plat­form, its smart ther­mo­stats and services are compa­ti­ble with any type of heating or cooling system. Custo­mers bene­fit from energy-saving tech­no­lo­gies such as geofen­cing and window-open detec­tion, as well as time-varia­ble rates. The company was foun­ded in 2011, curr­ently employs 180 people and opera­tes in more than 20 count­ries. The merger with GFJ will enable tado to further acce­le­rate its growth plans and invest massi­vely in its product and tech­no­logy development.

Advi­sor tado: Allen & Overy
Jointly led by part­ner Dr. Astrid Krüger and part­ner Dr. Hendrik Röhricht (both Private Equity/M&A, Munich). It also includes part­ner Dr. Heike Weber (tax law), part­ners Dr. Michael Weiß (corporate/M&A), Dr. Knut Sauer (capi­tal markets law) and Dr. Udo H. Olgem­öl­ler (public law). The team also includes Coun­sel Peter Wehner (Labor Law) and Dr. Andre Wandt (Corporate/M&A), Senior Asso­cia­tes Dr. Thomas Dieker (Tax Law), Nadine Kämper (Capi­tal Markets Law, all Frank­furt) and Heiner Meck­len­burg (Anti­trust Law, Hamburg) as well as Asso­cia­tes Corne­lia Tu, Frank Weiss (both Munich), Alan James-Schulz, Vero­nika Gaile (all Corporate/M&A), Dr. Stephan Bühner (Public Law) and Anne Pelzer (Labor Law, all Frank­furt). On Luxem­bourg law, part­ners Jacques Graas (Corporate/M&A) and Gilles Dall’A­gnol (Labor Law), senior asso­ciate Victo­ria Woest­mann and junior asso­ciate Jacques Hoff­mann (both Corporate/M&A, all Luxem­bourg) advise.

GFJ’s advi­sors include Sulli­van & Crom­well LLP, Eight Advi­sory, Flick Gocke Schaum­burg, Boston Consul­ting Group and Maxi­mi­lian Mayer.

About Allen & Overy

Allen & Overy is an inter­na­tio­nal law firm with appro­xi­m­ately 5,500 employees, inclu­ding appro­xi­m­ately 550 part­ners, in more than 40 loca­ti­ons world­wide. allenovery.com/locations.

News

Munich, Germany — The River­side Company, the global private equity firm focu­sed on middle-market growth compa­nies, has sold its port­fo­lio company REPA to PT Holdings, a U.S. distri­bu­tor of restau­rant repair and repla­ce­ment parts, which is owned by private equity firm Berkshire Partners.

River­side had acqui­red a stake in REPA in Octo­ber 2016, a leading spare parts distri­bu­tor for profes­sio­nal kitchens and for coffee and vending machi­nes, today with over 700 employees in 13 inter­na­tio­nal loca­ti­ons. — During his holding period, River­side built REPA into a Euro­pean market leader with a growing inter­na­tio­nal presence. In addi­tion to conti­nuous orga­nic growth, REPA was able to make six acqui­si­ti­ons in Italy, Spain, Great Britain, Austria and Austra­lia and successfully inte­grate them into the Group.

River­side part­ner Peter Scha­ber­ger was respon­si­ble for the invest­ment in REPA for River­side Europe and says: “I am proud of our long and successful part­ner­ship with the REPA team. In addi­tion to imple­men­ting a pan-Euro­pean acqui­si­tion stra­tegy, estab­li­shing new product cate­go­ries and streng­thening OEM part­ner­ships, we have conti­nuously worked to profes­sio­na­lize the orga­niza­tion, expand warehouse capa­city, auto­mate proces­ses and lay the ground­work for a group-wide imple­men­ta­tion of an ERP system.”

In addi­tion, REPA contin­ued to expand its presence in Europe while further impro­ving its excel­lent custo­mer service, fast deli­very times and regio­nal coverage. River­side drove REPA’s stra­te­gic evolu­tion from an inde­pen­dent specia­li­zed distri­bu­tor at the time of acqui­si­tion, to a relia­ble and holi­stic outsour­cing part­ner for the after­mar­ket busi­ness of manu­fac­tu­r­ers around the world.

“Once again, we are demons­t­ra­ting our ability to profes­sio­na­lize and inter­na­tio­na­lize leading mid-market compa­nies through orga­nic as well as inor­ga­nic growth initia­ti­ves,” added Kars­ten Langer, Mana­ging Part­ner of River­side Europe.

“We thank River­side for the excel­lent coope­ra­tion over the past five years. This tran­sac­tion is the next logi­cal step in REPA’s evolu­tion and is in line with our own growth aspi­ra­ti­ons. We have always expan­ded our port­fo­lio of parts and now, with PT Holdings, we are even better posi­tio­ned to provide our custo­mers with outstan­ding service in all aspects of spare parts,” said Alex­an­der Wiegand, CEO of REPA.

In addi­tion to Peter Scha­ber­ger, Riverside’s invest­ment in REPA Group was mana­ged by Prin­ci­pal Till­mann Immisch, Asso­ciate Nicola Tomaschko and Senior Opera­ting Part­ner Fabio Pesiri.

About River­side Company

The River­side Company is a global private equity firm focu­sed on invest­ments in middle-market growth compa­nies valued at up to $400 million. Since its foun­ding in 1988, River­side has made over 800 invest­ments. Riverside’s inter­na­tio­nal private equity and struc­tu­red capi­tal port­fo­lios include over 140 compa­nies. River­side Europe is an inte­gral part of the company’s global network and has been inves­t­ing in Europe since 1989. River­side belie­ves this global presence provi­des excep­tio­nal insight into local condi­ti­ons, culture and busi­ness prac­ti­ces, making the River­side team better inves­tors and busi­ness part­ners. www.riversidecompany.com

REPA — The Spare Parts Group

REPA is a leading distri­bu­tor of spare parts for profes­sio­nal kitchens and for coffee and vending machi­nes in Europe. We offer the largest selec­tion of high quality spare parts and the best service. With over 700 employees at 13 inter­na­tio­nal loca­ti­ons and seve­ral auto­ma­ted warehou­ses, we can deli­ver all spare parts quickly and effi­ci­ently. Orde­red today, deli­vered tomor­row. The REPA Group includes LF (Italy), GEV (Germany), EPGC (France), Atel (Italy) and CCS (UK). www.repagroup.com

News

Frank­furt, Frank­fut a. M. — Global law firm Good­win has announ­ced that it is further expan­ding its private equity plat­form in Germany with the addi­tion of part­ner Florian Hirsch­mann. He will be joined by other members of his team at Good­win, inclu­ding Coun­sel Silvio McMiken.

Erik Dahl, a part­ner in Goodwin’s private equity prac­tice, says, “Our private equity plat­form now includes over 110 lawy­ers across our Euro­pean offices. Florian Hirsch­mann has exten­sive expe­ri­ence in working with private equity inves­tors on both dome­stic and complex cross-border tran­sac­tions, making him the ideal addi­tion to our exis­ting team.”

Hirsch­mann, who will be based in Munich, advi­ses clients prima­rily on complex, cross-border private equity, M&A and venture capi­tal tran­sac­tions as well as joint ventures. He also has exten­sive exper­tise in German-Chinese invest­ments. This exper­tise is comple­men­ted by McMi­ken, who has exten­sive tran­sac­tional and corpo­rate expe­ri­ence, with a parti­cu­lar focus on advi­sing on dome­stic or inter­na­tio­nal M&A, joint ventures, and restructurings.

“Florian is another high-profile addi­tion to our German private equity team and unders­cores our commit­ment to being a leader in the indus­tries in which our clients operate,” said Dr. Stephan Kock, head of Goodwin’s Frank­furt office. “We look forward to working with Florian to shape our clients’ success and conti­nue to drive Goodwin’s ‘capi­tal meets inno­va­tion’ strategy.”

Hirsch­mann is the latest addi­tion to Goodwin’s fast-growing Germany plat­form. In 2021, part­ner Dr. Anke Johann (Real Estate Finance), as well as part­ners Dr. Oded Schein (Tax), Dr. Jan Schin­köth (Private Equity), Dr. Markus Käpplin­ger (Corpo­rate Real Estate), and Dr. Joachim Kayser and Sebas­tian Bruch­witz (Private Invest­ment Funds) alre­ady joined the firm. This brings Goodwin’s Germany team to over 40 lawy­ers since the firm’s launch in Frank­furt in 2016.

Hirsch­mann has advi­sed private equity clients for more than 15 years and is widely reco­gni­zed as an indus­try leader in Germany. Most recently, he was named as a “Frequently Recom­men­ded Lawyer” for M&A and Private Equity in the JUVE Hand­book and was reco­gni­zed by both JUVE and Legal 500 as a market leader for China deals in Germany.

About Good­win Proc­ter LLP
Good­win is a global law firm head­quar­te­red in Boston with more than 1,600 attor­neys in 13 offices world­wide. Foun­ded in 1912, the firm is one of the top 50 law firms in the world and focu­ses on clients in the finan­cial, private equity, real estate, tech­no­logy and biotech industries.
In Germany, Good­win has been repre­sen­ted by an office in Frank­furt since 2016 and advi­ses Euro­pean and inter­na­tio­nal clients in cross-coun­try and cross-juris­dic­tional teams, in parti­cu­lar in the areas of real estate, private equity, venture capi­tal, finan­cing and tax law.
Goodwin’s goal is to be among the top 30 law firms in the coming years and to actively shape the legal market. www.goodwinlaw.com.

News

Copen­ha­gen / Berlin — Verdane, a Euro­pean private equity firm specia­li­zing in growth capi­tal, today announ­ced the final closing of the Verdane Idun I Fund (“Idun” or “the Fund”) at the hard cap of €300 million. The fund is thus above the origi­nal target fund volume of 225 million euros. Idun is an impact fund compli­ant with Article 9 of the EU Disclo­sure Regu­la­tion that invests in tech­no­logy-based compa­nies in Europe. With the launch of Idun, Verdane under­pins its ambi­ti­ons in the field of sustaina­bi­lity and aims to achieve posi­tive sustainable effects through its invest­ments in fast-growing companies.

The fund has alre­ady made three invest­ments: in Auntie (www.auntie.io), a digi­tal provi­der of work­place mental well­be­ing services, in Spond (www.spond.com), a digi­tal plat­form for grass­roots sports and physi­cal health promo­tion, and in a third company to be announ­ced at a later date.

Bjarne Kveim Lie (Photo © Verdane), Co-Foun­der and Mana­ging Part­ner of Verdane.We would like to thank both our exis­ting and new inves­tors for the trust they have placed in us. Their encou­ra­ge­ment of Idun rein­forces our approach of focu­sing on tech­no­logy as a key driver of more sustainable deve­lo­p­ment. We believe that inves­tors like Verdane should take a leading role in this deve­lo­p­ment and support foun­ders and manage­ment teams in inte­gra­ting sustaina­bi­lity into their busi­ness models, ther­eby crea­ting value with a posi­tive impact. The success of Idun’s fund­rai­sing also reflects the contin­ued deve­lo­p­ment of our company and we look forward to inves­t­ing the commit­ted capi­tal in a way that makes a posi­tive contri­bu­tion to the world we live in.”

Inves­tors in the fund include leading insti­tu­ti­ons such as Nysnø, the Norwe­gian sove­reign wealth fund for invest­ments to address climate change, and AP3, one of Sweden’s largest public pension funds.

As with Verdane’s previous invest­ments, Idun will focus on tech­no­logy-based solu­ti­ons in the core areas of energy tran­si­tion, sustainable consump­tion, and resi­li­ent socie­ties. Verdane bene­fits from its many years of expe­ri­ence as a growth inves­tor in sustainable busi­ness models.

All of Idun’s invest­ments must meet both finan­cial and tangi­ble sustaina­bi­lity crite­ria. Verdane under­stands this to mean contri­bu­ting to the imple­men­ta­tion of at least one of the UN Sustainable Deve­lo­p­ment Goals (SDGs), as well as quali­fy­ing invest­ments accor­ding to an “Impact Frame­work” deve­lo­ped speci­fi­cally by Verdane and based on the Impact Manage­ment Project. Each port­fo­lio company of the Idun Fund will regu­larly report on defi­ned sustaina­bi­lity metrics. Both the carried inte­rest and the loan terms of the fund are linked to the achie­ve­ment of the asso­cia­ted sustaina­bi­lity targets.

Idun has recei­ved strong support from exis­ting inves­tors, most of whom are insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors, inclu­ding foun­da­ti­ons, family offices and pension funds.

Idun’s manage­ment team has both signi­fi­cant entre­pre­neu­rial expe­ri­ence and exten­sive exper­tise in impact inves­t­ing. The Idun team is part of the Verdane plat­form with its more than 90 invest­ment experts, as well as the Verdane Elevate team, which consists of experts with parti­cu­lar opera­tio­nal know-how. With this approach, Verdane can opti­mally support compa­nies in reali­zing their full value crea­tion poten­tial and making a posi­tive contri­bu­tion to a more sustainable world. The fund will be mana­ged by part­ners Chris­tian Jebsen and Erik Osmund­sen, supported by direc­tors Reed Snyder and Karin Kans and sustaina­bi­lity lead Axel Elmqvist.

Chris­tian Jebsen, Part­ner at Verdane, said, “Coupled with the announce­ment of the Idun closing at the begin­ning of the year, we see a strong pipe­line of poten­tial invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties across Northwest Europe, as eviden­ced by the fund’s first invest­ments in three promi­sing new port­fo­lio compa­nies. We believe that sustaina­bi­lity will play an incre­asingly important role as a dedi­ca­ted stra­tegy for growth and private equity invest­ments. The entire indus­try is just evol­ving stron­gly towards a more sustainable and respon­si­ble mind­set. As an estab­lished part­ner for growth in tech­no­logy and sustaina­bi­lity, Verdane crea­tes value and helps its port­fo­lio compa­nies scale their busi­ness models. We look forward to working with their manage­ment teams to make a posi­tive impact.”

Verdane is one of the most active growth equity inves­tors in Northwest Europe, having made 17 invest­ments in 2021, inclu­ding four port­fo­lio tran­sac­tions. Idun will comple­ment the exis­ting Capi­tal and Edda fund stra­te­gies, adding an important invest­ment area to Verdane. The fund aims to deve­lop a frame­work and tools for impact inves­t­ing that will set bench­marks and be available to the rest of the invest­ment company’s teams as they refine and add value to their invest­ment strategies.

About Verdane

Verdane is an invest­ment company specia­li­zing in growth capi­tal that supports compa­nies with sustainable and tech­no­logy-based busi­ness models in their inter­na­tio­nal growth. Verdane parti­ci­pa­tes as a mino­rity or majo­rity inves­tor in indi­vi­dual compa­nies or port­fo­lios of compa­nies, focu­sing on three core themes:
Digi­tal Consu­mer, Soft­ware and Sustainable Society. Verdane’s funds have capi­tal commit­ments of €3.6 billion. Since 2003, the company has inves­ted in more than 135 fast-growing companies.
Verdane’s team of more than 90 employees, with offices in Berlin, Copen­ha­gen, Helsinki, London, Oslo and Stock­holm, is commit­ted to being the best part­ner for growth capi­tal in Europe.

News

Frank­furt a. M. — Will­kie Farr & Gallag­her LLP advi­sed Insight Part­ners on the USD 40 million Series B finan­cing round of Alasco GmbH (“Alasco”) led by Insight Part­ners. Light­rock, an inves­tor from the UK, and other exis­ting share­hol­ders also parti­ci­pa­ted in the round.

Foun­ded in 2018 by Benja­min Günther, Anselm Bauer-Wohl and Sebas­tian Schuonl (Photo © Alasco), Alasco is a cloud-based finan­cial manage­ment plat­form for real estate projects that offers real-time plan­ning, colla­bo­ra­tion and control. Alasco’s Real Estate Success soft­ware enables clients to connect all sources of ESG and finan­cial data — from projec­ted costs to reve­nues and budgets to ESG crite­ria — and lever­a­ges cutting-edge tech­no­logy to auto­mate and support finan­cial and sustaina­bi­lity decision-making.

Insight Part­ners is a leading global venture capi­tal and private equity firm that invests in high-growth tech­no­logy and soft­ware scale-up compa­nies driving trans­for­ma­tive change in their indus­tries. Foun­ded in 1995, Insight Part­ners has inves­ted in more than 400 compa­nies world­wide and raised more than $30 billion in capi­tal commit­ments through a series of funds.

Advi­sor Insight Ventures: WILLKIE
The Will­kie team was led by part­ners Dr. Axel Wahl and Miriam Steets (both Corporate/M&A, Frank­furt) and included coun­sel Svenja Wach­tel (Liti­ga­tion) and Wulf Kring (Tax, both Frank­furt) as well as asso­cia­tes Tobias Gerigk, Denise Kamme­rer (both Corporate/M&A) and Dr. Nadine Kramer (Labor Law, all Frankfurt).

Will­kie Farr & Gallag­her LLP is an inter­na­tio­nal law firm of more than 1,000 lawy­ers with offices in Brussels, Chicago, Frank­furt, Hous­ton, London, Los Ange­les, Milan, New York, Palo Alto, Paris, Rome, San Fran­cisco and Washington.

News

Berlin — Berlin-based fintech company Banx­ware has raised €10 million in a seed expan­sion round led by Element Ventures. D4 Ventures, FinVC and Varen­gold Bank AG parti­ci­pate as co-inves­tors. All three VC firms have exten­sive port­fo­lios of fintech companies.

Banxware’s exis­ting inves­tors Force over Mass, VR Ventures and High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) have signi­fi­cantly increased their invest­ments as part of this round. This also applies to the indus­try experts who have alre­ady inves­ted. They are Jan Kaniess and Carl Frede­ric Zitscher, foun­ders of Payone; Alex Urdea, former prin­ci­pal at Upper90, a New York City-based debt and equity fund; and Paula Blaz­quez Solano, part­ner and co-foun­der of Credo Capi­tal Part­ners. The current funding round is the second that the fintech company has under­ta­ken in 2021.

In the course of the finan­cing round, Banx­ware also restruc­tu­red its advi­sory board. New advi­sory board members from the inves­tor side are Mike McFag­den, Filip Coen, Timo Fleig and Jakob Schreyer. The chair­man­ship of the advi­sory board was filled by Chris­toph Bornschein.

Banx­ware will use the invest­ment to further deve­lop its embedded finan­cial services offe­ring, grow its team and expand product deve­lo­p­ment, sales and marke­ting to digi­tal plat­forms across Europe. In the last 12 months, Banx­ware has mana­ged to inte­grate its solu­tion with major plat­forms such as Penta, Takeaway.com (Lieferando) and Prestashop. In Q1 2022, Banx­ware will inte­grate embedded finan­cing solu­ti­ons with 3 leading payment service provi­ders and seve­ral other plat­forms in Germany, and plans to expand its reach to key Euro­pean markets.

Banxware’s tech­no­logy enables any company to offer embedded finan­cing products to SME custo­mers. Banx­ware thus crea­tes the link between banks, digi­tal plat­forms and merchants, all of whom bene­fit from Open Banking and the latest technologies.

Plat­forms: Plat­forms can enhance their current merchant offe­ring with reve­nue-based finan­cing products to streng­then both custo­mer loyalty and their own compe­ti­tive posi­tion in the market­place — all without compro­mi­sing their platform’s user inter­face. This will create an addi­tio­nal reve­nue stream, enab­ling the plat­form to offer more compe­ti­tive prices for its core products.

SMEs: SME custo­mers bene­fit from a fast, conve­ni­ent and fully digi­tal finan­cing appr­oval process that allows them to access finan­cing within minutes.

Banks: Banx­ware offers banks access to a new set of custo­mers and acce­le­ra­ted, digi­ti­zed risk assess­ment to digi­tize lending and target under­ser­ved and digi­tally savvy custo­mers that tradi­tio­nal banks would not other­wise reach.

Unlike other finan­cial solu­ti­ons on the market, Banx­ware stands out because of its fully digi­tal, embedded approach:

Last Decem­ber, Banx­ware laun­ched its first embedded product, a white-label SME finan­cing solu­tion that is fully inte­gra­ted into the look and feel of the plat­form and allows plat­forms to offer liqui­dity to their merchants based on future reve­nue. The finan­cing decis­ion is made in real time and the disbur­se­ment is imme­diate. For this product, Banx­ware secu­red an initial loan volume of 100 million euros from Verei­nigte Volks­bank Raiff­ei­sen­bank eG.

The foun­ding team
Banx­ware was foun­ded in Septem­ber 2020 by Miriam Wohlf­arth (photo from Banx­ware) and Jens Roehr­born, both of whom are well-known in the indus­try. Miriam Wohlf­arth is proba­bly the best-known fintech foun­der in Germany. In 2009, she foun­ded Rate­pay, a leading payment provi­der for white-label buy-now-pay-later solu­ti­ons, which is part of the Nets‑A/S group, employs over 300 people* and is fully profitable.

Jens Roehr­born, CEO of Banx­ware, is a lawyer with more than 20 years of expe­ri­ence in the payments and banking indus­try. Jens has been a board member and/or consul­tant at PPRO, Deut­sche Handels­bank, Order­bird, Stocard, Lieferando, Rails­bank and many others.

Toge­ther with Fabian Heiß, former Head of Busi­ness Unit at Finleap, Nico­las Kipp, ex-Chief Risk Offi­cer at Rate­pay and Diogo Simoes, former Head of Engi­nee­ring at Klarna, Banx­ware is well equip­ped to shape the future of finan­cing solutions.

About Element Ventures
Element Ventures is a global venture capi­tal fund that invests in B2B finan­cial tech­no­logy compa­nies. Element’s part­ners are proud to have supported some of the best foun­ders and compa­nies in the indus­try. Element’s mission is to support bold foun­ders who are deve­lo­ping the finan­cial tech­no­logy of tomorrow.

About Force over Mass
Force Over Mass Capi­tal is an FCA-regu­la­ted venture capi­tal firm focu­sed on early-stage tech­no­logy invest­ments in the UK and Europe. The company invests in B2B inno­va­tions in four verti­cals: Fintech, Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence, SaaS and Indus­try 4.0. Force Over Mass opera­tes both seed and scale-up funds to support early-stage compa­nies on their growth journey.

About VR Ventures
The venture capi­tal fund was estab­lished to drive inno­va­tion in the finan­cial indus­try. VR Ventures invests in early-stage start­ups in the Euro­pean FinTech and PropTech sectors, as well as in inno­va­tive digi­tal solu­ti­ons for small and medium-sized enter­pri­ses. Many of VR Ventures’ inves­tors are part of the Volks­ban­ken Group. VR Ventures lever­a­ges this unique network and exper­tise to support its port­fo­lio compa­nies beyond the finan­cial. The fund manage­ment of VR Ventures and the VC firm Reds­tone work toge­ther as one team.

About High-Tech Gründerfonds
The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start-ups with growth poten­tial. With a volume of around EUR 900 million spread across three funds and an inter­na­tio­nal part­ner network, HTGF has supported more than 650 start-ups since 2005. His team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and start-up experts supports the young compa­nies with know-how, entre­pre­neu­rial spirit and passion. The focus is on high-tech start-ups in the fields of digi­tal tech, indus­trial tech, life scien­ces, chemis­try and rela­ted busi­ness areas. More than EUR 3.5 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in more than 1,800 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. In addi­tion, the fund has alre­ady successfully sold shares in more than 150 companies.

News

Frank­furt a.M. — McDer­mott Will & Emery advi­sed soft­ware inves­tor Main Capi­tal Part­ners on the acqui­si­tion of Form-Solu­ti­ons GmbH by mach­gruppe. The mach­gruppe was formed in 2021 through the merger of MACH AG with DATA-PLAN Compu­ter Consul­ting GmbH. MACH AG, an e‑government soft­ware and consul­ting company based in Lübeck, has been one of Main Capital’s port­fo­lio compa­nies since 2020.

Form-Solu­ti­ons GmbH, based in Karls­ruhe, Germany, has been helping German govern­ment agen­cies digi­tize their appli­ca­tion proces­ses for more than 20 years.

Main Capi­tal Part­ners is a leading soft­ware inves­tor in Bene­lux, DACH and Scan­di­na­via with over €2.2 billion in assets under manage­ment (as of Octo­ber 2021). Main has inves­ted in more than 120 soft­ware compa­nies to date.

The McDer­mott team led by part­ner Norman Wasse is parti­cu­larly expe­ri­en­ced with soft­ware and tech tran­sac­tions and had alre­ady advi­sed Main Capi­tal on both the acqui­si­tion of MACH AG and its acqui­si­tion of DATA-PLAN Compu­ter Consul­ting GmbH.

The McDer­mott team led by part­ner Dustin Schwerdt­fe­ger advi­sed Main Capi­tal in paral­lel in connec­tion with the acqui­si­tion financing.

Advi­sor Main Capi­tal Part­ners: McDer­mott Will & Emery, FFM

Norman Wasse, LL.M. (Corporate/M&A), Dustin Schwerdt­fe­ger (Finan­cing, Düssel­dorf; both Lead), Dr. Maxi­mi­lian Clos­ter­meyer (Real Estate), Marcus Fischer (Coun­sel; Tax), Dr. Gudrun Germa­kow­ski (Labor Law, Düssel­dorf), Dr. Chris­tian L. Masch (IT/IP, Munich), Dr. Alexa Ningel­gen (Public Law, Düssel­dorf); Asso­cia­tes: Dr. Marion von Grön­heim, Lisa Schick­ling, Elena Platte, LL.M., Elif Sultan Üzüm­ovali (Düssel­dorf; all Corporate/M&A), Lukas Deutz­mann (Labor Law, Düssel­dorf), Markus Hunken­schrö­der (Finan­cing, Düssel­dorf), Isabella Kätzl­meier (IT/IP, Munich)

News

Hano­ver — NORD Holding Unter­neh­mens­be­tei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft mbH (“NORD Holding”) has sold its shares in the RUF Group (“the Company”), one of the leading German suppli­ers of high-quality uphols­te­red and box-spring beds. The buyer is the invest­ment company Water­land Private Equity (“Water­land”). Details of the tran­sac­tion were not disclosed.

The RUF Group, based in Rastatt (RUF Betten) and Berlin (BRUNO Inte­rior), is a leading supplier of high-quality uphols­te­red and box-spring beds with a history span­ning almost 100 years. The company designs and manu­fac­tures uphols­te­red and box-spring beds, mattres­ses and access­ories, which are sold both in direct eCom­merce trade with its own online store and through statio­nary furni­ture stores or online stores of retail­ers in Germany and other EU count­ries. The products are marke­ted under two successful brands RUF Betten and BRUNO, each cove­ring diffe­rent custo­mer groups and price segments. With its 200 well-trai­ned employees, the RUF Group gene­ra­ted sales of appro­xi­m­ately EUR 60 million in 2020.

NORD Holding iden­ti­fied the RUF Group as a compel­ling invest­ment oppor­tu­nity and acqui­red the company in 2016 as part of a carve-out from the family-run Hüls Group. NORD Holding was able to build on its strong track record as a private equity inves­tor in succes­sion situa­tions and carve-outs.

In close coope­ra­tion with the commit­ted manage­ment team of the company, important deve­lo­p­ment steps of the RUF Group could be initia­ted and accom­pa­nied by NORD Holding:
Estab­lish a multi-brand stra­tegy to diver­sify custo­mer groups and price segments. Expan­sion of the supply chain, Targe­ted acqui­si­tion of the eCom­merce company BRUNO Inte­rior to build a multi-chan­nel stra­tegy. Prio­ri­tiza­tion of the digi­tiza­tion of the RUF Group in order to be able to offer digi­tal product support with the product confi­gu­ra­tor, among other things, and to better accom­pany the custo­mer jour­ney. Inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion by exten­ding geogra­phi­cal presence and licen­sing in Asian markets.

Ronald Grott, Member of the Execu­tive Board of NORD Holding:
“We are very proud of the growth and success that RUF Group has achie­ved over the last five years. This invest­ment is a great exam­ple of NORD Holding’s stra­tegy to support high quality compa­nies from the DACH region and manage­ment teams to expand inter­na­tio­nally and drive growth through trans­for­ma­tive M&A. We have no doubt that the RUF Group and its nearly 200 employees will conti­nue to deve­lop posi­tively under Waterland’s leader­ship. We would like to thank them all for their achie­ve­ments and wish them every success in the future.”

“Thanks to support from NORD Holding, we have been able to deve­lop excel­lently in recent years. Toge­ther with Water­land, we want to take this deve­lo­p­ment to the next level. We are looking forward to the coope­ra­tion and new, inno­va­tive ways,” says Heiner Goos­sens, Mana­ging Direc­tor of RUF Betten.

“Through the new part­ner­ship, we see even more value levers, espe­ci­ally in the area of D2C, also inter­na­tio­nally. We look forward to further streng­thening the BRUNO and RUF brands toge­ther with Water­land in the coming years,” adds Dr. Felix Baer, Mana­ging Direc­tor of BRUNO.

“RUF Betten has a broad, loyal custo­mer base, an ambi­tious work­force and expe­ri­en­ced manage­ment. With BRUNO, the group is also excel­lently posi­tio­ned in the direct-to-consu­mer segment and has been able to steadily gain market share in recent years,” explains Dr. Cars­ten Rahlfs, Mana­ging Part­ner at Water­land. “We intend to expand this growth path through orga­nic momen­tum and further acqui­si­ti­ons in the coming years. We look forward to a successful partnership.”

NORD Holding (repre­sen­ted by Ronald Grott and Moritz Stolp) was advi­sed on the tran­sac­tion by IMAP (M&A); CMS (Legal); KPMG (Finan­cial and Tax) and ERM (ESG).

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

Water­land has consis­t­ently outper­for­med with its invest­ments since its incep­tion in 1999. The firm ranks fifth globally in the 2020 HEC/Dow Jones Private Equity Perfor­mance Rankings and eighth among global private equity firms in the 2020 Preqin Consis­tent Perfor­mers in Global Private Equity & Venture Capi­tal Report. In addi­tion, Real Deals awarded Water­land the title of Pan-Euro­pean House of the Year 2020 at the PE Awards. www.waterland.de

About NORD Holding
With a history of more than 50 years and assets under manage­ment of € 2.5 billion, NORD Holding is one of the leading private equity asset manage­ment compa­nies in Germany. The focus is on the invest­ment areas of direct invest­ments and funds of funds. The focus of the direct busi­ness is on the struc­tu­ring and finan­cing of corpo­rate succes­sion models, the acqui­si­tion of group divisions/subsidiaries and expan­sion finan­cing for medium-sized compa­nies. Unlike most other finan­cial inves­tors who manage funds for a limi­ted period of time, NORD Holding opera­tes as a so-called “ever­green fund” with no time limit and invests off the balance sheet. Curr­ently, the company is directly inves­ted in more than 15 compa­nies in Germany and other German-spea­king count­ries. The other Fund Invest­ments busi­ness unit targets the small-cap segment of the Euro­pean private equity market and focu­ses on primary, secon­dary and co-invest­ments. In addi­tion, NORD Holding focu­ses on buyout mana­gers newly estab­lished in the market, opera­tio­nal invest­ment stra­te­gies and regu­larly acts as an anchor inves­tor. www.nordholding.de

News

Berlin — Deli­very Hero has acqui­red a majo­rity stake in GlovoApp23, S.L., based in Barce­lona, Spain. Deli­very Hero has alre­ady been a share­hol­der of Glovo since 2018 and curr­ently holds appro­xi­m­ately 43.8% of the outstan­ding shares (on an undi­luted basis). Under the share purchase agree­ment concluded between Deli­very Hero SE and the selling share­hol­ders, Deli­very Hero acqui­res a further approx. 39.4% of the outstan­ding shares in Glovo (on an undi­luted basis) and thus a majo­rity stake.

Deli­very Hero will acquire the shares in Glovo in exch­ange for the issu­ance of new Deli­very Hero shares. Under the tran­sac­tion, Glovo is valued at appro­xi­m­ately EUR 2.3 billion on a fully diluted basis and after taking into account cash and finan­cial liabi­li­ties. The tran­sac­tion is expec­ted to close in the second quar­ter of 2022 and is subject to custo­mary condi­ti­ons and regu­la­tory appr­ovals as well as merger control clearance in multi­ple jurisdictions.

Advi­sor Deli­very Hero: YPOG

Dr. Martin Scha­per (Co-Lead, Corporate/Transactions), Partner
Dr. Tim Schlös­ser (Co-Lead, Corporate/Transactions), Partner
Dr. Karen Freh­mel-Kück (Corporate/Transactions), Senior Associate

About Deli­very Hero SE

Deli­very Hero is a leading global local deli­very plat­form opera­ting in appro­xi­m­ately 50 count­ries within Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa. Laun­ched in 2011 with a grocery deli­very service, the company is a pioneer in Quick Commerce — the next gene­ra­tion of e‑commerce — and aims to deli­ver groce­ries and house­hold goods to custo­mers in less than an hour, often in as little as 10 to 15 minu­tes. Deli­very Hero is head­quar­te­red in Berlin and was included in the German bench­mark index DAX (Deut­scher Akti­en­in­dex) in 2020.

About Glovo

Foun­ded in Barce­lona in 2015, the company opera­tes in 25 count­ries within Europe, Central Asia as well as Africa and offers a cross-cate­gory app that connects custo­mers with local restau­rants, grocery stores, super­mar­kets, phar­macies and major retail­ers. The goal is to create easy and digi­tal access for people to all services in cities and local regi­ons. This allows users to acquire what they need anytime, anywhere.

About YPOG

YPOG is a specia­list tax and commer­cial law firm, opera­ting in the core areas of corpo­rate, funds, liti­ga­tion, tax, tran­sac­tions, IP/IT and nota­rial services. 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. www.ypog.law

News

Munich — EMERAM Capi­tal Part­ners, one of the leading invest­ment mana­gers for medium-sized compa­nies in the German-spea­king region, has gained Dr. Sven Oleow­nik as a further partner.

“With Dr. Sven Oleow­nik, we are streng­thening our team for the next phase of our deve­lo­p­ment as a part­ner for medium-sized growth compa­nies. We are firmly estab­lished in the market as a busi­ness deve­lo­p­ment part­ner for compa­nies in the technology/software, value-added services and new consu­mer stap­les sectors. We have known Mr. Oleow­nik for many years and know that he brings the exper­tise and network to play a powerful role in expan­ding our posi­tion,” explains Dr. Chris­tian Näther, Mana­ging Part­ner of EMERAM Capi­tal Part­ners. “So we are plea­sed to now welcome Dr. Sven Oleow­nik to the circle of our partners.”

For the last seven years, Dr. Sven Oleow­nik was Part­ner and Head of Germany at the invest­ment company Gimv in Munich. There he built up the current team. Prior to that, he spent twelve years at Deloitte as Mana­ging Part­ner in the Corpo­rate Finance Advi­sory prac­tice, advi­sing invest­ment compa­nies and corporations.

About EMERAM Capi­tal Partners
EMERAM is one of the leading invest­ment mana­gers for medium-sized compa­nies in German-spea­king count­ries. Funds advi­sed by EMERAM curr­ently provide more than 400 million euros of capi­tal for the deve­lo­p­ment of compa­nies. The port­fo­lio includes compa­nies from the Technology/Software, Value-added Services and New Consu­mer Stap­les sectors. www.emeram.com

EMERAM acts as a long-term busi­ness deve­lo­p­ment part­ner for its compa­nies and promo­tes the sustainable growth (orga­nic and inor­ga­nic) of the port­fo­lio compa­nies. Curr­ently, the port­fo­lio compri­ses six plat­form invest­ments that conti­nuously gene­rate double-digit orga­nic sales growth. In addi­tion, signi­fi­cant inor­ga­nic growth was achie­ved through more than 20 add-on acqui­si­ti­ons, enab­ling inter­na­tio­nal expansion.

News

Zurich/Bern — The tradi­tion-rich Sihl Group, head­quar­te­red in Oster­mun­di­gen, Bern, in the port­fo­lio of the invest­ment company Equis­tone since 2016, has acqui­red Dietz­gen Corpo­ra­tion from Tampa in the US state of Florida. This will make the globally active specia­list for the coating and finis­hing of papers, films and fabrics a leading supplier of coated high-end print media in the USA, where it will gain major logi­sti­cal advantages.

Sihl can look back on well over a hundred years of company history and, with sites in Switz­er­land, Germany and the USA, specia­li­zes in the coating and finis­hing of papers, films and fabrics for an inter­na­tio­nal custo­mer base. The successful supplier of inno­va­tive premium coatings in the high-growth digi­tal prin­ting market employs more than 350 people and supplies part­ners in a wide range of indus­tries — from auto­mo­tive to logi­stics and tourism to pack­a­ging. In mid-2016, funds advi­sed by Equis­tone acqui­red a majo­rity stake in the Group.

With the subsi­diary Sihl Inc. loca­ted in Fiske­ville in the US state of Rhode Island as a proces­sing and distri­bu­tion center, Sihl has an alre­ady strong posi­tion in the North and South Ameri­can markets. The product range extends from CAD media and synthe­tic print carri­ers to prin­ta­ble wall­pa­pers and flexi­ble pack­a­ging films. The invest­ment in Dietz­gen, a well-known provi­der of proces­sing and distri­bu­tion services for digi­tal print media such as papers, films and texti­les, will now signi­fi­cantly expand the company’s posi­tion in the US market. The priva­tely held company, foun­ded in 1989, has an exten­sive dealer network and is known for just-in-time deli­veries nati­on­wide thanks to exten­sive inven­tory in six parti­cu­larly conve­ni­ent loca­ti­ons. Its media brands Dietz­gen (CAD and Repro appli­ca­ti­ons), Magic (Signage), Museo (Photo and Fine­Art) and Vali­da­tion (Proof) are well established.

Combine strengths with excep­tio­nal offer

The acqui­si­tion of Dietz­gen marks an important mile­stone in the stra­te­gic deve­lo­p­ment of the Sihl Group and is also the first acqui­si­tion since the parti­ci­pa­tion of Equis­tone. “This add-on invest­ment not only streng­thens Sihl Group’s market posi­tion in the US quite signi­fi­cantly, but also impro­ves the frame­work condi­ti­ons for logi­stics and distri­bu­tion at the same time — the bene­fits for both sides cannot be over­loo­ked,” said Stefan Maser, Mana­ging Direc­tor and Part­ner at Equis­tone. “Toge­ther with manage­ment, we intend to leverage the addi­tio­nal tail­wind and shared exper­tise to drive growth and create syner­gies not only in the Ameri­cas,” added Equis­tone Direc­tor David Zahnd.

“This tran­sac­tion rein­forces our vision of being the leading provi­der of high-end coated print media in the U.S.,” said Peter K. Wahs­ner, CEO of Sihl Group. “Combi­ning Dietzgen’s conver­ting, logi­stics and distri­bu­tion capa­bi­li­ties with Sihl’s inno­va­tive products and level of service crea­tes an excep­tio­nal offe­ring for our custo­mers. The new plat­form not only allows us to drive growth in our estab­lished markets, but also to expand our flexi­ble pack­a­ging busi­ness in the U.S. thanks to Dietzgen’s stra­te­gi­cally loca­ted sites.” Dietz­gen Corpo­ra­tion CEO Darren Letang also welco­mes the invest­ment: “This is a great move. Our combi­ned strengths create a unique oppor­tu­nity for both compa­nies and their custo­mers. My manage­ment team and I look forward to the future in the Sihl Group.”

Respon­si­ble for the tran­sac­tion on the part of Equis­tone Part­ners Europe are Stefan Maser (photo), David Zahnd and Roman E. Hegglin.
Equis­tone was advi­sed on this tran­sac­tion by Bär & Karrer (Legal CH, Struc­tu­ring, Tax), Munich Stra­tegy (Commer­cial), Deloitte (Finan­cial) and Wuersch & Gering (Legal and Tax US). The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price.

About Equis­tone Part­ners Europe
Equis­tone Part­ners Europe is one of the most active Euro­pean equity inves­tors with a team of more than 40 invest­ment specia­lists in seven offices in Germany, Switz­er­land, the Nether­lands, France and the UK. Equis­tone prima­rily invests in estab­lished medium-sized compa­nies with a good market posi­tion, above-average growth poten­tial and an enter­prise value of between EUR 50 and 500 million. Since its foun­da­tion, equity has been inves­ted in around 170 tran­sac­tions in the DACH region and the Nether­lands, mainly mid-market buy-outs. The port­fo­lio curr­ently compri­ses around 50 compa­nies across Europe, inclu­ding 20 active holdings in Germany, Switz­er­land, the Nether­lands and Belgium. Equis­tone is curr­ently inves­t­ing from its sixth fund, which closed in March 2018 with €2.8 billion.

For more infor­ma­tion, visit www.equistone.ch

About Sihl — SIMPLY THE BETTER SOLUTION
The Sihl Group is the leading quality supplier of prin­ta­ble media in the fast-growing global digi­tal prin­ting market. The exten­sive range includes inno­va­tive premium papers for photo and fine art prin­ting, large-format media for inkjet and laser prin­ting, as well as ther­mal paper and self-adhe­sive products. Sihl also produ­ces coated papers and films for indus­trial appli­ca­ti­ons. As a high-perfor­mance, inter­na­tio­nally active company, Sihl has crucial tech­no­lo­gi­cal know-how and broad, in-depth indus­try exper­tise. The Group streng­thens the market posi­tion of its custo­mers with future-proof product solu­ti­ons and makes a decisive contri­bu­tion to impro­ving value crea­tion with inno­va­tive, process-support­ing services. Sihl manu­fac­tures in compli­ance with all ecolo­gi­cal, legal, social and occu­pa­tio­nal safety standards.

For more infor­ma­tion, visit www.sihl.com

News

Munich — The foun­der and CEO of SCHWIND eye-tech-solu­ti­ons GmbH, Mr. Rolf Schwind, was advi­sed by the Munich and Frank­furt offices of the inter­na­tio­nal law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP in connec­tion with the sale of the majo­rity stake in SCHWIND-eye-tech-solu­ti­ons GmbH previously held by the finan­cial inves­tor Ardian. Ardian sells its stake to the private equity invest­ment company Adagia Part­ners, which thus beco­mes the new majo­rity shareholder.

The manage­ment team around Mr. Rolf Schwind (CEO), Mr. Dome­nic von Planta (COO) and Mr. Dirk Rosen­lö­cher (CFO) will conti­nue to lead the busi­ness of the SCHWIND Group. Weil had alre­ady advi­sed Mr. Rolf Schwind on the entry of Ardian in 2016.

SCHWIND eye-tech-solu­ti­ons GmbH, loca­ted in Klein­ost­heim, Germany, is one of the leading specia­lists for refrac­tive and thera­peu­tic corneal surgery and eye laser systems. The Group deve­lops, manu­fac­tures and markets a compre­hen­sive port­fo­lio of products for the treat­ment of ametro­pia and corneal diseases.

The Weil tran­sac­tion team was led by Munich Corpo­rate Part­ner Dr. Barbara Jagers­ber­ger (photo ) and supported by Coun­sel Benja­min Rapp (Tax, Frank­furt) and Asso­cia­tes Madleen Düdder, Maxi­mi­lian Schmitt, Stef­fen Giolda (all Corpo­rate, Munich), Lukas Reisch­mann (Tax, Frank­furt) and Mareike Pfeif­fer (Labor Law, Frankfurt).

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

 

News

Berlin — A YPOG team led by Daniel Resas and Niklas Ulrich advi­sed the Fede­ral State of Hesse on the liqui­da­tion of crypto assets with a market value of over € 100 million. YPOG prima­rily assis­ted the respon­si­ble Attor­ney General’s Office in Frank­furt am Main in nego­tia­ting and conclu­ding a corre­spon­ding frame­work agree­ment with Bank­haus Scheich Wert­pa­pier­spe­zia­list AG. 

Bank­haus Scheich Wert­pa­pier­spe­zia­list AG acts as a market maker in the context of market-driven sales. The frame­work agree­ment estab­lishes a long-term part­ner­ship and thus also serves as a basis for future explo­ita­ti­ons of seized crypto assets by the State of Hesse.

“In any case, this is the first time in Germany that such a high-volume liqui­da­tion of seized crypto assets has occur­red. This has posed major chal­lenges for those invol­ved, and not just in terms of selling off. Above all, we had to break prac­ti­cally new ground in deal­ing with the money laun­de­ring legal requi­re­ments of the trading parti­ci­pants. I am certain that we have crea­ted a new market stan­dard here for the explo­ita­tion of state-seized crypto assets,” said YPOG part­ner Daniel Resas (photo).

Advi­sor State of Hesse


Daniel Resas
 (Co-Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Asso­cia­ted Partner, 
Dr. Niklas Ulrich
 (co-lead, regu­la­tory), Associate, 
Dr. Jörn Wöbke
 (Tran­sac­tions), Part­ner

About YPOG

YPOG is a specia­list tax and commer­cial law firm, opera­ting in the core areas of corpo­rate, funds, liti­ga­tion, tax, tran­sac­tions, IP/IT and nota­rial services. 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. Today, YPOG employs more than 70 expe­ri­en­ced lawy­ers, tax advi­sors, tax specia­lists and a notary in three offices in Berlin, Hamburg and Colo­gne. www.ypog.law

News

Singen — Oppen­hoff advi­sed the foun­ders and share­hol­ders of the Suno­vis Group on the sale of the company to asset mana­ger Brook­field. The sale took place within the frame­work of a compe­ti­tive bidding process set up by Lazard. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose details of the transaction.

Suno­vis, based in Singen, Germany, has successfully deve­lo­ped more than 30 solar projects in Germany and other Euro­pean count­ries and has a current deve­lo­p­ment pipe­line of appro­xi­m­ately 1.7 GWp of solar projects, of which appro­xi­m­ately 600 MWp are in advan­ced and mid-stage deve­lo­p­ment. Suno­vis’ current manage­ment team will conti­nue to lead the company.

Brook­field is a global asset mana­ger and one of the world’s largest opera­tors of wind and solar assets with a global network and exper­tise in rene­wa­ble energy opera­ti­ons and development.

The Oppen­hoff team led by Till Liebau included Lisa Schmitt, Marcel Marko­vic, Moritz Schmitz, Malte Menken (all M&A / Private Equity), Dr. Gunnar Knorr (Tax), Anja Dombrow­sky (Labor Law), Dr. Simon Spang­ler (Anti­trust) and Stephan Müller (Foreign Trade Law).

About Oppen­hoff

The full-service law firm Oppen­hoff finds indus­try-speci­fic solu­ti­ons for groups, large owner-mana­ged compa­nies and finan­cial inves­tors. More than 90 attor­neys advise on all major areas of busi­ness and tax law.

News

Berlin — Berlin-based crypto advi­sory F5 Crypto Capi­tal has laun­ched a new open-ended German crypto fund for insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors. Through its subsi­diary F5 Crypto Manage­ment GmbH, quali­fied inves­tors are enab­led to make invest­ments in the crypto market. — A YPOG team led by part­ner Jens Kretz­schmann provi­ded compre­hen­sive legal and tax advice to F5 Crypto Capital.

The new F5 Crypto Fonds 1 InvAG m.v.K. for semi-profes­sio­nal and profes­sio­nal inves­tors is accep­ting subscrip­ti­ons with imme­diate effect and aims to achieve high diver­si­fi­ca­tion through a targe­ted selec­tion of crypto stocks. Funda­men­tal analy­ses of the analy­sis team, with many years of expe­ri­ence in the crypto market, provide the basis of the invest­ment stra­tegy of the new fund. A signi­fi­cant portion of the fund also pursues an index-based invest­ment stra­tegy. Thus, the over­all stra­tegy covers broad parts of the crypto market, such as tokens from the Decen­tra­li­zed Finance (DeFi) sector, meta­verse appli­ca­ti­ons and Web 3.0 projects. The open fund struc­ture repres­ents a parti­cu­lar advan­tage for inves­tors. F5 Crypto Fund 1 offers weekly subscrip­tion and redemp­tion, with share units viewa­ble in the bank cust­ody account by ISIN.

“We are very plea­sed to be invol­ved in the estab­lish­ment of this, for the German crypto market, signi­fi­cant fund and to be able to support again with our exper­tise in the field of fund struc­tu­ring in the imple­men­ta­tion of inno­va­tive ideas. A German open-ended crypto fund product in the form of an InvAG m.v.K. has been miss­ing on the market so far,” said part­ner Jens Kretzschmann.

Advi­sor F5 Crypto Capi­tal: YPOG
Jens Kretz­schmann (lead/structuring, tax), Partner
Lenn­art Lorenz (Regu­la­tory), Partner
Dr. Julian Albrecht (Struc­tu­ring, Tax), Asso­cia­ted Partner
Dr. Saskia Bong (Struc­tu­ring, Taxes), Associate

About F5 Crypto Capital
F5 Crypto Capi­tal opera­tes a crypto fund, crypto index and crypto rese­arch divi­sion for semi-profes­sio­nal and profes­sio­nal inves­tors. F5 Crypto was foun­ded in Berlin in 2018, and its foun­ders are among the leading crypto asset mana­gers in Germany today.

About YPOG
YPOG is a specia­list tax and commer­cial law firm, opera­ting in the core areas of corpo­rate, funds, liti­ga­tion, tax, tran­sac­tions, IP/IT and nota­rial services. 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 employs more than 70 expe­ri­en­ced lawy­ers, tax advi­sors, tax specia­lists and a notary in three offices in Berlin, Hamburg and Colo­gne. For more infor­ma­tion: www.ypog.law .

News

Berlin — Equity and debt finan­cing achie­ved by ever­phone amounts to $200 million. Growth inves­tor Cadence Growth Capi­tal led the equity finan­cing as lead inves­tor. In addi­tion, exis­ting inves­tors Deut­sche Tele­kom, Alley­Corp and signals Venture Capi­tal again inves­ted in the Berlin-based startup. The addi­tio­nal debt capi­tal in the form of green loans under a warehouse finan­cing struc­ture comes from Deut­sche Bank and The Phonenix Insu­rance Company. YPOG again advi­sed smart­phone-as-a-service provi­der ever­phone in this finan­cing round.

While ever­phone relied on the advice of Hogan Lovells part­ner Diet­mar Helms’ team for the debt finan­cing struc­ture, as in the past, YPOG provi­ded compre­hen­sive advice on the equity finan­cing round as well as corpo­rate law aspects of the debt finan­cing. Follo­wing the successful comple­tion of the finan­cing round, Cadence Growth Capi­tal is now everphone’s largest shareholder.

With the fresh capi­tal, the company plans to further advance the circu­lar economy in the field of mobile devices, which aims to fully or parti­ally reuse raw mate­ri­als to conserve finite resour­ces such as rare earths and other compon­ents. In order to further expand market share, the new finan­cial resour­ces will be used, among other things, for acti­vi­ties to acquire new busi­ness custo­mers. In addi­tion, the company says the money will also go toward further inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion, staff augmen­ta­tion, product deve­lo­p­ment and growth of its active device fleet, which alre­ady exceeds 100,000 devices.

ever­phone recei­ved compre­hen­sive legal advice from a YPOG team co-led by part­ners Benja­min Ullrich (photo) and Matthias Kres­ser. The Berlin-based company had alre­ady relied on a team led by Benja­min Ullrich for the previous capi­tal increase in mid-2020.

“We are plea­sed to conti­nue to accom­pany the ever­phone team on its impres­sive jour­ney, espe­ci­ally because everphone’s flexi­ble rental model (“device-as-a-service”) has a parti­cu­lar impact on our approach to finite resour­ces,” said YPOG part­ner Benja­min Ullrich. “We are alre­ady exci­ted about the next steps and hope that ever­phone will also serve as a role model for other start­ups in the important field of circu­lar economy,” adds YPOG part­ner Matthias Kresser.

About ever­phone

ever­phone is a one-stop solu­tion for corpo­rate smart­phones. Since 2016, the startup has been offe­ring an inno­va­tive concept for the procu­re­ment, manage­ment and inte­gra­tion of mobile devices such as smart­phones and tablets in the corpo­rate context. The “Phone as a Service” model gives employees a free choice of company phones, allows flexi­ble upgrades and repla­ce­ment of devices, and includes both DSGVO-compli­ant mobile device manage­ment (MDM) and a rapid repla­ce­ment service in the event of defects. The port­fo­lio includes devices from Apple, Samsung, Nokia, Google and Fair­phone. Since Decem­ber 2020, ever­phone has been an offi­cial B2B part­ner of Samsung Elec­tro­nics’ DaaS stra­tegy in Germany. ever­phone was foun­ded by former CHECK24 execu­tive Jan Dzulko and employs over 170 people in Berlin. In addi­tion to nume­rous start­ups and SMEs, ever­phone custo­mers also include global play­ers such as Henkel, Ernst & Young and TIER Mobi­lity. Inves­tors include Dr. Henrich Blase (foun­der of CHECK24), Kevin Ryan (foun­der of MongoDB/ Busi­ness­In­si­der), Cadence Growth Capi­tal, Deut­sche Tele­kom and signals Venture Capital.

Consul­tant ever­phone: YPOG
Dr. Benja­min Ullrich (Co-Lead/­Tran­sac­tion­s­/­Cor­po­rate), Partner
Matthias Kres­ser (Co-Lead/­Tran­sac­tion­s­/­Ven­ture Debt), Asso­cia­ted Partner
Emma Peters (Transactions/Corporate), Senior Associate
Chris­tiane Schnitz­ler (Transactions/Corporate), Associate
Bilal Tirsi (Transactions/Venture Debt), Associate

About YPOG

YPOG is a specia­list tax and commer­cial law firm, opera­ting in the core areas of corpo­rate, funds, liti­ga­tion, tax, tran­sac­tions, IP/IT and nota­rial services. 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 employs more than 70 expe­ri­en­ced lawy­ers, tax advi­sors, tax specia­lists and a notary in three offices in Berlin, Hamburg and Colo­gne. www.ypog.law

News

Munich — EQT Ventures leads a Euro 12 million finan­cing round at Berlin-based online plat­form Time­l­ess, through which shares of luxury goods and coll­ec­ti­bles can be sold and traded. In addi­tion to EQT Ventures, other backers include Porsche Ventures, C3 EOS VC (FinLab EOS VC Fund) and La Roca Capi­tal. — CEO Jan Karnath foun­ded the company in 2018 toge­ther with Andreas Joeb­ges (CTO) and Malte Häus­ler (CFO). They laun­ched the plat­form Time­l­ess in Febru­ary 2021.

Time­l­ess, a brand of Berlin-based New Hori­zon GmbH, is a digi­tal plat­form for selling and trading shares in luxury goods and memo­ra­bi­lia through toke­niza­tion, provi­ding access to this asset class for a broad base of retail inves­tors. The company is thus making the market for rare coll­ec­ti­bles — inclu­ding watches, art, vehic­les, snea­k­ers and wine — acces­si­ble to ever­yone, using block­chain tech­no­logy to docu­ment digi­tal tran­sac­tions in a relia­ble, traceable and secure way. Users can buy and trade shares start­ing at 50 euros via the Time­l­ess app.

EQT Ventures is the venture capi­tal fund of EQT, a purpose-driven global invest­ment orga­niza­tion. EQT Ventures invests in fast-growing, inno­va­tive and tech­no­logy-driven compa­nies in all sectors world­wide, with a focus on Europe and the US.

The DLA Piper team was led by part­ner Andreas Füch­sel (Private Equity/M&A, Frank­furt). The core team included Senior Asso­ciate Domi­nik Wege­ner (Corporate/M&A, Hamburg) and Asso­ciate Phil­ipp Meyer (Private Equity/M&A), and also included Part­ner Dennis Kunschke (Finance), Coun­sel Miray Kavruk (IPT), Senior Asso­cia­tes Elena Bach­mann (Finance), Juliane Poss (Capi­tal Markets, all Frank­furt), Florian Jeske (Employ­ment), Asso­cia­tes David Sanchio Schele (Data Protec­tion, both Hamburg) and Theresa Schenk (Capi­tal Markets, Frankfurt).

About DLA Piper

DLA Piper is one of the world’s leading commer­cial law firms, with offices in more than 40 count­ries in Africa, Asia, Austra­lia, Europe, the Middle East, and North and South America. In Germany, DLA Piper is repre­sen­ted by more than 250 lawy­ers at its offices in Frank­furt, Hamburg, Colo­gne and Munich. In certain juris­dic­tions, this infor­ma­tion may be conside­red attor­ney adver­ti­sing. For more infor­ma­tion, visit: www.dlapiper.com

News

Munich, Germany — Blick­feld, a Munich-based provi­der of LiDAR sensor tech­no­logy and percep­tion soft­ware, announ­ced the expan­sion of its Series A finan­cing to $31 million. New Future Capi­tal (NFC), a private equity firm that provi­des growth capi­tal prima­rily in Asia, North America and Europe, was won as a new inves­tor. In addi­tion, all exis­ting inves­tors parti­ci­pa­ted in the round, inclu­ding Bayern Kapi­tal, Conti­nen­tal, Fluxu­nit — ams OSRAM Ventures, High-Tech Grün­der­fonds, Tengel­mann Ventures and UVC Partners.

New invest­ment supports the deve­lo­p­ment of new products for auto­no­mous driving and nume­rous indus­trial appli­ca­ti­ons and the inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion of the busi­ness. The finan­cing expan­sion comes at a time when Blick­feld is growing signi­fi­cantly and expan­ding into new markets. The company plans to conti­nue deve­lo­ping sensors and soft­ware that will further advance the relia­ble acqui­si­tion and use of 3D data.

Foun­ded by Dr. Mathias Müller, Dr. sc. Florian Petit and Rolf Wojtech in 2017, Blick­feld deve­lops and produ­ces LiDAR sensors and percep­tion soft­ware. The solu­ti­ons provide high-reso­lu­tion three-dimen­sio­nal envi­ron­men­tal infor­ma­tion and enable nume­rous appli­ca­ti­ons ranging from auto­no­mous trans­por­ta­tion and mobi­lity to smart cities, indus­trial appli­ca­ti­ons and secu­rity applications.

Since the last funding, Blick­feld has made signi­fi­cant progress in brin­ging products to market, inclu­ding the volume launch of the versa­tile Cube 1 and Cube Range 1 3D LiDAR sensors for nume­rous indus­trial appli­ca­ti­ons. In addi­tion, the company has rolled out seve­ral large-scale deploy­ment projects, such as passen­ger flow capture and analy­sis at airports and bulk mate­rial volume measu­re­ment in product warehouses.

In addi­tion to the company’s current distri­bu­tion part­ners in 13 count­ries, inclu­ding Germany, Canada, China and Japan, the new round of funding will support the opening of offices in the U.S. and Asia, furthe­ring Blickfeld’s inter­na­tio­nal presence. The new offices will serve to expand an inte­gra­tor network to make products available faster and in grea­ter quan­ti­ties for appli­ca­ti­ons world­wide and to serve growing demand in the key markets of the U.S. and Asia. In addi­tion to growth in new markets, the number of employees will also increase signi­fi­cantly, with a focus on the sales team.

In early 2022, Blick­feld will expand its product port­fo­lio to include new percep­tion soft­ware with features such as object reco­gni­tion, clas­si­fi­ca­tion, track­ing and coun­ting. Appli­ca­tion areas include indus­trial, smart traf­fic, secu­rity, drones and crowd analy­tics. The latter repres­ents a major oppor­tu­nity for the global appli­ca­tion of field-of-view tech­no­logy, provi­ding important data on conges­tion, crow­ding, waiting times, and more — all while main­tai­ning privacy.

“The addi­tio­nal funding in this invest­ment round confirms inves­tors’ contin­ued confi­dence in our vision to capture and analyze the world with a compre­hen­sive solu­tion. We are proud that our products are now used by compa­nies and orga­niza­ti­ons all over the world! The strong network of our new inves­tor NFC in Asia and the US will be of great value for Blick­feld to gain a fast and sustainable foot­hold in the US and Asia,” Dr. Mathias Müller, co-foun­der and CEO of Blickfeld

“As a long-time part­ner, we have supported Blick­feld from the begin­ning. By combi­ning Blickfeld’s proprie­tary MEMS tech­no­logy with our indus­try-leading 905 nm edge emit­ting laser compon­ents, Blickfeld’s sensors demons­trate the capa­bi­li­ties of LiDAR tech­no­logy in real-world use cases and at indus­trial scale. We look forward to conti­nuing to support Blickfeld’s growth trajec­tory in the future.” Jörg Strauß, Senior Vice Presi­dent & Gene­ral Mana­ger Busi­ness Line Visua­liza­tion & Laser at ams OSRAM.

About field of view

Blick­feld, foun­ded in Munich in 2017, is a provi­der of 3D LiDAR products and percep­tion soft­ware for auto­no­mous vehic­les and IoT appli­ca­ti­ons. Blick­feld LiDAR products meet the highest perfor­mance requi­re­ments in terms of power, cost and size needed for the mass market. The company is finan­ci­ally supported by Bayern Kapi­tal, Conti­nen­tal, Fluxu­nit — ams OSRAM Ventures, High-Tech Grün­der­fonds, New Future Capi­tal, Tengel­mann Ventures and UVC Part­ners. — www.blickfeld.com

About Bayern Kapital
Bayern Kapi­tal GmbH, head­quar­te­red in Lands­hut, was estab­lished in 1995 as a wholly owned subsi­diary of LfA Förder­bank Bayern on the initia­tive of the Bava­rian state govern­ment. As the venture/growth capi­tal company of the Free State of Bava­ria, Bayern Kapi­tal provi­des equity capi­tal to the foun­ders of inno­va­tive high-tech compa­nies and inno­va­tive tech­no­logy compa­nies in Bava­ria. Bayern Kapi­tal mana­ges specia­li­zed invest­ment funds with an invest­ment volume of around 700 million euros. To date, Bayern Kapi­tal has inves­ted over 350 million euros of venture capi­tal in around 300 inno­va­tive, tech­no­logy-orien­ted compa­nies from a wide range of sectors, inclu­ding life scien­ces, soft­ware & IT, mate­ri­als & new mate­ri­als, nano­tech­no­logy and envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­logy. Bayern Kapi­tal has supported the compa­nies EOS Elec­tro Opti­cal Systems, conga­tec, Morpho­Sys, voxel­jet, parcel­Lab, SimS­cale and many others, some of which are listed on the stock exch­ange and are now market leaders in their sectors, from an early stage in the realiza­tion of their projects and also in large-volume finan­cing rounds. As a result, more than 8,000 jobs have been perma­nently crea­ted in Bava­ria in sustainable compa­nies. www.bayernkapital.de

About Conti­nen­tal
Conti­nen­tal deve­lops pionee­ring tech­no­lo­gies and services for the sustainable and connec­ted mobi­lity of people and their goods. Foun­ded in 1871, the tech­no­logy company provi­des safe, effi­ci­ent, intel­li­gent and afforda­ble solu­ti­ons for vehic­les, machi­nery, traf­fic and trans­por­ta­tion. Conti­nen­tal gene­ra­ted sales of €37.7 billion in 2020 and curr­ently employs more than 192,000 people in 58 count­ries and markets. The company cele­bra­ted its 150th anni­ver­sary on Octo­ber 8, 2021. www.continental.com/de/

About Fluxu­nit — ams OSRAM Ventures
Fluxu­nit — ams OSRAM Ventures is the inde­pen­dent venture capi­tal unit of OSRAM. Buil­ding on OSRAM’s market leader­ship, the Fluxu­nit invests in start-ups in future tech­no­lo­gies that go beyond OSRAM’s core busi­ness and bring with them the poten­tial to open up new appli­ca­ti­ons and signi­fi­cantly change busi­ness models. The goal of the Fluxu­nit is to provide start­ups with signi­fi­cant support, both in terms of capi­tal and access to OSRAM’s resour­ces and network, in order to acce­le­rate their growth.
www.fluxunit.de

About New Future Capi­tal (NFC)
New Future Capi­tal is one of the best known inves­tors in Grea­ter China and focu­ses on the auto­mo­tive sector with offices in Taipei and Shang­hai. Lever­aging its indus­try exper­tise and opera­tio­nal capa­bi­li­ties, the company aims to part­ner with busi­nesses to trans­form and grow toge­ther amid rapid inno­va­tion. With a hands-on approach at stra­te­gic and opera­tio­nal levels, NFC supports busi­ness values and stri­ves for long-term success. www.newfuturecapital.com

About Tengel­mann Ventures
Tengel­mann Ventures has been inves­t­ing in start-ups in the consu­mer inter­net, digi­tal services and emer­ging tech­no­lo­gies sectors since 2009. With around 50 invest­ments, Tengel­mann Ventures is one of the most important venture capi­tal inves­tors in Germany. Its best-known invest­ments include compa­nies such as Zalando (IPO), Deli­very Hero (IPO), Klarna, Scalable Capi­tal and data Artisans.
www.tengelmann-ventures.com

About UVC Partners
UVC Part­ners is a Munich and Berlin based early-stage venture capi­tal firm inves­t­ing in Euro­pean B2B start­ups within the enter­prise soft­ware, indus­trial tech­no­lo­gies and mobi­lity sectors. The fund usually invests between €0.5 million and €5 million at the outset and up to €20 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 center for inno­va­tion and busi­ness crea­tion. With over 300 employees and more than 100 indus­try part­ners, Unter­neh­mer­TUM can draw on many years of expe­ri­ence in buil­ding young compa­nies. This colla­bo­ra­tion allows UVC Part­ners to provide start­ups with unique access to talent, indus­try clients and other finan­cial part­ners. www.uvcpartners.com

About High-Tech Gründerfonds
The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start-ups with growth poten­tial. With a volume of around EUR 900 million spread across three funds and an inter­na­tio­nal part­ner network, HTGF has supported more than 650 start-ups since 2005. His team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and start-up experts supports the young compa­nies with know-how, entre­pre­neu­rial spirit and passion. The focus is on high-tech start-ups in the fields of digi­tal tech, indus­trial tech, life scien­ces, chemis­try and rela­ted busi­ness areas. More than EUR 3.5 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in more than 1,800 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. In addi­tion, the fund has alre­ady successfully sold shares in more than 140 companies.

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