ALTERNATIVE FINANCING FORMS
FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND INVESTORS

Author: Tatjana Anderer

Gründerin des FYB-Verlag
News

Munich — happy­brush, the Munich-based start-up for elec­tric tooth­brushes and sustainable oral hygiene products, secu­res around EUR 4 million in a Series A finan­cing round. BayBG as an exis­ting inves­tor and the family holding company of the Haniel Group as a newly acqui­red inves­tor parti­ci­pa­ted in the finan­cing. LUTZ | ABEL provi­ded compre­hen­sive advice to BayBG in this finan­cing round.

With over five million products sold, the young company is one of the fastest growing compa­nies in Europe, accor­ding to the Finan­cial Times, and is even ranked number 1 in the health sector. The start-up is also making a name for itself in terms of social commit­ment and sustaina­bi­lity and has, for exam­ple, been certi­fied as a sustainable B‑corporation and awarded a “very good” rating by Ökotest (Super­Green, 04/2021). With the fresh money from the inves­tors, happy­brush would like to posi­tion itself more stron­gly on the German market, for exam­ple with alre­ady announ­ced inno­va­tions such as the tooth­brush connec­ted to an app, as well as expand into neigh­bor­ing Euro­pean count­ries with a basic product range.

Advi­sor BayBG: LUTZ | ABEL Rechts­an­walts PartG mbB
The consul­ting team around Jan-Phil­lip Kunz, LL.M. (lead) and Dr. Bern­hard Noreisch, LL.M. (both VC/M&A) consis­ted of Ute Schenn, Nina Theresa Mutsch­ler (both Commer­cial), Dr. Corne­lius Renner, Isabelle Hohl (both IP Law), Clau­dia Knuth, Xenia Verspohl (both Labor Law) and Chris­toph Rich­ter (Anti­trust Law).

News

Munich — KORIAN Deutsch­land AG has acqui­red the ‘Inten­siv­pfle­ge­dienst Lebens­wert’ (IPDL). Bird & Bird LLP advi­sed KRIAN on this transaction.

For KORIAN, one of Europe’s leading provi­ders of care and nursing services for seni­ors, the inte­gra­tion of IPDL into its network was another important step in diver­si­fy­ing its offe­ring in care and nursing services for seni­ors and those in need of care. KORIAN also offers long-term care faci­li­ties, specialty clinics, assis­ted living, and home care and services, among other services. In addi­tion to Germany and France, the KORIAN Group is also active in Belgium, Italy, the Nether­lands and Spain.

IPDL’s services include inten­sive and respi­ra­tory care at home or in special resi­den­tial commu­ni­ties, as well as an outpa­ti­ent service for senior care at home. In addi­tion, the company’s own “Lebens­wert Academy” offers exten­sive advan­ced and further trai­ning in the field of inten­sive and respi­ra­tory care.

IPDL was foun­ded in 2009 by the married couple Martina and Rudolf Wied­mann and employs around 280 people. The care service is active in parts of Baden-Würt­tem­berg and Bava­ria. Rudolf Wied­mann remains with the company as Mana­ging Direc­tor. His wife as well as the whole manage­ment team are still active in the manage­ment and support KORIAN Germany with their know-how.

Advi­sor to KORIAN Deutsch­land AG: Bird & Bird, Munich
Lead Part­ner Stefan Münch, Coun­sel Michael Gaßner, Asso­ciate Marcel Nurk (all Corporate/M&A, Munich) and Asso­ciate Jan Medele (Corporate/M&A, Düssel­dorf), Part­ner Dr. Alex­an­der Duis­berg and Asso­ciate Goek­han Kosak (both Commer­cial, Munich), Part­ner Thomas Hey and Asso­ciate Alisa Nent­wig (both Labor Law, Düssel­dorf), Part­ner Dr. Stephan Wald­heim and Asso­ciate Marcio da Silva Lima (both Anti­trust, Düssel­dorf), Part­ner Dr. Markus Körner (Trade­mark, Munich).

Bird & Bird alre­ady advi­sed KORIAN Deutsch­land AG last year on the acqui­si­tion of the care divi­sion of Quali­vita AG.

News

Berlin — Seven Senders, the leading deli­very plat­form for parcel ship­ping in Europe, looks back on a successful 2020 and has closed a Series C follow-on round of €32 million. As in the previous finan­cing round, the lead inves­tor is Digi­tal+ Part­ners, which toge­ther with btov is cove­ring the finan­cing needs of the Berlin-based scale-up. Seven Senders will use the inflow of capi­tal for further tech­ni­cal expan­sion and to conti­nue its inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion stra­tegy. Among other things, there are plans to support the Euro­pean busi­ness of Chinese and US online retail­ers with central service hubs.

With its focus on cross-border ship­ping, Seven Senders bene­fi­ted greatly from the expan­sion of Euro­pean online retail­ing last year. Sales have doubled since March 2020. In line with its growth target, the company recently opened new coun­try offices in Amster­dam, Vienna and Madrid. In addi­tion, Seven Senders has been offe­ring a solu­tion for ship­ping to the UK since Febru­ary 2021, ensu­ring the smooth move­ment of goods after Brexit.

With its network of over 100 local premium parcel deli­very compa­nies, the Seven Senders deli­very plat­form opti­mi­zes retail­ers’ ship­ping proces­ses to all Euro­pean count­ries. The entire network is acces­si­ble via a stan­dar­di­zed inter­face. With mini­mal comple­xity, the best possi­ble ship­ping in Europe is ensu­red for each package. This provi­des every ship­per with fast, relia­ble and afforda­ble deli­very, adapted to the needs of the end custo­mer. Excel­lent moni­to­ring, track­ing, and ship­ping-rela­ted commu­ni­ca­ti­ons round out the custo­mer expe­ri­ence. The fact that the solu­tion has been well recei­ved by the market is demons­tra­ted by the nine-figure annual sales that have now been achie­ved, as well as well-known custo­mers such as ASOS, Shop Apotheke, Lilly­doo, Mister Spex, Juniqe, Flaconi, West­wing, Best Secret, food­spring, Limango and Thomann.

Dr. Johan­nes Plehn, foun­der and co-CEO of Seven Senders: “Last year, we consis­t­ently pursued our growth stra­tegy. Thanks to invest­ments in tech­no­logy and employees, we were able to help our custo­mers cope with the enorm­ous increase in demand in online retail­ing in the wake of the Corona pande­mic. We will conti­nue to take advan­tage of the posi­tive market deve­lo­p­ment and expand our services, also with a view to retail­ers outside the Euro­pean Econo­mic Area. We are placing maxi­mum focus on this development.”

Patrick Beitel, Mana­ging Direc­tor and Part­ner of Digi­tal+ Part­ners: “Seven Senders’ sophisti­ca­ted tech­no­logy and the high level of logi­stics exper­tise of all parties invol­ved convin­ced us from the very begin­ning. Our assess­ment has been more than confirmed over the past 18 months: In expan­ding its inter­na­tio­nal ship­ping, Seven Senders has taken advan­tage of the oppor­tu­ni­ties that have arisen from the over­all posi­tive market deve­lo­p­ment. We are ther­e­fore plea­sed to conti­nue to jointly drive Seven Senders’ growth to become Europe’s number one in parcel shipping.”

About Digi­tal+ Partners

Digi­tal+ Part­ners is a leading inves­tor and growth capi­tal specia­list focu­sed on Euro­pean and US tech­no­logy compa­nies; assets under manage­ment amount to €350 million. Digi­tal+ helps ambi­tious entre­pre­neurs build global tech­no­logy busi­nesses, provi­ding stra­te­gic advice and long-term finan­cial support to help them define and execute their growth plans. The fund focu­ses exclu­si­vely on B2B tech­no­logy compa­nies and lever­a­ges an exten­sive corpo­rate network to help port­fo­lio compa­nies enter new markets and build new part­ner­ships. For more infor­ma­tion, visit www.dplus.partners.

About btov

btov Part­ners, foun­ded in 2000, is a Euro­pean venture capi­tal firm focu­sed on digi­tal and indus­trial tech­no­lo­gies. btov’s network of entre­pre­neu­rial private inves­tors provi­des her unique exper­tise and access to non-obvious invest­ment topics and foun­ders. The btov Indus­trial Tech­no­lo­gies Fund focu­ses on hard­ware and soft­ware inno­va­tions with indus­trial use cases such as auto­ma­tion, robo­tics, data analy­tics, indus­trial AI, addi­tive manu­fac­tu­ring and quan­tum compu­ting. The btov Digi­tal Tech­no­lo­gies Fund focu­ses on start­ups in AI, fintech, SaaS, logi­stics and digi­tal market­places. btov has seen very early waves of inno­va­tion such as Machine Lear­ning or Fintech and is one of the most successful funders of AI compa­nies in Europe.

The company, with offices in Berlin, Munich, St. Gallen and Luxem­bourg, mana­ges capi­tal of 510 million euros. The network of private inves­tors consists of 250 expe­ri­en­ced entre­pre­neurs and execu­ti­ves from all over Europe. Among the best-known invest­ments are Seven Senders, Black­lane, Data Artisans, DeepL, Face­book, Food­spring, ORCAM, Raisin, SumUp, Volo­c­op­ter and XING. www.btov.vc

About SEVEN SENDERS GmbH

SEVEN SENDERS is the leading deli­very plat­form for parcel ship­ping. The company connects ship­pers with its carrier network of more than 100 parcel deli­very compa­nies in Europe, enab­ling excel­lent local ship­ping as a compe­ti­tive advan­tage. With addi­tio­nal ship­ping services, such as claims center, insu­rance, returns portal and labels, SEVEN SENDERS makes inter­na­tio­nal ship­ping a simple matter. Auto­ma­ted ship­ping noti­fi­ca­ti­ons, track­ing and moni­to­ring solu­ti­ons ensure a trans­pa­rent ship­ping process. Monthly reports and analy­ses enable data-based opti­miza­tion of inter­na­tio­nal ship­ping perfor­mance. Ship­pers get ever­y­thing from a single source and reduce comple­xity. www.sevensenders.com.

Advi­sor Seven Senders: Vogel Heerma Waitz

Dr. Clemens Waitz and Lorenz Frey, both partners.

About Vogel Heerma Waitz

Vogel Heerma Waitz is a Berlin-based law firm specia­li­zing in growth capi­tal, tech­no­logy and media. www.v14.de

News

Lands­hut / Munich — Bayern Kapi­tal, the venture capi­tal company of the Free State of Bava­ria, is inves­t­ing in Virto­nomy as part of a seed finan­cing round. The digi­tal health startup is deve­lo­ping an inno­va­tive, data­base-driven soft­ware-as-a-service (SaaS) solu­tion for medi­cal device manu­fac­tu­r­ers. Manu­fac­tu­r­ers can use Virto­nomy to bring their products to market faster and more cost-effec­tively by simu­la­ting neces­sary tests or studies on the compu­ter during deve­lo­p­ment. The lead inves­tor in the seven-figure round is Dieter von Holtz­brinck Ventures. In addi­tion to Bayern Kapi­tal, the Initia­tive for Indus­trial Inno­va­tors and Plug and Play have also inves­ted in the young company from Munich’s WERK1.

Conven­tio­nal appr­oval proces­ses for medi­cal devices are time-consum­ing and costly. They are also often linked to ethi­cally ques­tionable expe­ri­ments on animals, and later on, risky human trials are often requi­red. The curr­ently more than 10 employees of Virto­nomy GmbH have ther­e­fore set them­sel­ves the goal of making these appr­oval proces­ses faster, more cost-effec­tive and safer. The company, foun­ded in 2019 and based in Munich’s WERK1, deve­lops data­base-based simu­la­tion solu­ti­ons for this purpose. The idea comes from the auto­mo­tive indus­try: instead of taking measu­re­ments while driving, a large part of the test­ing is done virtually. This allows more tests in less time and with more itera­ti­ons. Virto­nomy brings this prin­ci­ple to medi­cal tech­no­logy: The company builds virtual, custo­mizable anato­mies of human bodies. Manu­fac­tu­r­ers of medi­cal devices (for exam­ple, implants) can use Virto­nomy to test their tech­no­lo­gies on this virtual pati­ent at all stages of deve­lo­p­ment — from the concept phase to precli­ni­cal evalua­tion to long-term moni­to­ring in wide­spread pati­ent use. In this way, Virto­nomy can help to reduce the deve­lo­p­ment time and costs of medi­cal tech­no­logy products. At the same time, thanks to the large number of tests perfor­med virtually, a smal­ler number of animal and human tests are neces­sary in further development.

Virto­nomy plans to invest the funds from the seed round in the further tech­no­lo­gi­cal deve­lo­p­ment of the product, the recruit­ment of addi­tio­nal employees and the expan­sion of the constantly expan­ding database.

“From the begin­ning, we wanted to deve­lop a solu­tion that not only had econo­mic bene­fits, but also social bene­fits,” explains Dr. Simon Sonn­tag, CEO of Virto­nomy. “The deve­lo­p­ment of new medi­cal tech­no­logy products conti­nues to be parti­cu­larly time-consum­ing and cost-inten­sive. That’s why young compa­nies like us that want to make a diffe­rence in this indus­try are also depen­dent on strong capi­tal support during the start-up and growth phase. We are ther­e­fore deligh­ted to have attrac­ted a consor­tium of indus­try-expe­ri­en­ced inves­tors to our vision in Dieter von Holtz­brinck Ventures, Bayern Kapi­tal, Initia­tive for Indus­trial Inno­va­tors and Plug and Play.”

Dr. Georg Ried, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Bayern Kapi­tal, says: “In the digi­tiza­tion of health­care, there is still enorm­ous poten­tial for deve­lo­ping inno­va­tive solu­ti­ons and buil­ding market leaders. Digi­tal health start-ups are inte­res­t­ing for venture capi­tal inves­tors because their products usually offer calculable deve­lo­p­ment times and good scala­bi­lity. In addi­tion, the appr­oval process is some­what easier than for medtech hard­ware. Virto­nomy scores points in seve­ral ways with its inno­va­tive idea: a promi­sing, scalable product with the poten­tial to make the deve­lo­p­ment of medi­cal devices more effi­ci­ent, faster and safer. We see enorm­ous growth poten­tial here.”

About Virto­nomy
Virto­nomy GmbH was foun­ded in Decem­ber 2019 by Dr. Simon Sonn­tag (CEO) and Wen-Yang Chu (CTO) in Munich, Germany. Virto­nomy is deve­lo­ping a cloud-based SaaS solu­tion for digi­tiz­ing the design and conduct of clini­cal trials of medi­cal devices using virtual pati­ents based on a high volume of imaging, physio­lo­gi­cal and patho­lo­gi­cal data. The over­all goal here is to end animal and human test­ing in clini­cal trials through the use of data-based virtual pati­ents. Virto­nomy curr­ently employs about 10 people, combi­ning exper­tise in medi­cal engi­nee­ring, medi­cal image proces­sing, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, nume­ri­cal simu­la­tion and visua­liza­tion using exten­ded reality. www.virtonomy.io

About Bayern Kapital
Bayern Kapi­tal GmbH, based in Lands­hut, was foun­ded in 1995 as a wholly owned subsi­diary of LfA Förder­bank Bayern on the initia­tive of the Bava­rian state govern­ment. As the venture capi­tal company of the Free State of Bava­ria, Bayern Kapi­tal provi­des equity capi­tal to the foun­ders of inno­va­tive high-tech compa­nies and young, inno­va­tive tech­no­logy compa­nies in Bava­ria. Bayern Kapi­tal curr­ently mana­ges twelve invest­ment funds with an invest­ment volume of around 500 million euros. To date, Bayern Kapi­tal has inves­ted around 350 million euros of venture capi­tal in around 290 inno­va­tive tech­no­logy-orien­ted compa­nies from a wide range of sectors, inclu­ding life scien­ces, soft­ware & IT, mate­ri­als & new mate­ri­als, nano­tech­no­logy and envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­logy. As a result, more than 8,000 jobs have been perma­nently crea­ted in Bava­ria in sustainable compa­nies. www.bayernkapital.de

News

Hofbieber/Munich (DE), Antwerp (BE) — Gimv invests in the Apra­xon Group, a leading home­care company focu­sed on wound care in Germany. The tran­sac­tion, which has alre­ady been comple­ted, is part of a joint growth plan with the company’s foun­der and CEO, Oliver Pokrze­win­ski, who will conti­nue to be a key share­hol­der in the company.

Apra­xon, (Hofbie­ber (DE) — apraxon.com), offers high-quality wound care for (mainly elderly) people with chro­nic wounds in the home­care sector. Typi­cal wound indi­ca­ti­ons are decu­bi­tus, diabe­tic foot or ulcus cruris. In this context, the company acts as a link between pati­ents, doctors, nursing service/home and the health insu­rance companies.

Due to its high degree of specia­liza­tion, Apra­xon provi­des a conti­nuously high quality of medi­cal care and is able to tailor the treat­ment process to the indi­vi­dual needs of each pati­ent. In a market with steadily rising pati­ent numbers, driven prima­rily by demo­gra­phic change, specia­li­zed medi­cal care is beco­ming incre­asingly important. The services are reim­bur­sed by health insu­rance compa­nies, for which Apra­xon has been a relia­ble part­ner for many years.

“I am convin­ced that Gimv is the right part­ner to realize the company’s growth ambi­ti­ons and expand Apraxon’s presence in Germany,” said Oliver Pokrze­win­ski, Mana­ging Direc­tor and CEO of Apraxon.

“Thanks to Apraxon’s clear commit­ment to quality, the above-average quali­fi­ca­tion of their nursing staff and their highly digi­ta­li­zed and scalable proces­ses, we are convin­ced that Apra­xon is the right plat­form to build a true market leader in German wound care. We are very much looking forward to support­ing Mr. Pokrze­win­ski and the entire Apra­xon team in imple­men­ting their ambi­tious growth plans,” says Phil­ipp v. Hammer­stein, Part­ner at Gimv in the Health & Care team in Munich.

The new invest­ment is alre­ady Gimv’s fifth acqui­si­tion in the German-spea­king health­care market within the last four years. Gimv curr­ently holds a total of 23 invest­ments in compa­nies in the health­care and life scien­ces sector. With this acqui­si­tion, Gimv once again under­lines its posi­tion as one of the most active Euro­pean inves­tors in the health­care indus­try and its ambi­tion to posi­tively contri­bute to the United Nati­ons goals; in this case “Health and Well­be­ing”. The Gimv port­fo­lio also includes seve­ral hospi­tal and prac­tice groups as well as medi­cal tech­no­logy and biotech companies.

ABOUT GIMV
Gimv is a Euro­pean invest­ment company with 40 years of expe­ri­ence in private equity. The company is listed on Euron­ext Brussels, curr­ently mana­ges around EUR 2.0 billion and curr­ently invests in 55 port­fo­lio compa­nies, which toge­ther gene­rate reve­nues of more than EUR 2.5 billion and employ 14,000 people. Gimv’s aspi­ra­tion to make a posi­tive value contri­bu­tion to society is reflec­ted, among other things, in the recently successfully laun­ched Sustainable Bond.

Gimv iden­ti­fies inno­va­tive, leading compa­nies with high growth poten­tial and supports them sustain­ably on their way to market leader­ship. Each of the four invest­ment plat­forms Consu­mer, Health & Care, Smart Indus­tries and Sustainable Cities is mana­ged by a dedi­ca­ted and compe­tent team, each based in Gimv’s home markets — Bene­lux, France and DACH — and supported by an exten­sive inter­na­tio­nal network of experts.

News

Schwab­mün­chen — A Gleiss Lutz team has advi­sed the family-owned Ritter Group on the sale of the company to US tech­no­logy group Avan­tor. The purchase price is appro­xi­m­ately €890 million, subject to further payments depen­ding on the achie­ve­ment of certain perfor­mance-based mile­sto­nes. The tran­sac­tion is expec­ted to close in the 3rd quar­ter of 2021.

Ritter is head­quar­te­red in Schwab­mün­chen, Germany, and is one of the fastest growing manu­fac­tu­r­ers of high-quality consu­ma­bles for liquid hand­ling, auto­ma­ted analy­sis and clini­cal test­ing, inclu­ding conduc­tive pipette tips. These consu­ma­bles are central to a variety of mole­cu­lar scree­ning and diagno­stic appli­ca­ti­ons, inclu­ding real-time poly­me­rase chain reac­tion (PCR), or as part of drug deve­lo­p­ment and clini­cal trials for phar­maceu­ti­cal and
Biotech­no­logy Research.

Avan­tor is a New York Stock Exch­ange-listed global leader in products and services used in key rese­arch, deve­lo­p­ment and manu­fac­tu­ring acti­vi­ties by custo­mers in the high-tech­no­logy, biotech­no­logy, health­care and public sectors. Globally, the company serves 225,000 custo­mer sites and works with rese­arch labo­ra­to­ries and scien­tists in more than 180 countries.

Advi­sor Ritter: Gleiss Lutz
Dr. Jochen Tyrolt (Part­ner, Stutt­gart), Dr. Chris­tian Cascante (Part­ner, Frank­furt, both Lead), Johan­nes Schrägle (Coun­sel, Stutt­gart), Dr. Patrick Moss­ler (Part­ner), Dr. Daniel Heck (Coun­sel, both Hamburg), Florian Schorn (Munich), Dr. Lucas Hert­neck, Nikolas
Frey (both Stutt­gart, all M&A), Dr. Dirk Wasmann (Part­ner, Stutt­gart), Dr. Thors­ten Gayk (Coun­sel, Hamburg, both Corpo­rate), Dr. Johann Wagner (Part­ner), Dr. Thomas Büche­ler (both Tax, Hamburg), Dr. Doris-Maria Schus­ter (Part­ner), Dr. Daniela Mayr (both Hamburg), Prof. Dr. Martin Diller (Part­ner), Dr. Sebas­tian Ernst (both Stutt­gart, all Labor Law), Dr. Alex­an­der Molle (Part­ner), Dr. Matthias Schilde, Jan Hinrichs (all IP/IT), Dr. Chris­tian Hamann (Part­ner), Simon Wegmann (both Data Protec­tion Law), Dr. Enno Burk (Coun­sel), Dr. Chris­tina Fröb
(both Health­care, all Berlin), Dr. Jacob von Andreae (Part­ner), Aylin Hoffs (both Foreign Trade Law, both Düssel­dorf), Dr. Moritz Holm-Hadulla (Part­ner), Dr. Andreas Schüs­sel (both Anti­trust), Dr. Simon Wagner (Coun­sel, Dispute Reso­lu­tion, all Stutt­gart), Frank Schlo­b­ach (Part­ner), Dr. Thomas Kulzer (Coun­sel, both Finance), Konrad Discher (Coun­sel, Real Estate, all Frankfurt).

Gleiss Lutz worked as lead coun­sel with teams in various jurisdictions.

About Gleiss Lutz 

Gleiss Lutz regu­larly advi­ses family-owned compa­nies on large-volume sales tran­sac­tions, inclu­ding the owners of ZKW on the sale of the company to the Korean tech­no­logy group LG for EUR 1.1 billion or the owners of Getrag on the sale to Magna for EUR 1.75 billion.

News

Düssel­dorf — A Deloitte Legal team led by Felix Fell­ei­sen (Part­ner) and Max Lüer­ßen (Coun­sel; both Corporate/M&A, Düssel­dorf) advi­sed the stra­te­gic soft­ware inves­tor Main Capi­tal on its invest­ment in the finan­cial services soft­ware provi­der FOCONIS.

FOCONIS is a leading provi­der of data quality, control and compli­ance soft­ware that supports finan­cial insti­tu­ti­ons — prima­rily in German-spea­king count­ries — in their inter­nal report­ing and in meeting regu­la­tory requi­re­ments. The company’s more than 600 custo­mers include private banks and asso­cia­ti­ons, as well as savings banks and coope­ra­tive banks.

Main Capi­tal will support FOCONIS and the manage­ment team to further streng­then the exis­ting market posi­tion and conti­nue the strong growth trajec­tory by expan­ding into adja­cent custo­mer segments with high regu­la­tory and data quality requi­re­ments. In addi­tion to orga­nic growth initia­ti­ves, selec­tive acqui­si­ti­ons also repre­sent an important pillar of growth.

About FOCONIS

FOCONIS is a leading provi­der of data quality, control and compli­ance soft­ware for banks, desi­gned to help finan­cial insti­tu­ti­ons with inter­nal report­ing and regu­la­tory requi­re­ments. The solu­tion is focu­sed on finan­cial insti­tu­ti­ons in German-spea­king count­ries and is curr­ently used by over 600 custo­mers in the finan­cial services indus­try. The company’s main product, FOCONIS-ZAK®, conso­li­da­tes data from various sources, in parti­cu­lar public stock exch­ange data, data from banking asso­cia­ti­ons, data available directly from the custo­mer or other (un)structured data . The system then analy­zes and controls the proces­sed data by apply­ing an exten­sive set of rules. If conspi­cuous busi­ness tran­sac­tions are iden­ti­fied, FOCONIS-ZAK® initia­tes the reso­lu­tion of compli­ance issues accor­ding to a firmly defi­ned process inclu­ding escala­tion paths. The checked and correc­ted data is then auto­ma­ti­cally updated in the customer’s respec­tive core banking system. The company was foun­ded in 2000 and curr­ently employs 80 people.

About Main Capital

Main Capi­tal is a stra­te­gic soft­ware inves­tor with an exclu­sive focus on the soft­ware sector in the Bene­lux, DACH region and Scan­di­na­via. Within this sector, Main Capi­tal is the most specia­li­zed entity for manage­ment buyouts and growth capi­tal for stra­te­gic late-stage acqui­si­ti­ons. Main Capi­tal mana­ges invest­ments worth appro­xi­m­ately €1 billion in estab­lished and growing soft­ware compa­nies in the Nether­lands, the DACH region and Scan­di­na­via. An expe­ri­en­ced team of specia­lists mana­ges these private equity funds from offices in The Hague, Düssel­dorf and Stockholm.

Felix Fell­ei­sen and Max Lüer­ßen have been advi­sing Main Capi­tal since the begin­ning of its expan­sion into Germany and have alre­ady assis­ted the stra­te­gic soft­ware inves­tor in a number of plat­form and add-on acqui­si­ti­ons. Deals advi­sed by Deloitte Legal’s M&A lawy­ers include acqui­si­ti­ons of stakes in fast-growing German soft­ware and SaaS compa­nies such as b+m Infor­ma­tik (finan­cial services), arte­gic (marke­ting auto­ma­tion), JobRou­ter (process auto­ma­tion), Clever­soft (GRC for finan­cial services), HYPE Inno­va­tion (inno­va­tion management/collaboration), GBTEC (process automation/workflow management/ GRC), Onven­tis (procu­re­ment & Invoice Manage­ment) and HLP Infor­ma­tion Manage­ment (Idea and Inno­va­tion Manage­ment Software).

Advi­sor Main Capi­tal: Deloitte Legal
Max Lüer­ßen (Coun­sel, Corporate/M&A, Düssel­dorf, Lead), Felix Fell­ei­sen (Part­ner, Corporate/M&A, Düssel­dorf Co-Lead); Frauke Heudt­lass (Part­ner, Labor Law, Düssel­dorf); Dr. Fleur Johanna Prop, LL.M. (Coun­sel, Corporate/M&A, Düssel­dorf), Alex­an­der Roehl, LL.M. (Asso­ciate, Corporate/M&A, Düssel­dorf); Leonie Onkel­bach (Asso­ciate, Labor Law, Düsseldorf .

Consul­tant FOCONIS: POELLATH
Phil­ipp von Braun­schweig (Part­ner, Corporate/M&A, Munich, Lead), Dr. Nico Fischer (Part­ner, Tax, Munich), Andrea Strei­fen­e­der, (Asso­ciate, Corporate/M&A, Munich).


About Deloitte

Deloitte provi­des audi­ting, risk advi­sory, tax advi­sory, finan­cial advi­sory and consul­ting services to compa­nies and insti­tu­ti­ons from all sectors of the economy; Legal advice is provi­ded in Germany by Deloitte Legal. With a global network of member compa­nies in more than 150 count­ries, Deloitte combi­nes excel­lence with world-class perfor­mance and helps clients solve their complex busi­ness chal­lenges. Making an impact that matters – for around 312,000 Deloitte employees, this is a common mission state­ment and indi­vi­dual ambi­tion at the same time.

News

Dortmund/ Colo­gne — With a team led by Dr. Oliver Bött­cher and Kris­tina Schnei­der from the Colo­gne office, Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek advi­sed Compleo Char­ging Solu­ti­ons AG on a merger with wallbe AG. The closing of the tran­sac­tion and the combi­na­tion of Compleo’s and wallbe’s opera­ti­ons are expec­ted to take place before the end of April. The merger of the compa­nies, whose products and services comple­ment each other, is expec­ted to create a major provi­der of char­ging solu­ti­ons in Europe. With the merger, Compleo and wallbe streng­then their leading posi­tion on the German market and in Europe.

Compleo will acquire 100 percent of the shares in wallbe in return for payment of appro­xi­m­ately one-third in Compleo shares, and appro­xi­m­ately two-thirds in cash from exis­ting liqui­dity. The two previous and largest owners of wallbe, ener­city AG (around 50 percent) and Weid­mül­ler Mobi­lity Concepts GmbH & Co. KG (around 26 percent), as well as Dr. Domi­nik Freund, will remain invol­ved in Compleo as new shareholders.

Compleo is a leading provi­der of char­ging solu­ti­ons for elec­tric vehic­les. In doing so, the company supports complete solu­tion provi­ders with its char­ging stati­ons and, if requi­red, also with the plan­ning, instal­la­tion, main­ten­ance, service or backend of the char­ging infra­struc­ture. Compleo’s offe­ring includes both AC and DC char­ging stati­ons. DC char­ging stati­ons from Compleo are the first DC char­ging stati­ons on the market that comply with cali­bra­tion regu­la­ti­ons. The company deve­lops and manu­fac­tures all products at its Dort­mund site. In doing so, the manu­fac­tu­rer focu­ses on inno­va­tion, safety, consu­mer-friend­li­ness and cost-effec­ti­ve­ness. Compleo star­ted produc­tion of the first char­ging stati­ons in 2009. The fast-growing company is head­quar­te­red in Dort­mund and curr­ently employs over 260 people. Since Octo­ber 2020, Compleo has been listed in the Prime Stan­dard segment of the Frank­furt Stock Exch­ange (ISIN: DE000A2QDNX9).

The Böttcher/Schneider team alre­ady advi­sed the current majo­rity share­hol­der and part of the manage­ment on the acqui­si­tion of the stake in the then EBG compleo GmbH at the end of 2019. In the context of the current merger, Compleo’s advice included full advice on the acqui­si­tion, due dili­gence, contract docu­men­ta­tion, inclu­ding the exch­ange of shares carried out, up to the closing.

Advi­sors to Compleo Char­ging Solu­ti­ons AG: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek
Dr. Oliver Bött­cher (Lead Partner),
Kris­tina Schnei­der, LL.M.,
Dr. Phil­ipp Jansen,
Dr. Chris­toph Schork, LL.M.,
Anna Schä­fer (all corporate/M&A), all Cologne
Dr. Thors­ten Kuthe,
Meike Dres­ler-Lenz (both Capi­tal Markets), both Cologne
Dr. Ruben Hofmann (IP), Cologne
Dr. Sascha Sche­wiola (Labor Law), Cologne
Dr. Lutz Keppe­ler (IT), Cologne
Tim Peter­mann (Sales Law),
Fabian G. Gaffron (Taxes), both Hamburg
Beatrice Stange, LL.M. (anti­trust law), Düsseldorf
Klaus Weinand-Härer
Adam Brock­mann (both Tax Due Dili­gence), both Frankfurt

News

Hamburg / Schwa­bach / Roth — Pack­a­ging mate­ri­als and folding carton manu­fac­tu­rer Leupold is ente­ring its first part­ner­ship under the aegis of private equity firm Water­land Private Equity, which acqui­red a majo­rity stake in Leupold in August 2020. In the future, Stro­bel AG, a manu­fac­tu­rer of folding cartons and card­board pack­a­ging with a special focus on sustaina­bi­lity, will comple­ment the product range of the pack­a­ging manu­fac­tu­rer. With Waterland’s support, the two compa­nies will increase their custo­mer segments and geogra­phic reach, and mutually leverage and further expand product inno­va­tions. The current Stro­bel owners, Fried­rich and Monika Bech­told, will remain on board as part of a tran­si­tion phase.

Stro­bel, based in Roth, was foun­ded in 1894. Over the years, the long-estab­lished company has deve­lo­ped into a specia­li­zed supplier of carton­board pack­a­ging and rela­ted services for the consu­mer and food indus­tries. Stro­bel AG’s product range, which can be indi­vi­du­ally adapted to speci­fic custo­mer requi­re­ments, extends from folding boxes to displays. Stro­bel also offers its custo­mers a range of services in areas such as pack­a­ging and logistics.

Stro­bel places a special focus on sustaina­bi­lity and climate neutra­lity in deve­lo­p­ment and produc­tion: Stro­bel has alre­ady been certi­fied and awarded seve­ral times for its achie­ve­ments in this area, for exam­ple with first place in the Energy Turn­around Award of the city of Roth and the German Pack­a­ging Award 2020. Stro­bel was also the first Bava­rian pack­a­ging company to become comple­tely climate-neutral. The company’s custo­mers include renow­ned manu­fac­tu­r­ers of bran­ded goods in the sports, fitness and well­ness, food and pet food, and toy sectors.

Foun­ded in Schwa­bach in 1910, Joh. Leupold GmbH & Co. KG is one of the leading German suppli­ers of indi­vi­dual pack­a­ging solu­ti­ons made of card­board and focu­ses on the design and manu­fac­ture of folding cartons, blis­ter cards, blanks, corru­ga­ted pack­a­ging, displays and erec­ting boxes. The company is one of the largest medium-sized folding carton manu­fac­tu­r­ers and produ­ces around 1.5 million pack­a­ging solu­ti­ons daily for brand manu­fac­tu­r­ers in Germany, Europe and the USA.

“With Leupold and Water­land, we have found the ideal part­ners for our further deve­lo­p­ment. As part of a larger group, there are new oppor­tu­ni­ties for us to expand our produc­tion capa­bi­li­ties, enter new markets and further deve­lop our busi­ness model. We are looking forward to the coope­ra­tion,” says Fried­rich Bech­told, CEO of Stro­bel AG.

“The part­ner­ship with Stro­bel is a natu­ral next step on our contin­ued growth path, which we have now been able to realize with the support of Water­land,” says Michael Fuchs, one of Leupold’s mana­ging direc­tors. “Not only thanks to the geogra­phi­cal proxi­mity — Strobel’s head­quar­ters in Roth is only ten kilo­me­ters away from Leupold — this coope­ra­tion offers nume­rous poten­ti­als to bundle and further deve­lop our resour­ces and exper­tise in the areas of deve­lo­p­ment, produc­tion and sales,” adds Thomas Göll­ner, also Mana­ging Direc­tor of Leupold.

“Leupold alre­ady has a strong posi­tio­ning in the Euro­pean carton­board pack­a­ging market, which we intend to expand into market leader­ship in the areas of quality, inno­va­tion, sustaina­bi­lity and service. A buy & build stra­tegy, which we have now laun­ched with the acqui­si­tion of Stro­bel, is an essen­tial part of our growth stra­tegy. In parti­cu­lar, the high focus on sustaina­bi­lity and climate neutra­lity convin­ced us of Stro­bel as a very good fit,” says Dr. Cars­ten Rahlfs, Mana­ging Part­ner of Waterland.

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 (Manches­ter), Ireland (Dublin), Denmark (Copen­ha­gen) and Switz­er­land (Zurich). Curr­ently, over eight 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.

News

London/ Brigh­ton — MPB, the world’s largest resel­ler of photo and video kit, has raised £49.8 million in its latest funding round, led by Vitru­vian Part­ners with parti­ci­pa­tion from current inves­tor Acton Capi­tal, joining exis­ting inves­tors Mobeus Equity Part­ners, Berin­gea and FJ Labs.

Foun­ded in Brigh­ton in 2011, MPB is a stand­out driver of the crea­tor economy groun­ded in a busi­ness model of circu­la­rity that deli­vers both econo­mic and envi­ron­men­tal sustaina­bi­lity. Recir­cu­la­ting 300,000 items of kit globally each year, MPB has trans­for­med access to photo and video kit by offe­ring a tech­no­logy-based, custo­mer-centric service that remo­ves the risk and uncer­tainty atta­ched to using many of its competitors.

Matt Barker, Foun­der and CEO, MPB said: “This funding round is a major mile­stone for MPB culmi­na­ting a decade of strong perfor­mance and a vision to make great kit acces­si­ble and affordable.

With the back­ing of Vitru­vian Part­ners and those reinves­t­ing in our busi­ness we can acce­le­rate our US and Euro­pean growth stra­tegy at scale, profi­ta­bly. Photo­gra­phy and video­gra­phy are intrin­sic to socie­ties and cultures all over the world, and at MPB we have crea­ted a circu­lar model that offers ever­yone the chance to be visual storytel­lers and content crea­tors in a way that’s good for the planet.”

The used kit market is in a period of signi­fi­cant expan­sion as more consu­mers purchase sustain­ably in the circu­lar economy. With estab­lished loca­ti­ons in the UK, US and Germany, MPB is well-posi­tio­ned to take advan­tage of this growing trend. The new wave of funding will allow the company to focus on new product deve­lo­p­ments and tech­no­logy that broa­den the ways in which people can access kit, and bols­ter exis­ting opera­ti­ons to bring more kit to more people.

Tom Studd, Part­ner at Vitru­vian Part­nersthe inde­pen­dent growth-focu­sed private equity firm, said: “MPB has deve­lo­ped a unique tech-enab­led plat­form to meet a market need, trans­forming access to photo­gra­phy kit to become a global leader in its field, whilst buil­ding a product that genui­nely has a posi­tive impact on the world. Matt and the team have achie­ved strong and profi­ta­ble growth through recent laun­ches in the US and Germany, and we’re deligh­ted to part­ner with them for the next step of the jour­ney. Vitru­vian looks to back excep­tio­nal teams with unique products in large markets, and we believe Matt and the team fit those crite­ria perfectly.”

Vitru­vian Part­ners, which has previously inves­ted in successful circu­lar compa­nies inclu­ding Vesti­aire Coll­ec­tive as well as house­hold names Carwow, Just Eat, Farfetch, Skyscan­ner and Trust­pi­lot, beco­mes MPB’s largest share­hol­der and is supported in this round by exis­ting inves­tor, Acton Capi­tal. Mobeus Equity Part­ners, which first inves­ted in MPB during its Series A funding and remains MPB’s second largest insti­tu­tio­nal share­hol­der, has parti­ally exited. Berin­gea and FJ Labs remain involved.

Sebas­tian Wossagk, Mana­ging Part­ner at Acton Capi­talsaid: “It’s always a privi­lege to watch compa­nies like MPB grow and excel in their field. Matt and his team have alre­ady taken the first steps into inter­na­tio­na­li­sa­tion by opening loca­ti­ons in Brook­lyn and Berlin, and we’re exci­ted to support them as they pursue further expan­sion in both the US and Europe.”

Arma Part­ners has acted as exclu­sive finan­cial advi­sor to MPB on the £50m invest­ment led by Vitru­vian Part­ners, with parti­ci­pa­tion from exis­ting inves­tor Acton Capital.

About Arma Partners
Arma Part­ners provi­des inde­pen­dent corpo­rate finance advice to compa­nies and inves­tors active in the global Digi­tal Economy. We act as trus­ted advi­sors to Digi­tal Economy leaders throug­hout their entire corpo­rate life­cy­cle, from raising private capi­tal for fast-growing disrup­t­ers and foun­der-led busi­nesses to orchest­ra­ting complex cross-border M&A deals for private equity inves­tors and global large-cap public compa­nies. Foun­ded in 2003, Arma today employs a large dedi­ca­ted advi­sory team with unpar­al­le­led domain exper­tise and an envia­ble track record in each of the diverse sub-segments that toge­ther comprise the ever-expan­ding global Digi­tal Economy.

News

WeWork has agreed to go public through a merger with blank-check firm BowX Acqui­si­tion Corp in a deal that values the office-sharing startup at $9 billion inclu­ding debt.

It marks a steep drop from the $47 billion that WeWork was valued for a listing in 2019, ahead of a botched listing plan that implo­ded due to inves­tor concerns over its busi­ness model and its foun­der Adam Neumann’s manage­ment style.

Even though WeWork has long lost billi­ons of dollars, it always found ways to attract huge invest­ments from deep-pocke­ted inves­tors. Now, less than two years after it was rescued from a collapse, the co-working company has found yet another backer willing to over­look its losses. The company announ­ced on Friday that it had agreed to merge with a blank-check firm in a deal that would give it a listing on the stock market it was denied when it was forced to shelve an initial public offe­ring as inves­tors ques­tio­ned its finan­cial strength and dubious gover­nance practices.

Instead of a tradi­tio­nal I.P.O., WeWork is merging with BowX Acqui­si­tion, a company listed on the stock exch­ange for the sole purpose of buying a busi­ness, in a type of deal that has become hugely popu­lar in recent months. Inves­tors, bankers, and even cele­bri­ties and athle­tes have rushed to float such special purpose acqui­si­tion compa­nies, or SPACs, because they offer their crea­tors a chance to mint huge profits rela­tively quickly. And merging with these vehic­les is attrac­tive to compa­nies like WeWork because they provide an express lane onto the stock market without the obsta­cles that scuttled WeWork’s public offe­ring in Septem­ber 2019.

A SPAC is a shell firm that uses proceeds from a public listing to buy a private firm and WeWork is the latest in a slew of high-profile compa­nies that have taken this route to the markets.

“There have been doubts raised about its busi­ness model, and those doubts may be diffi­cult to address in an I.P.O. road­show,” said Michael Klaus­ner, a Stan­ford busi­ness profes­sor, refer­ring to the presen­ta­ti­ons that compa­nies give to mutual funds, pension mangers and other insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors before a public offe­ring. SPACs are “highly proble­ma­tic” because their struc­ture can encou­rage buyers to over­pay, hurting share­hol­ders in return, he said.

In 2021 only, 295 SPACs had gone public (USA, source New York Times), raising $93 billion and brea­king last year’s record in a matter of months. Because so many of these compa­nies are now out there, some have tried to use star power to get busi­nesses to enter­tain their merger offers.

WeWork said the deal with BowX gave it an equity value of $7.9 billion, far less than the nearly USD 50 billion value that its inves­tors placed on the company in 2019. WeWork will receive $1.3 billion in cash from the deal, inclu­ding $800 million from Insight Part­ners, Star­wood Capi­tal Group, Black­Rock and other investors.

WeWork will fetch $1.3 billion in cash from the latest deal, inclu­ding $800 million in private invest­ment from Insight Part­ners, funds mana­ged by Star­wood Capi­tal, Fide­lity Manage­ment and others.

News

Munich — In March 2021, funds advi­sed by Bregal Unter­neh­mer­ka­pi­tal (BU) were able to conclude agree­ments to acquire a majo­rity stake in ACTICO, a leading inter­na­tio­nal provi­der of soft­ware for intel­li­gent process auto­ma­tion and digi­tal decis­ion-making. ACTICO’s manage­ment and share­hol­ders will retain a signi­fi­cant equity stake in the company. McDer­mott Will & Emery provi­ded legal advice to the share­hol­ders of ACTICO on the sale to Bregal Unternehmerkapital.

ACTICO is a leading RegTech soft­ware provi­der offe­ring intel­li­gent decis­ion auto­ma­tion, espe­ci­ally for the banking and finan­cial services indus­try. The company sells its solu­ti­ons to custo­mers in over 25 count­ries world­wide. ACTICO was crea­ted in 2015 through a carve-out from the Bosch Group and today employs around 140 people at its head­quar­ters in Immenstaad on Lake Cons­tance and other bran­ches in the USA and Singapore.

The soft­ware plat­form is used in parti­cu­lar in the areas of risk manage­ment, regu­la­tory and compli­ance, fraud protec­tion, custo­mer loyalty and process opti­miza­tion. In parti­cu­lar, ACTICO excels in proces­sing large amounts of data and in deve­lo­ping relia­ble, robust and easily scalable applications.

Bregal Unter­neh­mer­ka­pi­tal invests in medium-sized compa­nies in a wide range of indus­tries in Germany, Austria, Switz­er­land and Nort­hern Italy. The focus is on market leaders and “hidden cham­pi­ons” with strong manage­ment teams and growth potential.

Bregal Unter­neh­mer­ka­pi­tal GmbH was foun­ded in 2015 by Florian Schick and Jan-Daniel Neumann. The funds they advise support entre­pre­neurs family busi­nesses. The focus is on majo­rity and mino­rity invest­ments and growth finan­cing, prima­rily in medium-sized compa­nies in Germany, Austria, Switz­er­land and nort­hern Italy — the “Mittel­stand”. These invest­ments are inde­pen­dent of deve­lo­p­ments on the finan­cial markets. With pati­ent capi­tal, entre­pre­neu­rial exper­tise and part­ner­ship-based dialo­gue, BU aims to focus on growing its invest­ments and helping them create sustainable value. Parti­cu­larly important are finan­cial stabi­lity, a high degree of flexi­bi­lity, short decis­ion-making paths and a high degree of entre­pre­neu­rial free­dom for the companies.

Consul­tant Share­hol­der of ACTICO
McDer­mott Will & Emery, Munich: Dr. Cars­ten Böhm (Lead, Corpo­rate), Marcus Fischer (Coun­sel, Tax, Frank­furt), Nina Siewert (Tax, Frank­furt), Dr. Sandra Urban-Crell (Labor, Düssel­dorf), Stef­fen Woitz (IP), Dr. Germar Enders (Coun­sel; Corpo­rate); Asso­cia­tes: Frank Weiß, Bene­dikt Gloß­ner (both Corporate)

About McDer­mott Will & Emery
McDer­mott Will & Emery is a leading inter­na­tio­nal law firm. With over 1,200 attor­neys, we are repre­sen­ted in 21 loca­ti­ons world­wide: Atlanta, Boston, Brussels, Chicago, Dallas, Düssel­dorf, Frank­furt a. M., Hous­ton, Colo­gne, London, Los Ange­les, Miami, Milan, Munich, New York, Orange County, Paris, San Fran­cisco, Sili­con Valley, Washing­ton, D.C. and Wilm­ing­ton. The German prac­tice is mana­ged by McDer­mott Will & Emery Rechts­an­wälte Steu­er­be­ra­ter LLP. www.mwe.com

News

Berlin — Berlin-based y42 (form­erly known as Datos Intel­li­gence) has successfully closed a $2.9 million seed funding round. Lead inves­tor was the venture capi­tal fund La Fami­glia, other inves­tors were the co-foun­ders of Food­spring, Perso­nio and Petlab.

Foun­ded in 2020 and based in Berlin, startup y42 is a colla­bo­ra­tive data plat­form that brings toge­ther tech­ni­cal and non-tech­ni­cal users to load, cleanse, connect, visua­lize and share data. The all-in-one tool enables users to inte­grate hundreds of data sources and build a scalable data infra­struc­ture without programming. Y42 intends to use the funds to expand its go-to-market stra­tegy and for product deve­lo­p­ment. “As the amount of data has increased, the systems for proces­sing data have also become more complex. Buil­ding a scalable data infra­struc­ture is a night­mare for many compa­nies,” said Hung Dang, foun­der and CEO of y42. “We want to enable all compa­nies to get value from their data without inves­t­ing in expen­sive IT projects and in-house deve­lo­per teams.” y42 is the first scalable data plat­form that can be set up and used by less IT-savvy users.

Foun­der Dang has become famous for hosting a series of Great Gatsby-style parties. He foun­ded an event company and deve­lo­ped a global data plat­form for Even­tim to analyze events. He reinves­ted the money from that in his new startup, Y42, form­erly called Datos.

Based in Berlin,La Fami­glia is a pan-Euro­pean early-stage VC fund that invests in tech­no­logy compa­nies that are empowe­ring or rethin­king large industries.

POELLATH provi­ded compre­hen­sive legal advice to La Fami­glia in the context of the seed finan­cing round at y42 with the follo­wing Munich team:
Tobias Jäger (Part­ner, Lead, M&A/Private Equity/Venture Capi­tal), Dr. Sebas­tian Rosen­tritt, LL.M. (Senior Asso­ciate, M&A/Private Equity/Venture Capi­tal), Dr. Matthias Meier (Asso­ciate, M&A/Private Equity/Venture Capital)

About POELLATH + Partners
POELLATH is a market-leading inter­na­tio­nal busi­ness and tax law firm with more than 150 lawy­ers and tax advi­sors in Berlin, Frank­furt and Munich. We stand for high-end advice on tran­sac­tions and asset manage­ment. We offer legal and tax services from a single source. In our selec­ted and highly specia­li­zed prac­tice groups, we not only know the law, but also shape best prac­tice in the market toge­ther with our clients. Natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal rankings regu­larly list our consul­tants as leading experts in their field.

News

Munich / Braun­schweig — Toge­ther with Water­land Private Equity, the soft­ware deve­lo­p­ment provi­der GOD (Gesell­schaft für Orga­ni­sa­tion und Daten­ver­ar­bei­tung mbH) plans to acce­le­rate its growth. The company from Lower Saxony is one of the leading provi­ders of custo­mi­zed enter­prise IT and soft­ware solu­ti­ons, espe­ci­ally for compa­nies with complex supply chains and produc­tion proces­ses. The port­fo­lio of services for custo­mers is to be expan­ded through targe­ted acqui­si­ti­ons as part of a buy & build stra­tegy. The share­hol­ders Igor Krahne, Ralf Holland and Dr. Thomas Wolen­ski remain signi­fi­cantly invol­ved as manage­ment team and lead the company opera­tio­nally. The tran­sac­tion is subject to appr­oval by the anti­trust authorities.

GOD has been deve­lo­ping and opera­ting custo­mi­zed enter­prise IT and soft­ware solu­ti­ons since 1985. The service provi­der, which is head­quar­te­red in Braun­schweig and has offices in Hamburg, Ingol­stadt, Wolfs­burg and Wroclaw (Poland), specia­li­zes in compa­nies with complex IT projects. The more than 400 employees of GOD support large enter­pri­ses as well as medium-sized compa­nies from requi­re­ments to archi­tec­ture to project manage­ment in the deve­lo­p­ment and opera­tion of indi­vi­dual soft­ware. The offe­ring also includes modern cloud and edge compu­ting services, as well as SAP consulting.

GOD will conti­nue to support sophisti­ca­ted compa­nies in digi­tiza­tion through indi­vi­dua­li­zed deve­lo­p­ment and expand its modern product port­fo­lio. In addi­tion, new markets are to be opened up geogra­phi­cally through further loca­ti­ons. The IT and soft­ware market conti­nues to be a rapidly growing market in the wake of digi­tiza­tion: The digi­tal asso­cia­tion Bitkom fore­casts an increase in sales to 174.4 billion euros in 2021 for Germany alone. This is expec­ted to create around 20,000 new jobs.

Igor Krahne, mana­ging part­ner of GOD, says: “The IT and soft­ware sector is constantly reinven­ting itself, which requi­res a broad product range on the one hand, but also a high degree of specia­liza­tion on the other. Waterland’s expe­ri­ence in the tech sector has convin­ced us that we have the right part­ner on board: This will secure our claim to lead the digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion toge­ther with our customers.”

Dr. Gregor Hengst, Prin­ci­pal at Water­land, adds: “We are impres­sed how GOD’s team is growing sustain­ably in the area of complex soft­ware solu­ti­ons. The company is bene­fiting from demand trends through digi­ta­liza­tion, Agile deve­lo­p­ment and IoT deve­lo­p­ments, as well as in cloud compu­ting. We look forward to further acce­le­ra­ting growth through acqui­si­ti­ons as well.”

Water­land has exten­sive expe­ri­ence in the digi­ta­liza­tion, IT and tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons sectors: the Water­land port­fo­lio in these areas includes Serrala (finan­cial auto­ma­tion and payment soft­ware), Skay­link (mana­ged cloud services), Enreach (unified commu­ni­ca­ti­ons), netgo group (IT services) and netrics (enter­prise IT).

Water­land Advisor:
Boston Consul­ting Group (Commer­cial)
Henge­ler Muel­ler (Legal)
Ernst & Young (Finan­cial)
GCA Altium (Debt) advised.

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 (Manches­ter), Ireland (Dublin), Denmark (Copen­ha­gen) and Switz­er­land (Zurich). Curr­ently, over eight 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.

News

Frank­furt am Main/Gorinchem, The Nether­lands — Ardian, a leading global inde­pen­dent invest­ment firm, has ente­red into an agree­ment to acquire Deli Home with the aim of support­ing the company’s inter­na­tio­nal growth plans. Deli Home is a Dutch manu­fac­tu­rer and supplier of wood-based, custom and high quality home impro­ve­ment products such as doors, cabi­nets and floors. The products are sold through DIY stores, buil­ders’ merchants and online suppli­ers. The tran­sac­tion is the first invest­ment of the Ardian expan­sion team in the Nether­lands. Toge­ther with Ardian, Deli Home’s manage­ment plans to further imple­ment its growth stra­tegy and deve­lop Deli Home into a pan-Euro­pean player.

Deli Home, whose roots go back to 1869, is head­quar­te­red in Gorin­chem, the Nether­lands. With sales of more than 340 million euros and 1,250 employees, the company has estab­lished itself as the market leader in the Bene­lux region. In recent years, the manage­ment team, led by Victor Aquina (CEO) and Jan-Willem Smits (CFO), has deve­lo­ped the company from a pure distri­bu­tor into a manu­fac­tu­rer of custo­mi­zed, wood-based DIY products with an inte­gra­ted digi­tal confi­gu­ra­tion plat­form, a broad logi­stics network and merchan­dise group manage­ment solu­ti­ons. Through this approach, Deli Home crea­tes great value for its customers.

Victor Aquina, CEO of Deli Home, said: “We have a clearly defi­ned growth stra­tegy that has two pillars: Conti­nuing to convince custo­mers of our digi­tal solu­ti­ons for custo­mi­zed home impro­ve­ment products, as well as expan­ding our offe­ring across Europe. Two of our future core markets are France and Germany, so Ardian, with its strong Euro­pean presence and network, is the ideal part­ner for us. The Ardian team convin­ced us with its profound under­stan­ding of the market and will actively support us with its exper­tise. We look forward to unleas­hing the company’s full poten­tial through this partnership.”

Dirk Witt­ne­ben, Head of Ardian Expan­sion Germany, added: “Deli Home has a strong and expe­ri­en­ced manage­ment team that has crea­ted a growth plat­form with a convin­cing M&A stra­tegy, for exam­ple through the acqui­si­ti­ons of Numdata and Weekamp Deuren. We see great poten­tial for growth through further acqui­si­ti­ons and the expan­sion of our range outside the Bene­lux region. We look forward to working with the manage­ment team and support­ing the company on its growth path.”

The parties to the tran­sac­tion were:

Ardian: Dirk Witt­ne­ben, Florian Haas, Nico­las Münzer, Janine Paustian

Legal Corpo­rate / Finance: Fresh­fields (Harald Spruit, Mandeep Lotay)

Finan­cial: Deloitte (Egon Sach­sal­ber, Tanya Fehr)

Tax / Struc­tu­ring: EY (Anne Mieke Holland)

Commer­cial / Opera­tio­nal: Roland Berger (Sameer Mehta, Swit­bert Miczka)

Tech / Digi­tal: WDP (Chris­toph Nichau, Johan­nes Dier­kes, Simon Ludwigs)

ESG: PwC (Emilie Bobin)

Envi­ron­men­tal: ERM (Werner Schulte)

M&A: ABN AMRO (Eric Altmann, Tammo Gunst)

Debt Advi­sory: Deloitte (Thomas Schouten)


ABOUT ARDIAN

Ardian is one of the world’s leading inde­pen­dent invest­ment firms, mana­ging over US$110 billion in assets for its inves­tors from Europe, South and North America and Asia. The company is majo­rity-owned by its employees and gene­ra­tes sustainable, attrac­tive returns for its investors.

With the objec­tive of achie­ving posi­tive results for all stake­hol­ders, Ardian’s acti­vi­ties promote indi­vi­du­als, compa­nies and econo­mies world­wide. Ardian’s invest­ment philo­so­phy is aligned with the three guiding prin­ci­ples of excel­lence, loyalty and entrepreneurship.

The company has a global network of more than 700 employees and 15 offices in Europe (Frank­furt, Jersey, London, Luxem­bourg, Madrid, Milan, Paris and Zurich), South America (Sant­iago de Chile), North America (New York and San Fran­cisco) and Asia (Beijing, Seoul, Singa­pore and Tokyo). Ardian mana­ges the assets of its more than 1,000 inves­tors in five invest­ment areas: Direct Funds, Funds of Funds, Infra­struc­ture, Private Debt and Real Estate.

News

Zurich — Proven­tis Part­ners, one of the largest inde­pen­dent M&A advi­sory firms in the DACH region, under­pins its successful growth course with another key person­nel appoint­ment: Dr. Jan-Phil­ipp (JP) Pfander beco­mes a new part­ner in the Zurich office and will drive the stra­te­gic expan­sion of the tran­sac­tion busi­ness as well as the advi­sory services in the chemi­cal sector toge­ther with Dr. Uwe Nickel.

Prior to joining Proven­tis Part­ners, Jan-Phil­ipp Pfander was Mana­ging Direc­tor at Moelis & Company. He headed EMEA Chemi­cals and Mate­ri­als there. Until 2015, he was Mana­ging Direc­tor at J.P.Morgan and respon­si­ble for EMEA Chemi­cals. From 2001 to early 2007, he was head of the Euro­pean Chemi­cals sector at Lehman Brot­hers. Jan-Phil­ipp Pfander began his career at McKin­sey & Company.

In a career span­ning more than 30 years, Jan-Phil­ipp Pfander has advi­sed on a wide range of global and regio­nal M&A and capi­tal markets tran­sac­tions in chemi­cals and rela­ted sectors for stra­te­gists and finan­cial inves­tors. Among others, Jan-Phil­ipp Pfander has advi­sed Evonik, Symrise, Nouryon, Lonza, Marquardt & Bahls, Syngenta, Brenn­tag, ADNOC, Altana and Lanxess in the past.

At Proven­tis Part­ners, Jan-Phil­ipp Pfander will consis­t­ently expand the range of services for clients in the chemi­cal indus­try toge­ther with Uwe Nickel. He will contri­bute his many years of expe­ri­ence in M&A and corpo­rate finance as well as his proven exper­tise in the chemi­cal indus­try to the support of M&A proces­ses. He stands for the hands-on approach coupled with a long expe­ri­ence in invest­ment banking and stra­te­gic consulting.

“We are very appre­cia­tive to have such an expe­ri­en­ced chemi­cal expert as Jan-Phil­ipp Pfander join Proven­tis Part­ners as an M&A and indus­try specia­list. Jan-Phil­ipp brings to us a deep under­stan­ding of the needs of compa­nies in almost all sectors of the chemi­cal indus­try and knows how to trans­late the chal­lenges of these indus­tries into oppor­tu­ni­ties for our clients. His expe­ri­ence in invest­ment banking, his deal track record and last but not least his large network perfectly comple­ment Proven­tis’ exper­tise in the global chemi­cal indus­try. Thus, we gene­rate a unique selling propo­si­tion in the chemi­cal M&A advi­sory segment”, explai­ned Uwe Nickel, Mana­ging Part­ner of Proven­tis Part­ners Zurich.

“I am plea­sed to join Proven­tis Part­ners to further deve­lop the chemis­try exper­tise toge­ther with Uwe Nickel and the exis­ting team. We are buil­ding on an excel­lent repu­ta­tion of the company as a respon­si­ble, stra­te­gic part­ner for medium-sized compa­nies.” “Deli­ve­ring solu­tion-orien­ted, inno­va­tive and inde­pen­dent M&A and corpo­rate finance advice to stra­te­gists and finan­cial inves­tors — regio­nally active and globally connec­ted, is the goal,” says Jan-Phil­ipp Pfander. “The new role combi­nes my many years of expe­ri­ence in inter­na­tio­nal M&A and corpo­rate finance advi­sory with Proven­tis Part­ners’ exis­ting expe­ri­ence in mana­ging chemi­cal compa­nies, thus comple­men­ting each other ideally.”

“I expect a sustained increase in tran­sac­tion volu­mes in the sector over the next few years, due to the shift in supply chains, and the chan­ges in demand for chemi­cals and mate­ri­als that will accom­pany the “Green Revo­lu­tion”. My goal with Proven­tis Part­ners is to provide the ideal consul­ting services for our clients in this chal­len­ging environment.”

In the chemi­cal sector, Proven­tis Part­ners alre­ady has a long track record and is an active member of the global Merger Alli­ance. Thanks to Jan-Phil­ipp Pfander’s contri­bu­tion, Proven­tis Part­ners will conti­nue to expand the chemi­cal sector inter­na­tio­nally as a focus sector since 2020.

About Dr. Jan-Phil­ipp (JP) Pfander

Born in Frank­furt, he star­ted his career at McKin­sey & Company in Hamburg. After 10 years of top manage­ment consul­ting to chemi­cal and indus­trial compa­nies on stra­tegy, port­fo­lio manage­ment, M&A and perfor­mance opti­miza­tion, he joined Lehman Brot­her in London in 2001 in the M&A team and became Head of Chemi­cals Sector for Europe. At the begin­ning of 2007, he joined J.P.Morgan as Sector Head EMEA Chemi­cals. In mid-2015, Jan-Phil­ipp Pfander became Part­ner and Mana­ging Direc­tor at Moelis & Company with respon­si­bi­lity for Chemi­cals and Mate­ri­als in the EMEA region.

Dr. Jan-Phil­ipp (JP) Pfander studied micro­bio­logy at the Tech­ni­cal Univer­sity of Munich and holds a PhD in busi­ness admi­nis­tra­tion from the Univer­sity of Oldenburg.

About Proven­tis Partners

Proven­tis Part­ners is a part­ner-led M&A advi­sory firm whose clients include a majo­rity of mid-sized family busi­nesses, corpo­rate subsi­dia­ries and private equity funds. With more than 30 M&A advi­sors, Proven­tis Part­ners is one of the largest inde­pen­dent M&A consul­tancies in the German-spea­king region and looks back on 20 years of M&A expe­ri­ence and more than 300 comple­ted tran­sac­tions. The M&A advi­sors with offices in Zurich, Hamburg, Colo­gne and Munich are active in the sectors Indus­tri­als & Chemi­cals, Busi­ness Services, Consu­mer & Retail, TMT, Health­care and Energy & Sustaina­bi­lity. Exclu­sive member­ship in Mergers Alli­ance — an inter­na­tio­nal part­ner­ship of leading M&A specia­lists — enables Proven­tis Part­ners to assist clients in 30 count­ries in key markets world­wide. Mergers Alli­ance members, with over 200 M&A profes­sio­nals, provide Proven­tis Part­ners, and thus its clients, with unique access to local markets in Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia and Africa. www.proventis.com

News

Berlin — The Chinese company Sino Biophar­maceu­ti­cal Limi­ted is buying Softhale NV. Softhale is a priva­tely held Belgian company focu­sed on the deve­lo­p­ment of products for the treat­ment of respi­ra­tory dise­a­ses. Its next-gene­ra­tion Soft Mist Inha­la­tion (“SMI”) device is based on diffe­ren­tia­ted tech­no­logy and enables more effi­ci­ent drug depo­si­tion in the lungs.

The tran­sac­tion volume is USD 110 million and addi­tio­nal payments rela­ted to regu­la­tory and commer­cial milestones.

An inter­na­tio­nal team of Baker McKen­zie lawy­ers provi­ded compre­hen­sive advice to Sino Biophar­maceu­ti­cal Limi­ted on all legal and regu­la­tory aspects of the tran­sac­tion, with the agree­ment gover­ned by German law. The M&A nego­tia­ti­ons were led by Dr. Thors­ten Seidel in Berlin. The due dili­gence on the Belgian company was led by Baker McKen­zie Brussels under the leader­ship of Domi­ni­que Maes.

“With the successful closing of the tran­sac­tion, we were able to support our client in the imple­men­ta­tion of its growth stra­tegy. With this acqui­si­tion, our client gains a stra­te­gic hub in Europe on its way to beco­ming a major deve­lo­per of inno­va­tive respi­ra­tory products for China and the global market,” commen­ted Dr. Thors­ten Seidel, Part­ner Baker McKenzie.

Sino Biophar­maceu­ti­cal, toge­ther with its subsi­dia­ries, is a leading inno­va­tive rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment (“R&D”) focu­sed phar­maceu­ti­cal conglo­me­rate in China. Sino Biopharmaceutical’s busi­ness compri­ses a fully inte­gra­ted chain of phar­maceu­ti­cal products that includes a number of inno­va­tive R&D plat­forms and pipe­lines, a range of smart manu­fac­tu­ring faci­li­ties, and a strong distri­bu­tion infrastructure.

Softhale is a Belgian phar­maceu­ti­cal company specia­li­zing in the deve­lo­p­ment of SMI (Soft Mist Inha­la­tion) devices (vapor inha­lers) and rela­ted phar­maceu­ti­cal products for the deli­very of drugs to the lungs.

Baker McKenzie’s global Corporate/M&A team advi­ses on more cross-border tran­sac­tions than any other law firm. Most recently, Baker McKen­zie advi­sed Para­gon on the sale of Novu­mIP to Ques­tel Group, TA Asso­cia­tes on the acqui­si­tion of a majo­rity stake in IGEL, Embra­cer on the acqui­si­tion of Easy­brain Limi­ted, SK Tele­com on a joint venture with Deut­sche Tele­kom, Chr. Hansen Holding A/S in its acqui­si­tion of Jenne­wein Biotech­no­lo­gie GmbH, DBAG in an invest­ment in conga­tec Holding AG, SAP in the sale of its SAP Digi­tal Inter­con­nect commu­ni­ca­ti­ons unit to Sinch AB, Air Liquide in the sale of the Schülke Group to Swedish finan­cial inves­tor EQT, METRO AG in the sale of its China busi­ness and the estab­lish­ment of a stra­te­gic part­ner­ship with Wumei, Bayer AG in the sale of its majo­rity stake in chemi­cal park opera­tor Currenta, and Evonik in the sale of its methacry­la­tes group to Advent International.

Legal advi­sor Sino Biophar­maceu­ti­cal Limi­ted: Baker McKenzie
Lead: Corporate/M&A: Dr. Thors­ten Seidel (Part­ner, Berlin)
Other lawy­ers invol­ved: Corporate/M&A: Domi­ni­que Maes (Part­ner, Brussels), Kim Stas (Coun­sel, Brussels), Derek Poon (Part­ner, Hong Kong), Bruno Schroé (Asso­ciate, Brussels), Holger Engel­kamp (Coun­sel, Berlin)
Employ­ment: Dr. Matthias Köhler (Part­ner, Berlin), Tatjana Serbina (Asso­ciate, Berlin)
IP: Dr. Rembert Niebel (Part­ner, Frankfurt)

About Baker McKenzie

Baker McKen­zie advi­ses clients to successfully deal with the chal­lenges of globa­liza­tion. We solve complex legal problems across natio­nal borders and legal fields. Our unique culture — grown over 70 years — enables our 13,000 employees to under­stand local markets while opera­ting inter­na­tio­nally. We use the trus­ting and friendly coope­ra­tion in our inter­na­tio­nal network for the bene­fit of our clients.

In Germany, around 200 lawy­ers with proven profes­sio­nal exper­tise and inter­na­tio­nal expe­ri­ence repre­sent the inte­rests of their clients at the offices in Berlin, Düssel­dorf, Frankfurt/Main and Munich. As one of the leading German law firms, Baker McKen­zie advi­ses natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal compa­nies and insti­tu­ti­ons in all areas of commer­cial law.

News

Frank­furt am Main — Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (DBAG) invests in R+S Group AG (R+S), a provi­der of tech­ni­cal buil­ding equip­ment. DBAG acqui­res the shares of the previous majo­rity share­hol­der, conzima Cons­truc­tion GmbH, invests 15 million euros and enters into a long-term invest­ment. Haspa Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft für den Mittel­stand mbH, which has alre­ady been a share­hol­der of R+S since 2010, will conti­nue to hold an inte­rest as a mino­rity share­hol­der. The Board of Manage­ment of R+S will also acquire shares. The tran­sac­tion is subject to a finan­cing contin­gency and regu­la­tory appr­oval; closing is expec­ted in April.

Expan­ded offe­ring through long-term investments

DBAG has expan­ded its offe­ring to mid-market compa­nies to include equity invest­ments that it can hold in the port­fo­lio for longer than the matu­rity limits of conven­tio­nal private equity funds allow. DBAG ther­e­fore does not enter into such invest­ments as a co-inves­tor along­side the DBAG funds it initia­tes, but finan­ces them exclu­si­vely with funds from its own balance sheet. In this context, DBAG supports fast-growing compa­nies as a mino­rity share­hol­der and acqui­res majo­rity stakes in compa­nies with opera­tio­nal chal­lenges. In both cases, sustainable corpo­rate deve­lo­p­ment requi­res a longer holding period than in the buyout busi­ness. A first long-term parti­ci­pa­tion was agreed in Septem­ber 2020:
Haus­held AG deve­lops intel­li­gent meter solu­ti­ons for elec­tri­city networks — DBAG has since accom­pa­nied the company’s growth as a mino­rity shareholder.

R+S Group AG: Three inde­pen­dent busi­ness units

R+S is one of the leading compa­nies in tech­ni­cal buil­ding equip­ment. R+S imple­ments, controls and main­ta­ins projects for muni­ci­pa­li­ties, health care, indus­try and ship­buil­ding in parti­cu­lar. R+S is a full-service provi­der; its range of services includes elec­tri­cal system cons­truc­tion, energy and control tech­no­logy, and heating/air condi­tio­ning and venti­la­tion tech­no­logy. Among the better-known current projects are the cons­truc­tion of the new Termi­nal 3 at Frank­furt Airport and an exten­sion for Frank­furt Univer­sity Hospi­tal. Tech­ni­cal buil­ding equip­ment accounts for just over 50 percent of sales. The company’s offe­ring is supple­men­ted by two orga­niza­tio­nally inde­pen­dent busi­ness units — person­nel services and a high-perfor­mance elec­tri­cal trade. In 2020, R+S gene­ra­ted around 360 million euros in sales. The company employs 3,000 people at 30 loca­ti­ons in Germany, inclu­ding around 500 at its head­quar­ters in Fulda (Hesse).

In recent years, R+S had grown mainly through corpo­rate acqui­si­ti­ons. Howe­ver, plan­ned syner­gies could not be achie­ved because the inte­gra­tion of the acqui­red compa­nies was not driven forward quickly enough. This had a nega­tive impact on earnings, as did a number of major projects that were not suffi­ci­ently profi­ta­ble. In addi­tion, promi­sing new cons­truc­tion projects were post­po­ned due to the pande­mic — this has affec­ted current capa­city utiliza­tion. R+S has an attrac­tive custo­mer base and a high order back­log. The market envi­ron­ment is good: The trend towards so-called smart buil­dings and energy-effi­ci­ent buil­dings ensu­res contin­ued growth and expands the market espe­ci­ally for elec­tri­cal buil­ding equip­ment, which R+S mainly offers. The reor­ga­niza­tion of the company, which is alre­ady well advan­ced, is to be comple­ted in the coming years to enable further profi­ta­ble sales growth. Corpo­rate acqui­si­ti­ons should then also contri­bute to this again. DBAG streng­thens the equity and thus acce­le­ra­tes the successful reor­ga­niza­tion of the company.

“We are inves­t­ing in a company in the core indus­trial services sector and with an attrac­tive market posi­tion that has crea­ted good condi­ti­ons for successful further deve­lo­p­ment over the past two years,” said Jannick Hune­cke, photo, member of the DBAG Manage­ment Board on the occa­sion of the signing of the contract on Friday. “DBAG has been very successful in inves­t­ing in compa­nies with simi­lar busi­ness models in the past and will use its expe­ri­ence to further advance R+S as a long-term partner.”

Ralph Burk­hardt, Chair­man of the Board of Manage­ment of R+S Group AG, empha­si­zes not only the finan­cial contri­bu­tion but above all the substan­tive contri­bu­tion of DBAG: “With our new share­hol­ders, we are well posi­tio­ned to expand our range of services to include further trades and to turn more stron­gly to custo­mers in parti­cu­larly promi­sing industries.”

About DBAG

Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG, a listed company, initia­tes closed-end private equity funds and invests — predo­mi­nantly along­side DBAG funds — in well-posi­tio­ned medium-sized compa­nies with poten­tial. One focus for many years has been indus­try. An incre­asing propor­tion of equity invest­ments are in compa­nies in the growth sectors of broad­band tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons, IT services/software and health­care. The long-term, value-enhan­cing entre­pre­neu­rial invest­ment approach makes DBAG a sought-after invest­ment part­ner in the German-spea­king region. Assets mana­ged and advi­sed by the DBAG Group amount to 2.5 billion euros.

News

Berlin — SMP has again advi­sed the startup SellerX in the course of a capi­tal increase. The total volume of the exten­ded finan­cing round amounts to appro­xi­m­ately 26 million euros and comes from lead inves­tor 83North as well as exis­ting inves­tors Felix Capi­tal, Cherry Ventures and other well-known busi­ness angels. Just a few months ago, SellerX announ­ced the successful comple­tion of a €100 million equity and debt finan­cing led by Sili­con Valley-based VC Triple­Point Capi­tal, among others.

In the mean­time, the Berlin-based company has bought up around 20 Amazon stores and is now plan­ning to use the fresh capi­tal to further expand its opera­ting busi­ness. At least 50 more stores are to follow in the next year and a half. SellerX was compre­hen­si­vely legally advi­sed by SMP part­ner Martin Scha­per toge­ther with Martyna Sabat and Matthias Kres­ser. The team had alre­ady provi­ded legal support to the FBA buyer in the previous finan­cing at the end of 2020 and also worked closely with Tomasz Krzy­wi­cki, Gene­ral Coun­sel of SellerX, on this transaction.

About SellerX

SellerX is a VC-funded startup that buys and builds out Amazon stores. With its growing and diver­si­fied port­fo­lio of FBA (Fulfill­ment by Amazon) sellers, SellerX aims to further opti­mize and grow its acqui­red busi­nesses to estab­lish sustainable consu­mer brands in the home, garden and pet supply cate­go­ries. Art supplies, DIY tools, nutri­tio­nal supple­ments, beauty products, baby products and fitness tools are also part of SellerX’s diverse port­fo­lio. The Berlin-based company was foun­ded in 2020 by Phil­ipp Trie­bel and Malte Horeys­eck (photo ) and says it curr­ently employs around 120 people at its sites in Germany, the UK and the US.

About SMP

SMP is a specia­list tax and commer­cial law firm opera­ting in the core areas of corpo­rate, funds, liti­ga­tion, tax and tran­sac­tions. SMP’s attor­neys and tax advi­sors repre­sent 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. Since its foun­da­tion in 2017, SMP has become 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, SMP employs more than 60 expe­ri­en­ced lawy­ers, tax advi­sors and tax specia­lists in three offices in Berlin, Hamburg and Colo­gne. www.smp.law

News

Berlin — SMP advi­sed early-stage inves­tor 42CAP on its invest­ment in Vien­nese biotech startup Allcyte. As lead inves­tor of an inter­na­tio­nal inves­tor consor­tium, 42CAP inves­ted toge­ther with Air Street Capi­tal (UK), Amino Coll­ec­tive (Germany), VP Venture Part­ners (Switz­er­land) and PUSH Ventures (Austria) in the course of the growth financing.

Allcyte, which specia­li­zes in cancer therapy, has so far used its process to treat blood cancers. Howe­ver, accor­ding to the company, expan­sion to other cancer types is alre­ady plan­ned. “Instead of trying to extra­po­late infor­ma­tion from DNA, we’re taking actual cancer cells and test­ing directly on them to see what works,” Niko­las Krall, co-foun­der and CEO of Allcyte, told U.S. Fortune maga­zine. For the multi­tude of rapidly perfor­med “micro­ex­pe­ri­ments,” the startup uses AI image reco­gni­tion to deter­mine how cells respond to each drug.

“It is fasci­na­ting to see how alre­ady today in modern cancer therapy the use of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence in inter­ac­tion with biome­di­cine can help to directly deter­mine and in this way maxi­mize the degree of effi­cacy of diffe­rent treat­ments and to speci­fi­cally advance drug deve­lo­p­ment,” says Jens Kretz­schmann. “We hope that this invest­ment has laid the foun­da­tion for further revo­lu­tio­nary succes­ses of the company in the fight against cancer,” adds Frede­rik Gärtner.

42CAP recei­ved legal and tax advice from an SMP team led by Frede­rik Gärt­ner, Jens Kretz­schmann, and Martyna Sabat. Previously, SMP assis­ted the venture capi­ta­list in a number of finan­cing rounds as well as in the launch of its second venture capi­tal fund generation.

About 42CAP
42CAP inves­tors Alex Meyer and Thomas Wilke invest very early in young compa­nies with global ambi­ti­ons. They built one of Europe’s largest SaaS compa­nies them­sel­ves with eCir­cle and sold the profi­ta­ble company to Teradata (NYSE:TDC) in 2012. The 42CAP credo Peers amongst Entre­pre­neurs reflects their invest­ment approach to support data and tech­no­logy-driven busi­ness models, product-driven foun­ders and sustainable busi­ness deve­lo­p­ment. This back­ground is appre­cia­ted by foun­ders such as Nico­las Reboud (SHINE, Paris), Inigo Ijuan­tegui (Ontruck, Madrid) and Alex­an­der Igels­böck (Adve­rity, Vienna).

Allcyte
Allcyte is a biotech startup based in Vienna. Using AI-assis­ted image analy­sis, Allcyte has deve­lo­ped a method to gene­rate actionable insights into the func­tional acti­vity of drugs and drug candi­da­tes directly in viable, primary tissue samples from human cancer pati­ents at the single-cell level. The company thus enables physi­ci­ans to treat cancer pati­ents with the most promi­sing drug at the right time, when clas­si­cal gene­tics-driven precis­ion medi­cine fails to provide precise answers. It also enables phar­maceu­ti­cal compa­nies to select the most promi­sing drug candi­da­tes for clini­cal deve­lo­p­ment in the right pati­ent popu­la­ti­ons to maxi­mize clini­cal trial success rates and pati­ent bene­fit. Allcyte star­ted in 2017 as a spin-off of the Vienna-based CeMM Rese­arch Center for Mole­cu­lar Medi­cine. Foun­ded by Berend Snij­der, Gregory Vladi­mer, Niko­laus Krall and Giulio Superti-Furga, the company curr­ently employs around 30 people.

About SMP
SMP is a specia­list tax and commer­cial law firm opera­ting in the core areas of corpo­rate, funds, liti­ga­tion, tax and tran­sac­tions. SMP’s attor­neys and tax advi­sors repre­sent 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. Since its foun­da­tion in 2017, SMP has become 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, SMP employs more than 60 expe­ri­en­ced lawy­ers, tax advi­sors and tax specia­lists in three offices in Berlin, Hamburg and Colo­gne. www.smp.law

Consul­tant 42CAP: SMP
Dr. Frede­rik Gärt­ner (Corpo­rate), Asso­ciate Partner
Jens Kretz­schmann (Taxes), Partner
Dr. Martyna Sabat (Corpo­rate), Associate

News

Chemnitz/Munich/New York — Staff­base, a leading provi­der of digi­tal solu­ti­ons for inter­nal corpo­rate commu­ni­ca­ti­ons, and Gene­ral Atlan­tic, a leading global growth inves­tor, have agreed on a stra­te­gic part­ner­ship: Gene­ral Atlan­tic is leading a €122 million ($145 million) finan­cing round for the Chem­nitz, Germany-based start-up to help it grow inter­na­tio­nally and further expand its global leader­ship posi­tion. Of the exis­ting inves­tors, Insights Part­ners and e.ventures are parti­ci­pa­ting in the finan­cing round; KIZOO and Capna­mic Ventures remain inves­ted. As part of the part­ner­ship, Achim Berg (photo), Opera­ting Part­ner at Gene­ral Atlan­tic and Presi­dent of the digi­tal asso­cia­tion BITKOM, will join Staffbase’s Advi­sory Board.

Foun­ded in 2014 in Chem­nitz, Germany, Staff­base has become a fast-growing and award-winning provi­der of employee apps, inter­nal email news­let­ter tools, and modern intra­nets to improve employee commu­ni­ca­ti­ons. The products are used in over 1,000 orga­niza­ti­ons by a total of more than 8 million people and regu­larly win awards. Custo­mers include Adidas, Audi, BHP, Deut­sche Post DHL, Grou­pon, Hita­chi, Ikea, Johns Hopkins Univer­sity, McKes­son, Paula­ner, Suncor, Viess­mann and Volvo.

The Staff­base plat­form enables compa­nies to commu­ni­cate with all their employees in a timely and effec­tive manner: from the crea­tion of messa­ges in the corpo­rate design to the fast and relia­ble publi­ca­tion of messa­ges and the measu­re­ment of the impact of commu­ni­ca­tion measu­res. Staffbase’s solu­ti­ons enable more effec­tive onboar­ding, higher enga­ge­ment and grea­ter employee iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with their employer. More and more compa­nies see inter­nal commu­ni­ca­tion as an essen­tial stra­te­gic task that can be used to guide and involve employees in the digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion. In parti­cu­lar, the Covid 19 pande­mic and the asso­cia­ted proli­fe­ra­tion of a hybrid work envi­ron­ment has once again high­ligh­ted the importance of targe­ted and agile inter­nal communications.

Dr. Martin Böhrin­ger, co-foun­der and CEO of Staff­base: “Our vision is to bring all employees of a company toge­ther through strong inter­nal commu­ni­ca­tion and a common mission. To achieve this, we support execu­ti­ves and commu­ni­ca­tion profes­sio­nals in large compa­nies with the leading digi­tal plat­form for successful employee commu­ni­ca­tion, which we conti­nue to expand at high speed. The part­ner­ship with Gene­ral Atlan­tic will help us further realize this goal, not least in North America. But also crucial for us is the strong local team in Germany, which will support us with its expertise.”

Dr. Chris­tian Figge, Mana­ging Direc­tor at Gene­ral Atlan­tic: “Staff­base is a global pioneer in the field of soft­ware speci­fi­cally desi­gned for inter­nal commu­ni­ca­ti­ons. We have been follo­wing this exci­ting company for some time and are now looking forward to support­ing the foun­ding and manage­ment team in expan­ding their global market leader­ship. Staff­base is an excel­lent exam­ple of how broad the base of inno­va­tive compa­nies with global ambi­tion now is in Germany.”

Staff­base has 450 employees in eleven loca­ti­ons, with head­quar­ters in Chem­nitz and offices in London, New York, Vancou­ver, Amster­dam and Berlin. In early March, the company merged with Bananatag, the leading Cana­dian provi­der of inter­nal corpo­rate commu­ni­ca­ti­ons. The combi­ned company is one of the world’s largest, highest reve­nue and fastest growing provi­ders of advan­ced inter­nal commu­ni­ca­ti­ons soft­ware. The merger added a native solu­tion for email commu­ni­ca­tion to the estab­lished employee app and intra­net plat­form, as well as deeper inte­gra­ti­ons with Slack and Micro­soft 365 colla­bo­ra­tion tools, inclu­ding Micro­soft Teams and SharePoint.

Staff­base

Staff­base is one of the world’s leading and fastest growing provi­ders of employee apps and modern intra­nets to improve employee commu­ni­ca­tion in large and inter­na­tio­nal compa­nies. The mobile version allows employ­ers to secu­rely reach their employees where­ver they are — in the office, at home, on the factory floor, or on the road. The plat­form gives the work­force better access to corpo­rate infor­ma­tion and digi­tal work­place tools. With head­quar­ters in Chem­nitz and offices in New York, Amster­dam, London, Vancou­ver, Kelowna, Munich, Leip­zig, Berlin, Dres­den and Colo­gne, Staff­base enables inter­nal commu­ni­ca­tion that reaches all employees. Staff­base has more than 1000 custo­mers world­wide — inclu­ding DHL, T‑Systems, Viess­mann, Adidas, Paula­ner, MAN Truck & Bus SE and Audi. For more infor­ma­tion, visit staffbase.com.

Gene­ral Atlantic

Gene­ral Atlan­tic is a leading inter­na­tio­nal growth capi­tal inves­tor that provi­des capi­tal and stra­te­gic support to compa­nies with high growth poten­tial. Foun­ded in 1980, the company combi­nes a colla­bo­ra­tive global approach, indus­try-speci­fic exper­tise, a long-term invest­ment hori­zon and a deep under­stan­ding of growth drivers with outstan­ding manage­ment teams to create excep­tio­nal busi­ness models world­wide. Gene­ral Atlantic’s team includes more than 175 invest­ment profes­sio­nals in New York, Amster­dam, Beijing, Green­wich, Hong Kong, Jakarta, London, Mexico City, Mumbai, Munich, Palo Alto, São Paulo, Shang­hai and Singa­pore. www.generalatlantic.com

News

Copen­ha­gen, Denmark — London-based SME growth inves­tor Magenta Part­ners today announ­ced that it has led a major Series A funding round for Moto­sumo, a fast-growing at-home indoor cycling plat­form that offers live inter­ac­tive clas­ses from any bike. Magenta led the finan­cing round with parti­ci­pa­tion from exis­ting investors.

Tom Matthews, mana­ging part­ner of Magenta, says their exten­sive evalua­tion iden­ti­fied Moto­sumo as a unique offe­ring in a crow­ded market. “Our team of experts has reviewed nume­rous soft­ware and hard­ware plat­forms in the Connec­ted Fitness space over the past 18 months. We believe Moto­sumo is an outstan­ding offe­ring capa­ble of leading the evolu­tion in the home fitness market. It is the only plat­form of its kind that is hard­ware agno­stic, which opens up signi­fi­cant growth oppor­tu­ni­ties across geogra­phies,” said Matthews, whose team at Magenta has an exten­sive back­ground in fitness, inclu­ding previous invest­ments in LA Fitness, The Gym Group, Pure Gym and Viva Gym.

Moto­sumo, a Danish fit-tech company foun­ded in 2015, offers a global program of live indoor cycling clas­ses with world-class instruc­tors. Motosumo’s inno­va­tive tech­no­logy means users can join the plat­form from home, with any bike and a cell phone or tablet. Even the simp­lest setup can be connec­ted to enjoy a fully inter­ac­tive class.

With subscrip­ti­ons start­ing at just $12.99 per month, Moto­sumo offers an afforda­ble alter­na­tive to the many expen­sive play­ers in the market that require consu­mers to purchase equip­ment and wait weeks for deli­very to get started.

“Imme­diate access, an inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ence and global reach are important factors for growth, and Moto­sumo has all three,” says Moto­sumo co-foun­der and CEO Kres­ten Juel Jensen. “Our plat­form works with any bike, so users don’t have to invest in new equip­ment and can access a work­out imme­dia­tely. Moto­sumo cour­ses include inter­ac­tive games with live fitness metrics, and our trai­ners inter­act with parti­ci­pants in real time. We are exci­ted about the part­ner­ship with Magenta. Their invest­ment and stra­te­gic vision and support will help drive our expe­ri­ence and expansion.”

“Even before the COVID pande­mic, consu­mer demand for home exer­cise opti­ons was growing. The past year has drasti­cally chan­ged the land­scape of the fitness indus­try. Connec­ted fitness at home has become a major bene­fi­ci­ary, and Moto­sumo was alre­ady ahead of the curve and uniquely posi­tio­ned to drive rapid adop­tion of our home exer­cise solu­tion,” said Juel Jensen.

This round of Series A funding will allow Moto­sumo to double the number of its trai­ners on four conti­nents (Europe, North America, Asia and Austra­lia), expand its tech­ni­cal team and signi­fi­cantly increase its marke­ting efforts. Magenta typi­cally invests between GBP5 million and GBP20 million in each oppor­tu­nity. Your invest­ment in Moto­sumo is the first step in a possi­ble long-term, working partnership.

Magenta Mana­ging Part­ner Chase Emson alre­ady makes Moto­sumo clas­ses part of his daily work­out at home, “Moto­sumo is a fanta­stic expe­ri­ence. It is the only real live and inter­ac­tive offer for those who have an indoor bike at home. Having taken some of the clas­ses, I can say from perso­nal expe­ri­ence that Moto­sumo is fun and enter­tai­ning — and I’m most exci­ted about the results I’m getting from my trai­ning,” Emson said.

Inves­tors in Moto­sumo from previous rounds include Danish venture capi­tal fund Prom­en­tum Equity Part­ners and PreSeed Ventures, one of Denmark’s largest inno­va­tion incubators.

About Moto­sumo

Moto­sumo is a live inter­ac­tive plat­form for home cycling cour­ses that works with any statio­nary bike. The company was foun­ded by a Danish team of engi­neers and astro­phy­si­cists who harnes­sed the power of smart­phone motion sensors to gene­rate live fitness metrics, such as cadence, on each bike. They deve­lo­ped an app to make a fun, inter­ac­tive work­out and commu­nity expe­ri­ence acces­si­ble to almost anyone. Early on, Moto­sumo became a popu­lar main­stay in gyms and fitness centers. In response to the growing demand for at-home work­out opti­ons, Moto­sumo has evol­ved the plat­form for indi­vi­dual users and part­ne­red with a network of world-class trai­ners to create a global offe­ring of daily live clas­ses. For just $12.99 per month, anyone can enjoy the same intense, inter­ac­tive fitness expe­ri­ence at home. To turn any bike into a world-class work­out expe­ri­ence, visit www.motosumo.com.

About Magenta Partners

Magenta Part­ners LLP is a UK-based private equity advi­sory firm foun­ded in 2008, specia­li­zing in entre­pre­neur-led growth invest­ments. Since its incep­tion, Magenta has inves­ted in consu­mer-focu­sed compa­nies such as Pure Gym, JoJo Maman Bebe, Maker&Son and North Ameri­can Guitar Company. A criti­cal element of Magenta’s invest­ment style is the ability to work with manage­ment teams to achieve alignment around a common goal. Magenta funds are backed by successful entre­pre­neurs, and the manage­ment team itself brings expe­ri­ence in running and growing successful venture-backed compa­nies. www.magentapartners.com

Prom­en­tum Equity Partners

Prom­en­tum Equity Part­ners is a Danish private equity fund estab­lished in 2016 as a colla­bo­ra­tion between Prom­en­tum Capi­tal and Alter­na­tive Equity Part­ners. www.promentumequity.dk

PreSeed Ventures

For more than two deca­des, PreSeed Ventures has scou­ted, mento­red and funded Danish success stories such as Vivino, Trust­pi­lot and Lunar. www.preseedventures.dk

News

Frank­furt a.M. — McDer­mott Will & Emery advi­ses Fried­rich Vorwerk Group SE on its successful IPO in the Prime Stan­dard segment of the Frank­furt Stock Exchange.

A total of 9.2 million shares were placed at a price of 45 euros per share. Of this amount, 2.0 million came from a capi­tal increase and 6.0 million from the holdings of the exis­ting share­hol­ders MBB SE and ALX Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft mbH. In addi­tion, 1.2 million shares were allot­ted to exis­ting share­hol­ders under an over-allot­ment option. The total place­ment volume thus amounts to 414 million euros. The first day of trading on the Regu­la­ted Market of the Frank­furt Stock Exch­ange is expec­ted to be March 25, 2021.

The IPO was supported by Beren­berg and Jeffe­ries as Joint Global Coor­di­na­tors and by Hauck & Aufhäu­ser as Joint Bookrunner.

“The IPO gives us the oppor­tu­nity to play a decisive role in shaping the energy tran­si­tion and, in parti­cu­lar, to expand in the growing markets for hydro­gen and the expan­sion of elec­tri­city high­ways,” says Torben Klein­feldt, CEO of the Vorwerk Group and share­hol­der, explai­ning the company’s decis­ion to go public.

Fried­rich Vorwerk is a leading provi­der of energy infra­struc­ture solu­ti­ons for gas, elec­tri­city and hydro­gen appli­ca­ti­ons. Fried­rich Vorwerk plans to use the gross proceeds of 90 million euros from the newly issued shares to signi­fi­cantly expand its busi­ness over the next few years, parti­cu­larly in the areas of elec­tri­city and clean hydrogen.

McDer­mott has a long-stan­ding client rela­ti­onship with the medium-sized, family-owned invest­ment company MBB SE. McDer­mott alre­ady advi­sed MBB subsi­diary Aumann AG on its IPO in 2017.

Advi­sors to Fried­rich Vorwerk Group SE: McDer­mott Will & Emery, Frankfurt
Simon Weiß, Joseph W. Marx (both Capi­tal Markets, both Lead), Dr. Phil­ipp Gren­ze­bach (Corpo­rate, Düssel­dorf), Edwin C. Lauren­son (Senior Coun­sel, Capi­tal Markets, San Francisco/New York); Asso­cia­tes: Isabelle Müller, Elena Platte, LL.M., Chris­toph Schä­fer, Tom Schä­fer (all Corporate)

About McDer­mott Will & Emery
McDer­mott Will & Emery is a leading inter­na­tio­nal law firm. With over 1,200 attor­neys, we are repre­sen­ted in 21 loca­ti­ons world­wide: Atlanta, Boston, Brussels, Chicago, Dallas, Düssel­dorf, Frank­furt a. M., Hous­ton, Colo­gne, London, Los Ange­les, Miami, Milan, Munich, New York, Orange County, Paris, San Fran­cisco, Sili­con Valley, Washing­ton, D.C. and Wilm­ing­ton. The German prac­tice is mana­ged by McDer­mott Will & Emery Rechts­an­wälte Steu­er­be­ra­ter LLP. www.mwe.com

News

Frank­furt a. Main — ec4u and BULPROS join forces under the majo­rity parti­ci­pa­tion of Silver­fleet Capi­tal to offer their custo­mers a new gene­ra­tion of digi­tal cloud expe­ri­ence services. Shear­man & Ster­ling advi­sed Silver­fleet Capi­tal on the finan­cing provi­ded by Ares for the acqui­si­tion of ec4u and BULPROS.

ec4u and BULPROS join forces to offer their custo­mers a new gene­ra­tion of digi­tal cloud expe­ri­ence services. The joint plat­form will employ around 1,400 people at 25 sites in a total of eleven countries.

ec4u, head­quar­te­red in Karls­ruhe, and BULPROS, head­quar­te­red in Sofia, Bulga­ria, have alre­ady been working toge­ther as part­ners in the field of digi­tal cloud solu­ti­ons since 2018. The foun­ders and exis­ting manage­ment teams of both compa­nies will remain on board as share­hol­ders and will conti­nue to manage the merged company. The merger is subject to the custo­mary regu­la­tory approval.

ec4u was foun­ded in 2000 and specia­li­zes in the digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion of busi­ness-criti­cal proces­ses in the areas of marke­ting, sales, service and e‑commerce across the entire custo­mer life­cy­cle. The company offers its custo­mers consul­ting services, tech­ni­cal imple­men­ta­tion, and ongo­ing deve­lo­p­ment and opera­tion of CRM systems. ec4u has successfully comple­ted a total of more than 800 trans­for­ma­tion projects, prima­rily in Germany, Austria and Switz­er­land. The company employs more than 400 experts at seve­ral Euro­pean locations.

BULPROS, foun­ded in 2010, is a provi­der of digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion services. This includes digi­tal solu­ti­ons imple­men­ta­tion, cyber­se­cu­rity, cloud migra­tion and mana­ged services, and tech­no­logy services. BULPROS opera­tes world­wide and employs more than 1,000 people at 20 loca­ti­ons in Europe and North America. The company has been named as one of the fastest growing tech­no­logy compa­nies by leading indus­try analysts — inclu­ding Deloitte’s Tech­no­logy Fast 50 in CE report and the Finan­cial Times 100 Europe.

In addi­tion to their highly compe­ti­tive service port­fo­lios and the high level of exper­tise of their employees, the two compa­nies also have strong rela­ti­onships with stra­te­gic tech­no­logy part­ners such as Sales­force, Micro­soft, SAP, Oracle, IBM, Cisco and Snowflake.

The invest­ment in ec4u and BULPROS builds on Silver­fleet Capital’s exten­sive expe­ri­ence with compa­nies in the tech­no­logy sector: Tech­no­lo­gi­cal change is a key macro trend under­pin­ning Silver­fleet Capital’s invest­ment approach. The private equity firm’s recent invest­ments include Trust­Quay, a provi­der of trust, corpo­rate and fund admi­nis­tra­tion services, and Coll­ec­tia, a credit manage­ment services plat­form. Previous successful invest­ments in this area include Phase One, Ipes and TMF.

“ec4u and BULPROS are leaders in the market for cloud-based, digi­tal solu­ti­ons for enter­pri­ses. This is a market that is very attrac­tive and offers high growth poten­tial. We are plea­sed to be able to support them in the future to fully exploit this poten­tial,” comm­ents Dr. Chris­tian Süss, Part­ner at Silver­fleet Capi­tal.

“Both ec4u and BULPROS have strong stra­te­gic part­ner­ships with the leading play­ers in the digi­tal plat­form space. We will support both compa­nies in explo­ring further coope­ra­tion and expan­sion oppor­tu­ni­ties,” adds Joachim Braun (photo), Part­ner at Silver­fleet Capi­tal.

At Silver­fleet, Dr. Chris­tian Süss, Joachim Braun, Benja­min Hubner and Jenni­fer Regehr were respon­si­ble for the tran­sac­tion. The invest­ment company was advi­sed on the tran­sac­tion by Latham & Watkins (Corpo­rate & Tax Legal), Shear­man & Ster­ling (Finance Legal), Nauta­Du­tilh (Legal), PwC (Finan­cial), wdp (IT), Grant Thorn­ton (Tax), Kambou­rov (Legal), Noerr (Legal), Schön­herr (Legal), Bär & Karrer (Legal), Kear­ney (Commer­cial) and MD Advi­sors (Debt Advi­sory). Funding was provi­ded by Ares.

About Silver­fleet Capital
Silver­fleet Capi­tal is an inde­pen­dent pan-Euro­pean private equity firm that invests in middle-market compa­nies and is a long-stan­ding client of Shear­man & Sterling.

The Shear­man & Ster­ling team led by part­ner Winfried M. Carli included asso­cia­tes Andreas Breu and Daniel Wagner (all Munich-Finance).

About Shear­man & Sterling
Shear­man & Ster­ling is an inter­na­tio­nal law firm with 25 offices in 13 count­ries and appro­xi­m­ately 850 lawy­ers. In Germany, Shear­man & Ster­ling has offices in Frank­furt and Munich. The firm is one of the inter­na­tio­nal market leaders in advi­sing on complex cross-border tran­sac­tions. World­wide, Shear­man & Ster­ling prima­rily advi­ses inter­na­tio­nal corpo­ra­ti­ons and large natio­nal compa­nies, finan­cial insti­tu­ti­ons, and large mid-sized compa­nies. For more infor­ma­tion, visit www.shearman.com.

News

Güters­loh — House­hold and commer­cial appli­ance manu­fac­tu­rer Miele has acqui­red a majo­rity stake in Otto Wilde Gril­lers GmbH, a leading manu­fac­tu­rer of grills. Miele was advi­sed on the tran­sac­tion by a cross-loca­tion M&A team from the law firm BRANDI Rechts­an­wälte, led by Güters­loh part­ners Dr. Franz Tepper (photo) and Dr. Cars­ten Chris­to­phery. The tran­sac­tion was carried out by way of a share deal. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price.

By acqui­ring 75.1% of the shares in the specia­list for gas barbe­cu­e­ing, the world-renow­ned Miele house­hold appli­ance group is further expan­ding its exper­tise in the field of outdoor cooking. In addi­tion to expan­ding the port­fo­lio, further inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion is on the joint agenda.

Foun­ded in 2015 in Düssel­dorf, Germany, the family-owned company Otto Wilde Gril­lers deve­lops, builds and sells high-end grills along with access­ories. The devices are produ­ced by manu­fac­tu­ring part­ners in Germany and China. The company curr­ently employs 30 people.

Miele has many years of exper­tise in the deve­lo­p­ment, produc­tion and global marke­ting of premium built-in appliances.

BRANDI Rechts­an­wälte conti­nuously advi­ses Miele on tran­sac­tions and corpo­rate law issues, in parti­cu­lar on invest­ments in and acqui­si­ti­ons of start-ups. The advice on the invest­ment in Otto Wilde Gril­lers covered the due dili­gence, the purchase agree­ment, the invest­ment agree­ment and the nego­tia­ti­ons in the context of the transaction.

Advi­sors to Otto Wilde Gril­lers: LACORE Rechts­an­wälte, Berlin

Advi­sor Miele: BRANDI Attor­neys Gütersloh/Paderborn/Bielefeld
Dr. Franz Tepper (photo), Part­ner (Co-Lead, Corporate/M&A), Gütersloh
Dr. Cars­ten Chris­to­phery, Part­ner (Co-Lead, Corporate/M&A), Gütersloh
Dr. Nils Wigging­haus, Part­ner (Corporate/M&A), Gütersloh
Eva-Maria Gott­schalk, Part­ner (Corporate/M&A), Gütersloh
Dr. Sörren Kiene, Part­ner (Commer­cial), Gütersloh
Dr. Sandra Vyas, Part­ner (Employ­ment Law), Paderborn
Dr. Chris­toph Rempe, Part­ner (IP/IT, Anti­trust Law), Bielefeld
Meike Pott­hast, Asso­ciate (Labor Law), Paderborn

Advi­sors to Otto Wilde Gril­lers GmbH: LACORE Rechts­an­wälte, Berlin
Nata­lie Vahsen, Part­ner (Corporate/M&A)
Stefa­nie Berges, Asso­ciate (Corporate/M&A)
Paola Leiva, Asso­ciate (Corporate/M&A)

News

Berlin — Fixico, Europe’s leading digi­tal car repair plat­form, announ­ces a €5 million expan­sion of its Series A funding round, closing it with a total of €12 million. The round is led by Auto­tech Venture. All exis­ting inves­tors, inclu­ding Fin Capi­tal, conti­nue to actively parti­ci­pate. In addi­tion, Fixico welco­mes Madrid-based Mundi Ventures to its inves­tor base. To date, Fixico has raised a total of €19.3 million. The new funds will acce­le­rate Fixico’s product deve­lo­p­ment, streng­then its presence in Germany and drive its expan­sion in Europe.

Digi­ta­liza­tion boost for the proces­sing of car repairs
Fixico is a fast-growing and award-winning Dutch tech company that aims to rede­fine the auto repair indus­try. In this field, which reflects a 120 billion euro market in Europe alone, time seems to have stood still and disrup­tion is long over­due. The repair process is time-consum­ing, inef­fi­ci­ent, and invol­ves nume­rous phone calls, emails, and physi­cal inspec­tions that are always the same — no matter what type of damage or vehicle is invol­ved. Howe­ver, modern vehic­les are beco­ming more and more tech­ni­cally sophisti­ca­ted, making repairs more complex. Not every work­shop can do that. It ther­e­fore takes a tail­o­red approach to find the right workshop.

Fixico provi­des a digi­tal plat­form that makes vehicle damage repair seam­less for drivers, insu­r­ers and fleet owners, and enables intel­li­gent match­ma­king for diffe­rent types of vehicle damage and suita­ble repair shops. The plat­form provi­des a seam­less and much more effi­ci­ent repair assign­ment process. Custo­mers can thus quickly and easily iden­tify the best repair shop for their claim, taking into account criti­cal factors such as avai­la­bi­lity, exper­tise and price.

Fixico curr­ently works with over 150 leading compa­nies in the fleet, rental, insu­rance and leasing indus­tries. Through a cross-border and unique market­place network, the plat­form provi­des access to more than 2,500 work­shops. Fixico is curr­ently repre­sen­ted in six count­ries: Germany, the Nether­lands, Belgium, Luxem­bourg, France and South Africa.

“Last year was tough for the auto repair indus­try. But even in the midst of a global pande­mic, Fixico was able to grow by 300%. This Series A round expan­sion gives us enough momen­tum to conti­nue our growth trajec­tory and become the digi­tal leader of the auto repair indus­try in Europe. In the next quar­ter, we will launch in three more Euro­pean count­ries: Italy, Austria and Denmark. In all likeli­hood, we will add three to five more count­ries to our expan­sion plans after that, with the UK and Spain at the top of our wish list. We are very exci­ted to now have Mundi Ventures on board, as they have tremen­dous know­ledge and access to a vast and cross-border insu­rance and mobi­lity network,” says Derk Rood­huy­zen de Vries, CEO and co-foun­der of Fixico.

Simon Roth­man beco­mes new member of the Execu­tive Board
Upon comple­tion of the finan­cing round, Simon Roth­man will be appoin­ted to Fixico’s Super­vi­sory Board. Roth­man is known as an early pioneer of online market­places and network effect compa­nies. He joined eBay when it was still a small U.S. auction house for coll­ec­ti­bles and helped scale the company to nearly 200 million users and gene­rate more than $40 billion in annual revenue.

During his time at eBay, Roth­man foun­ded eBay Motors. Within six years, he built eBay Motors into a global company with annual sales of 14 billion U.S. dollars and made it the world’s number one auto­mo­tive marketplace.

Simon Roth­man is a long-time angel inves­tor and venture capi­ta­list with a passion for market­places and mobi­lity. Roth­man served as an early stage board member at Tesla, Cargu­rus, Convoy and Nuro. He is also an advi­sor and/or angel inves­tor in successful tech­no­logy compa­nies such as Lyft, Lime, Getaround, Aurora, Fiverr and Poshmark.

“During my time at eBay Motors as well as at Tesla, I perso­nally deve­lo­ped a great passion for market­places and mobi­lity. It is now a unique oppor­tu­nity to find a company as promi­sing as Fixico, which sits at the inter­sec­tion of the market­place and the mobi­lity sector. From my perspec­tive, Fixico’s use of network dyna­mics to connect repair shops with vehicle owners has the poten­tial to funda­men­tally change the auto repair indus­try,” explains Simon Roth­man as a newly appoin­ted member of Fixico’s super­vi­sory board.

About Fixico
Fixico (https://fixico-business.com/de) is Europe’s leading repair manage­ment plat­form for car damage. Since its foun­ding in 2014 by Derk Rood­huy­zen de Vries, the portal has helped car owners and busi­ness part­ners quickly and conve­ni­ently find the ideal repair shop for their car and save on repair costs. Fixico thus digi­ti­zes and simpli­fies the entire repair manage­ment process for fleet, car rental, insu­rance and leasing compa­nies. Working with over 150 leading compa­nies and a network of more than 2,500 master craft­smen, the Dutch company offers stress-free, fast repairs and compe­ti­tive prices. More than 200,000 claims have alre­ady been sett­led via the compa­ri­son plat­form throug­hout Europe. The 60-strong team alre­ady enables hundreds of compa­nies — inclu­ding part­ners such as Lease­Plan, AXA, Avis, Sixt and Aon — to handle car repairs more effi­ci­ently and cost-effec­tively in 6 count­ries (Germany, the Nether­lands, Belgium, Luxem­bourg, France and South Africa) and conti­nues to expand across Europe. Fixico is supported by a group of leading investors.

About Mundi Ventures
Mundi Ventures is a venture capi­tal firm that invests prima­rily in tech­no­logy-based compa­nies with B2B busi­ness models during the A or B round. The VC’s head­quar­ters are loca­ted in Madrid. There are bran­ches in Barce­lona, London and Seattle.

News

Hamburg — DLA Piper has advi­sed Germany-based multi­na­tio­nal TRUMPF Group on the acqui­si­tion of the global busi­ness of Lantek Sheet Metal Solutions.

TRUMPF is one of the world’s leading compa­nies for machine tools, lasers and elec­tro­nics for indus­trial appli­ca­ti­ons. In fiscal 2019/20, the company gene­ra­ted sales of 3.5 billion euros with around 14,300 employees.

Lantek is a leading global provi­der of soft­ware systems and solu­ti­ons for compa­nies in the sheet metal working sector, and is repre­sen­ted in 14 countries.

The inter­na­tio­nal DLA Piper team on this tran­sac­tion was led jointly by part­ner Teresa Zueco (Corpo­rate, Madrid) and the German Coun­try Mana­ging Part­ner Dr. Benja­min Para­mes­wa­ran, Photo (Corporate/M&A, Hamburg) — who is also DLA Piper’s global Client Rela­ti­onship Part­ner for the TRUMPF Group — supported by a core team consis­ting of Corpo­rate Asso­cia­tes Héctor Gómez, Alejan­dra Casta­ñeda and Carlos Fuerte (all Madrid). DLA Piper’s cross-border team also included colle­agues from more than ten juris­dic­tions, inclu­ding the UK, the US, France, Germany and China.

TRUMPF was advi­sed in-house by Dewi Kusuma (in-house counsel).

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. www.dlapiper.com

News

Munich — EMERAM Capi­tal Part­ners, one of the leading private equity firms for medium-sized compa­nies in the German-spea­king region, is leading an inves­tor consor­tium, inclu­ding the private equity firm Gimv, to take the digi­tal company sofa­tu­tor into its next growth phase. This replaces the previous shareholders.

sofa­tu­tor is the most compre­hen­sive digi­tal educa­tion plat­form for students in the German-spea­king world for grades 1 to 12 (K‑12). Number of users increased to more than one million students in 2020, the year of success. Further digi­tal lear­ning offe­rings and inte­gra­tion into school opera­ti­ons repre­sent a key growth lever. sofa­tu­tor plans to close the gap in online lear­ning and improve access to first-class educa­tion with further inno­va­tive offe­rings. In this way, the strong growth of recent years is to be continued.

Foun­ded in 2008, the company curr­ently has more than one million users. In addi­tion, sofa­tu­tor is now used by around 25 percent of all teachers throug­hout Germany, as well as in the German states of Saxony and Bremen. sofa­tu­tor thus sees itself as the most compre­hen­sive provi­der of digi­tal lear­ning assis­tance in Germany, Austria and Switz­er­land, a market with a total of more than eleven million students.

The product and service port­fo­lio of sofa­tu­tor includes a wide range of more than 11,000 videos as well as exer­ci­ses and work­s­heets for 14 diffe­rent school subjects. Students can flexi­bly access mate­ri­als and have a real-time chat on home­work with quali­fied teachers through sofatutor’s web-based plat­form or app.

Dr. Chris­tian Näther, Foun­ding Part­ner of EMERAM Capi­tal Part­ners, says: “Good educa­tion is a signi­fi­cant factor for a country’s society. That is why we want to support sofa­tu­tor in conti­nuously expan­ding its lear­ning offe­ring. Alre­ady, sofa­tu­tor is expe­ri­en­cing high demand for its digi­tal lear­ning offe­rings, which has been further streng­the­ned by home­schoo­ling and COVID-19. We would like to conti­nue this success story.” Matthias Ober­meyr, Part­ner at EMERAM Capi­tal Part­ners, adds: “Thanks to its compre­hen­sive digi­tal offe­rings, inno­va­tive strength and good value for money, sofa­tu­tor alre­ady has a strong market posi­tion. An expan­sion of this digi­tal product offe­ring as well as the further deve­lo­p­ment of digi­tal lear­ning models also offers signi­fi­cant growth potential.”

Stephan Bayer, CEO of sofa­tu­tor and foun­der of the company, explains: “With more than one million users and the large network of teachers who inte­grate sofatutor’s digi­tal lear­ning content into their lessons, sofa­tu­tor has long been the leading provi­der of digi­tal lear­ning services. With the new inves­tor consor­tium, we now have another strong inves­tor group at our side that will very compe­tently accom­pany and support the company in the next growth phase. Inno­va­tive digi­tal lear­ning offe­rings will conti­nue to form our DNA in the future. We want to support schools, teachers and students not only in the after­noons, but also provide digi­tal lear­ning content in the mornings when schools are in session.”

Dr. Sven Oleow­nik, Part­ner and Head of Germany at the Euro­pean invest­ment company Gimv, which specia­li­zes in growth companies.With its invest­ment in sofa­tu­tor, Gimv rein­forces its ambi­tion to invest in future-orien­ted compa­nies along the funda­men­tal consu­mer trends of digi­ta­liza­tion, sustaina­bi­lity and conve­ni­ence. Toge­ther with EMERAM, Gimv supports an excel­lently mana­ged company whose digi­tal offe­ring perfectly addres­ses the United Nati­ons goals of high-quality educa­tion and digi­tal inno­va­tion. Koen Bouck­aert, Mana­ging Part­ner and Head Consu­mer at Gimv, added: “We are ther­e­fore parti­cu­larly plea­sed to allo­cate part of our recently laun­ched Sustainable Bond to sofatutor’s growth story and thus make a signi­fi­cant contri­bu­tion to the company’s development.”

Advi­sor to the inves­tor consor­tium around EMERAM and Gimv:
IEG Invest­ment Banking Group (M&A), GLNS and McDer­mott (Legal), PwC (Finan­cial, Tax and Commer­cial) and Xperify (Tech/Marketing) advised.

The tran­sac­tion is subject to custo­mary condi­ti­ons, inclu­ding appr­oval by the compe­ti­tion autho­ri­ties. Further finan­cial details will not be disclosed.

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