ALTERNATIVE FINANCING FORMS
FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND INVESTORS

Author: Tatjana Anderer

Gründerin des FYB-Verlag
News

Amster­dam / Munich — Funds advi­sed by Castik Capi­tal S.à r.l. (“Castik”) have signed an agree­ment to acquire a majo­rity stake in Andra Tech Group. The sellers of the shares are funds advi­sed by Equis­tone Part­ners Europe, Moun­tain­view Capi­tal and the manage­ment of the group. Funds advi­sed by Equis­tone Part­ners Europe and the manage­ment team will retain a mino­rity stake in the company as part of the tran­sac­tion. The current CEO of Andra Tech Group, Geert Ketel­a­ars, will conti­nue to lead the company toge­ther with his manage­ment colle­agues Adwin Kanne­kens, Eric Urff and Gerben Heideman.

Foun­ded in 1973, Andra Tech Group (form­erly Kusters Beheer) has deve­lo­ped into a leading group for the manu­fac­ture of high-tech precis­ion compon­ents and submo­du­les. The Group consists of nine opera­ting compa­nies in the Nether­lands and Germany with a total of eleven modern and fully inves­ted produc­tion faci­li­ties that focus on the manu­fac­ture of high-quality precis­ion parts and modu­les. With more than 700 employees, Andra Tech Group serves an inter­na­tio­nal custo­mer base from a wide range of indus­tries, inclu­ding the semi­con­duc­tor, pack­a­ging, food, mobi­lity, medi­cal and aero­space indus­tries. The Andra Tech Group manu­fac­tures parts for proto­ty­pes, small to medium-sized batches and large series.

Andra Tech Group now intends to conti­nue its ambi­tious growth stra­tegy and estab­lish itself as a leading inter­na­tio­nal manu­fac­tu­rer of high-tech precis­ion compon­ents and submo­du­les through orga­nic growth and further acqui­si­ti­ons. The focus is on invest­ments in the Dutch dome­stic market and expan­sion into new regi­ons. Part of the growth stra­tegy is also to further expand the Group’s tech­no­lo­gi­cal exper­tise in the area of high-precis­ion manufacturing.

“In Castik, we have found the ideal part­ner to support us in expan­ding our capa­ci­ties and exper­tise — both through orga­nic growth and targe­ted acqui­si­ti­ons. We look forward to working closely with Castik’s team, whose expe­ri­ence and confi­dence in our culture and DNA has convin­ced us. The fact that the funds advi­sed by Equis­tone remain inves­ted as mino­rity share­hol­ders shows their contin­ued confi­dence in Andra Tech Group and our stra­tegy,” explains Geert Ketel­a­ars, CEO of the Andra Tech Group.

“We would like to thank the Andra Tech Group manage­ment team for the trust they have placed in us and look forward to deve­lo­ping the company further toge­ther. Andra Tech Group opera­tes in an attrac­tive market envi­ron­ment charac­te­ri­zed by a steadily incre­asing demand for high-tech compon­ents and rapid tech­no­lo­gi­cal progress. Our primary goal is to support Geert and the entire manage­ment team in the next phase of growth. A parti­cu­lar focus will be on expan­ding the custo­mer base and the Group’s tech­no­lo­gi­cal exper­tise,” says Michael Phil­ipps, Part­ner at Castik Capi­tal.

“It has been a great plea­sure to support Andra Tech Group on its jour­ney over the past three years. During the part­ner­ship, Andra Tech Group has made four acqui­si­ti­ons, further streng­the­ned its posi­tion in the Nether­lands and at the same time successfully ente­red the German market. Andra Tech Group is ther­e­fore ideally posi­tio­ned to successfully conti­nue the strong, dyna­mic growth of recent years into the future. We look forward to working with the Castik team and to conti­nuing to support Andra Tech Group in its next steps,” adds Hubert van Wolfs­win­kel, Part­ner in Equistone’s Amster­dam office.

Consul­tant:

Andra Tech Group and the Equis­tone funds were advi­sed on the tran­sac­tion by William Blair (M&A), BCG (Commer­cial), PwC (Finan­cial & Tax), A&O Shear­man (Legal) and Tauw (ESG).

Castik Capi­tal S.à r.l. was advi­sed by Lincoln Inter­na­tio­nal (M&A and Finan­cing), Roland Berger (Commer­cial & Opera­tio­nal), PwC (Finan­cial, Tax, ESG), Andra Tech Group, Skad­den, Arps, Slate, Meag­her & Flom (Legal), Hout­hoff (Legal) and White and Case (Finan­cing legal).

About Equis­tone Part­ners Europe

The funds advi­sed by Equis­tone Part­ners Europe are among the most active Euro­pean equity inves­tors with a team of more than 40 invest­ment specia­lists in seven offices in the Nether­lands, Germany, Switz­er­land, France and the UK. The Equis­tone funds invest prima­rily in estab­lished medium-sized compa­nies with a good market posi­tion, above-average growth poten­tial and an enter­prise value of between EUR 50 and 500 million. Since its foun­da­tion in 2002, the funds have inves­ted equity in more than 180 tran­sac­tions. The port­fo­lio of Equis­tone funds curr­ently compri­ses around 40 compa­nies across Europe. www.equistonepe.com.

About Andra Tech Group
www.andratechgroup.com/de

About Castik Capi­tal S.à r.l.
www.castik.com/de/

News

Düsseldorf/Munich — McDer­mott Will & Emery has advi­sed the Euro­pean produc­tion and distri­bu­tion studio Vuelta Group on the acqui­si­tion of the Munich-based distri­bu­tion and produc­tion company Tele­pool. Vuelta is acqui­ring Westbrook’s shares on behalf of its German subsi­diary SquareOne.

The inte­gra­ted company will operate under the name SquareOne in future. The acqui­si­tion compri­ses a rights cata­log of over 1,200 titles, inclu­ding box office hits such as Drive, Pretty Best Friends, The Imita­tion Game, King Richard and Trans­por­ter 3. Tele­pool has been wholly owned by West­brook Inc. since 2018. by Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith.

The Vuelta Group is repre­sen­ted outside Germany in Scan­di­na­via by the produc­tion company Scan­box, in France by Play­time and Pan and in Italy by Indiana Productions.

McDer­mott alre­ady advi­sed on the acqui­si­tion of SquareOne Enter­tain­ment GmbH for the then newly foun­ded Vuelta Group in 2023 and has advi­sed on all of the Group’s Euro­pean acqui­si­ti­ons to date.

Advi­sor Vuelta Group: McDer­mott Will & Emery, Düsseldorf/Munich

Dr. Phil­ipp Gren­ze­bach (Corporate/M&A, Düsseldorf/Frankfurt), Dr. Wolf­gang von Frentz (Media/IT, Munich; both lead), David Grimes (Corporate/M&A, New York), Dr. Florian Schie­fer (Tax, Frank­furt), Dr. Gudrun Germa­kow­ski (Employ­ment Law, Düssel­dorf), Dr. Claus Färber (Coun­sel, Media/IT, Munich); Asso­cia­tes: Kai Grand­pierre (Corporate/M&A, Colo­gne), Simon Apelojg (Media/IT, Munich), Markus Hunken­schrö­der (Finan­cing), Lisa Schei­pers (Employ­ment Law; both Düsseldorf)

About McDer­mott Will & Emery

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

News

Stutt­gart — Menold Bezler has advi­sed seve­ral share­hol­ders of the Stutt­gart-based AI specia­list Parsio­nate on the sale of their shares to the IT group Accenture.

Parsio­nate is a service provi­der in the field of master data manage­ment and data gover­nance with offices in Germany and loca­ti­ons in the Nether­lands, Sweden and Switz­er­land. The Parsio­nate Group’s consul­ting team, consis­ting of 130 employees, will become part of Accen­ture Technology’s Data & AI busi­ness unit in Germany, Austria and Switz­er­land. The foun­ders Thomas Sperr­fech­ter and Michael Fieg will lead and further deve­lop the port­fo­lio for data archi­tec­ture and management.

Accen­ture is a global consul­ting company with a focus on tech­no­lo­gies such as cloud, data and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. 742,000 employees in more than 120 count­ries gene­ra­ted sales of USD 64 billion in 2023. The acqui­si­tion puts Accen­ture in an even better posi­tion to offer inno­va­tive data-driven solu­ti­ons to clients in Europe.

Menold Bezler advi­sed the share­hol­ders of Parsio­nate on the legal and tax aspects of the sale.

Advi­sor seller: Menold Bezler (Stutt­gart)

Vladi­mir Cutura (Part­ner, Lead; Photo © Menold Bezler), Jens Schmelt (Part­ner), Thomas Futte­rer, Linda Groß, Dr. Björn Stau­din­ger, Justus Häfner, Nicole Brandt, LL.M., Michelle Gutjahr (all Corporate/M&A), Kath­rin Seiz (Coun­sel), Dr. Tim Gühring, Katha­rina Gösele (all Employ­ment), Dr. Markus Kleinn (IP), Jochen Zimmer­mann (Part­ner), Clemens Mauch (Part­ner), Michael Spohn, Laura Bommer (all Tax)

About Menold Bezler

Menold Bezler is a commer­cial law firm in Stutt­gart with a part­ner­ship struc­ture and 300 employees. More than 120 profes­sio­nals offer legal advice, tax advice, audi­ting and busi­ness manage­ment advice from a single source. Our clients include well-known medium-sized compa­nies, listed corpo­ra­ti­ons, the public sector and its compa­nies as well as non-profit organizations.
www.menoldbezler.de.

News

Zug / Frechen — Build­Tec Soft­ware Group, foun­ded by funds advi­sed by Bregal Unter­neh­mer­ka­pi­tal (“BU”), acquire a majo­rity stake in Digi­Para GmbH (“Digi­Para”), a Germany-based provi­der of BIM-based eleva­tor plan­ning soft­ware. The aim is to conti­nue the growth course of the Build­Tec Soft­ware Group and to expand the product portfolio.

Digi­Para, based in Frechen, Germany, has made a name for itself in buil­ding infor­ma­tion mode­ling (BIM) for eleva­tors and escala­tors. The experts deve­lop BIM-opti­mi­zed programs for the effi­ci­ent plan­ning and confi­gu­ra­tion of eleva­tors. The company has been in exis­tence for around 35 years, and eleva­tor manu­fac­tu­r­ers and archi­tects world­wide use the two solu­ti­ons Digi­Para Lift­de­si­gner and Digi­Para Elevatorarchitect.

The soft­ware with intel­li­gent BIM model supports 2D designs and the entire plan­ning process. BIM ensu­res easy and smooth colla­bo­ra­tion, so that the eleva­tor and escala­tor confi­gu­ra­tion process can be simpli­fied and acce­le­ra­ted with the tools. “I am very plea­sed about the inte­gra­tion of Digi­Para into the Build­Tec Soft­ware Group. This deve­lo­p­ment offers our employees and custo­mers added secu­rity,” says Andreas Fleisch­mann, CEO of Digi­Para, adds: “I am also exci­ted about the new oppor­tu­ni­ties that this part­ner­ship opens up: soft­ware deve­lo­p­ment cycles can be acce­le­ra­ted and the quality of our BIM products can be further impro­ved, guaran­te­e­ing our custo­mers more effi­ci­ent and powerful soft­ware solutions.”

The inte­gra­tion of Digi­Para is a further mile­stone for the Build­Tec Soft­ware Group to further expand its growth course and market posi­tion and to deve­lop into the leading Euro­pean plat­form for inno­va­tive soft­ware solu­ti­ons in the trade and cons­truc­tion indus­try. With the stra­te­gic acqui­si­tion of Digi­Para, the Build­Tec Soft­ware Group bene­fits from a comple­men­tary product range to the CAD/CAM soft­ware solu­ti­ons for timber cons­truc­tion, stair­case cons­truc­tion and sheet metal proces­sing of the SEMA group of compa­nies acqui­red in 2022. The expan­ded global custo­mer base also offers poten­tial for cross-selling.

“We are deligh­ted to have Digi­Para as an abso­lute expert in the field of eleva­tor BIM as a part­ner. We are thus expan­ding our port­fo­lio by an important area and consis­t­ently conti­nuing our growth course,” says Alex­an­der Neuss, CEO of the Build­Tec Soft­ware Group. “Buil­ding Infor­ma­tion Mode­ling is the future of the cons­truc­tion indus­try,” Neuss conti­nues. The new part­ner­ship will now result in bene­fits and syner­gies with regard to BIM tools.

Since 2023, Build­Tec Soft­ware Group, foun­ded by BU advi­sed Funds, has made six acqui­si­ti­ons and now unites well-known compa­nies such as SEMA, Haus­mann & Wynen, Glaser Programm­sys­teme, E‑KOMPLET, Acies and now Digi­Para under one roof.

About Bregal Entre­pre­neu­rial Capital

Bregal Unter­neh­mer­ka­pi­tal (“BU”) is a leading private equity firm with offices in Zug, Munich and Milan. The funds advi­sed by BU invest in medium-sized compa­nies based in Germany, Switz­er­land, Italy and Austria. With the mission to be the prefer­red part­ner for entre­pre­neurs and family busi­nesses, BU focu­ses on part­ner­ships with market leaders and “hidden cham­pi­ons” with strong manage­ment teams and growth poten­tial. Since its foun­da­tion in 2015, the funds mana­ged by BU have inves­ted over 3.0 billion euros in more than 100 compa­nies with over 20,000 employees. BU supports entre­pre­neurs and fami­lies as a stra­te­gic part­ner to further deve­lop, inter­na­tio­na­lize and digi­ta­lize their compa­nies, helping them to create sustainable value respon­si­bly and with a view to the next generation.

http://www.bregal.ch

News

Wies­ba­den / Zwin­gen­berg — BRAIN Biotech AG, a company specia­li­zing in bio-based products and solu­ti­ons such as enzy­mes and prote­ins as well as biotech­no­lo­gi­cal solu­ti­ons for more sustainable indus­trial proces­ses, is recei­ving a further injec­tion of capi­tal: Betei­li­gungs-Manage­ment­ge­sell­schaft Hessen mbH (“bmh”) — which has alre­ady parti­ci­pa­ted in seve­ral finan­cing rounds for the company since 1996 — is now provi­ding a further EUR 5 million in capi­tal. BRAIN intends to conti­nue inves­t­ing in rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment work as well as in labo­ra­tory and produc­tion facilities.

BRAIN Biotech AG (“BRAIN”) was foun­ded in 1993 in Zwin­gen­berg, Hesse, and was one of the pioneers in the field of indus­trial biotech­no­logy. Today, it is one of the leading Euro­pean compa­nies in the field of enzyme tech­no­logy, among others. Since its foun­da­tion, the company has deve­lo­ped from a service provi­der specia­li­zing in rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment to a group of compa­nies with an exten­sive scien­ti­fic services and product busi­ness for the B2B market. BRAIN focu­ses on the areas of nutri­tion, health and the envi­ron­ment. The acti­vi­ties of the BRAIN Group, with a total of 330 employees, 120 of whom are based in Zwin­gen­berg, are divi­ded into three divi­si­ons: The BioIn­dus­trial divi­sion focu­ses on the product busi­ness, while the BioSci­ence divi­sion compri­ses the rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment busi­ness on behalf of custo­mers. In the BioIn­cu­ba­tor segment, the company carries out its own R&D projects or those initia­ted with part­ners with high commer­cial potential.

Speci­fi­cally, bio-based products in the area of nutri­tion, for exam­ple, involve alter­na­tive protein and food sources based on micro­or­ga­nisms or cell cultures. In the health­care sector, BRAIN deve­lops phar­maceu­ti­cally active ingre­di­ents for the treat­ment of chro­nic wounds and rare dise­a­ses, among other things. BRAIN now covers the entire value chain for specialty enzy­mes — from deve­lo­p­ment to fermen­ta­tion and produc­tion on an indus­trial scale.

With the finan­cing round that has now been concluded, the company intends to further expand its rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment acti­vi­ties. At the same time, BRAIN Biotech is plan­ning invest­ments in labo­ra­tory and rese­arch faci­li­ties at the Zwin­gen­berg site.

Michael Schnei­ders, CFO BRAIN Biotech AGsays: “We are deligh­ted with bmh’s contin­ued confi­dence in our busi­ness model and greatly appre­ciate the trus­ting and long-stan­ding coope­ra­tion. We intend to use the funds from the current finan­cing round to make further future-orien­ted invest­ments at our head­quar­ters in Hesse and thus further expand our leading posi­tion in the market.”

Helge Haase, respon­si­ble Invest­ment Mana­ger of bmhexplains: “We are convin­ced of the poten­tial of BRAIN Biotech AG, and have been for over 25 years. We look forward to support­ing the company’s trans­for­ma­tion from a successful rese­arch company to a fast-growing manu­fac­tu­ring company and to conti­nuing to accom­pany BRAIN Biotech AG on its growth path.”

About the bmh

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

News

Munich, May 6, 2024 — Perusa Part­ners Fund II L.P. has sold its shares in the PROLED Group to the Galaed Group. The commer­cial law firm Gütt Olk Feld­haus advi­sed Perusa on this transaction.

The PROLED Group is a Euro­pean deve­lo­per, manu­fac­tu­rer and distri­bu­tor of LED light­ing with the brands PROLED, UNI-BRIGHT and mawa. With its own produc­tion faci­li­ties in Germany, PROLED is a refe­rence manu­fac­tu­rer for high-quality products with high design standards.

PROLED deve­lops, confi­gu­res and distri­bu­tes LED light­ing tech­no­logy for the B2B sector. The company sells its products to a broad network of archi­tects, elec­tri­ci­ans and whole­sa­lers, enab­ling it to achieve stable cash flows with low project risks.

Perusa acqui­red a majo­rity stake in MBN PROLED (Germany) as a plat­form in 2017 and streng­the­ned this in 2018 with the acqui­si­tion of UNI-BRIGHT (Belgium) and in 2021 with the acqui­si­tion of mawa (Germany). In 2020, the tran­si­tion from the foun­ders to a new exter­nal manage­ment team was successful and an inter­na­tio­nal sales team was established.

Since the acqui­si­tion by Perusa in 2017, PROLED’s sales and EBITDA have more than doubled as a result of acqui­si­ti­ons and orga­nic growth. PROLED is aiming to make further acqui­si­ti­ons in the frag­men­ted Euro­pean LED market with a focus on the high-margin B2B segment.

As an inter­na­tio­nally active private equity company, Perusa Part­ners specia­li­zes in the acqui­si­tion and deve­lo­p­ment of medium-sized compa­nies in trans­for­ma­tion situa­tions in German-spea­king and Scan­di­na­vian countries.

Legal Advi­sors Perusa Part­ners Fund II L.P.: Gütt Olk Feld­haus, Munich

Dr. Sebas­tian Olk (Part­ner, Corpo­rate Law/M&A; Photo © GOF), Dr. Tilmann Gütt, LL.M. (London) (Part­ner, Banking/Finance), Thomas Becker, LL.M. (Eur.) (Of Coun­sel, IP/IT/Data Protec­tion), Maxi­mi­lian Spind­ler, LL.M. (Colum­bia) (Coun­sel, Corporate/M&A), Dr. Domi­nik Forst­ner (Senior Asso­ciate, Corporate/M&A), Chris­to­pher Krappitz (Senior Asso­ciate, Banking/Finance), Tobias Berg­meis­ter (Asso­ciate, Corporate/M&A), Anja Schmidt (Asso­ciate, Banking/Finance)

Alten­burg Fach­an­wälte für Arbeits­recht, Munich
Andreas Ege (Part­ner, Employ­ment Law), Henning Timm (Coun­sel, Employ­ment Law)

 

 

News

Frank­furt — Will­kie Farr & Gallag­her LLP has advi­sed PAI Part­ners (“PAI”) on the acqui­si­tion of a majo­rity stake in the reha­bi­li­ta­tion busi­ness of the VAMED Group from Frese­nius SE & Co. KGaA. PAI will hold a 67 percent stake through its PAI Mid-Market Fund (“PAI MMF”) and Frese­nius will hold a 33 percent stake.

VAMED opera­tes 67 reha­bi­li­ta­tion clinics, acute care hospi­tals and care centers in Germany, Austria, Switz­er­land, the Czech Repu­blic and Great Britain with more than 100,000 pati­ents annu­ally. Supported by around 10,000 highly quali­fied employees, the unit offers a compre­hen­sive range of inpa­ti­ent and outpa­ti­ent reha­bi­li­ta­tion services as well as specia­li­zed acute care. The company takes a multi­di­sci­pli­nary approach to pati­ent care, with special­ties such as neuro­logy, ortho­pae­dics, psycho­so­ma­tics and cardiology.

Stefano Drago, one of the foun­ding part­ners of PAI Mid-Market Fund, said: “Vamed’s reha­bi­li­ta­tion busi­ness is a leading Euro­pean company provi­ding essen­tial reha­bi­li­ta­tion services and has an excel­lent repu­ta­tion for deli­ve­ring high quality care. PAI will leverage its signi­fi­cant expe­ri­ence in the health­care sector — inclu­ding previous invest­ments such as DomusVi, a leading player in the Euro­pean resi­den­tial aged care sector, a field adja­cent to reha­bi­li­ta­tion — to support Vamed’s reha­bi­li­ta­tion business.”

PAI Part­ners is a leading private equity firm that invests in market-leading compa­nies world­wide. The company mana­ges assets of around €27 billion and has made over 100 invest­ments in 12 count­ries since 1994, gene­ra­ting more than €24 billion in proceeds from 60 exits. PAI has built an outstan­ding track record of working with ambi­tious manage­ment teams where unique perspec­tive, unmat­ched indus­try expe­ri­ence and long-term vision enable compa­nies to reach — and go beyond — their full potential.

Advi­sor PAI Part­ners: WILLKIE

The Will­kie team was led by part­ner Dr. Axel Wahl (Corporate/M&A, Munich) and compri­sed the part­ners Dr. Michael Ilter (Corporate/M&A), Dr. Patrick Meiisel, Dr. Bettina Bokeloh (Tax, all Frank­furt), Anne Kleff­mann (Employ­ment), Dr. Richard Röder (Global Trade & Compli­ance, both Munich), Jan Wilms (Finance, Frank­furt), Faus­tine Viala (Anti­trust & Compe­ti­tion, Paris) and David Kupka (Anti­trust & Compe­ti­tion, Brussels), the coun­sel Dr. Florian Dendl (Corporate/M&A, Munich), Chris­tian Sper­ling (Corporate/M&A), Henning Aufder­haar (Real Estate), Wulf Kring (Tax), Martin Waśkow­ski (Employ­ment, all Frank­furt), Maxi­mi­lian Mayer (Finance, Munich) as well as asso­cia­tes Dr. Tobias Gerigk, Dr. Patrick Kemper (Corporate/M&A, both Frank­furt), Nils Hörnig, Dr. Maxi­mi­lian Schatz (Corporate/M&A), Dr. Laurin Havlik (Global Trade & Compli­ance, all Munich), Dr. Phil­ipp Stein­hau­sen (Finance), Philip Thür­mer (Real Estate, both Frank­furt), Leota Walter (Corporate/M&A, Munich), Sophie Wollen­we­ber (Corporate/M&A), Sascha Wink­ler (Employ­ment Law) and Marcel Seemaier (Tax, all Frankfurt).

Other consul­tants:
Maria Heil, Guram Gobe­chia (both NOVACOS Attor­neys at Law, Germany), Dr. Phil­ipp Schr­a­der, Dr. Stefan Jeit­ler, Yvonne Wohl­muth (all E+H Attor­neys at Law GmbH, Austria), Dr. Phil­ippe Seiler, Romina Lauper (both Bär & Karrer Ltd., Switz­er­land), Martin Peckl, Silvie Kiraly (both HAVEL & PARTNERS s.r.o.Czech Repu­blic) and Dr. Kai-Uwe Plath and Dr. Moritz Schmitz (both KNPZ Attor­neys at Law — Klawit­ter Neben Plath Zint­ler — Part­ner­schafts­ge­sell­schaft mbB, Germany).

About Will­kie Farr & Gallag­her LLP

Will­kie Farr & Gallag­her LLP provi­des leading legal solu­ti­ons to complex, busi­ness-criti­cal issues that span markets and indus­tries. Our appro­xi­m­ately 1,200 lawy­ers in 14 offices world­wide provide inno­va­tive, prag­ma­tic and sophisti­ca­ted legal services in around 45 areas of law. Find out more at www.willkie.com.

News

Berlin — good­car­bon secu­res €5.25 million in funding to bring new high-quality nature-based solu­ti­ons to market and enable compa­nies to meet their long-term net zero and nature commit­ments. Ocean 14 Capi­tal leads the round, with parti­ci­pa­tion from Silver­strand Capi­tal, high profile angel inves­tors and exis­ting inves­tors Planet A Ventures, 468 Capi­tal and Green­field Capital.

Foun­ded in 2021 by Jérôme Cochet (photo left) and David Diallo, good­car­bon offers a plat­form for compa­nies that want to build and manage trust­wor­thy, long-term port­fo­lios of carbon credits from nature-based solu­ti­ons. The start-up’s approach invol­ves close colla­bo­ra­tion with impact-orien­ted projects and the culti­va­tion of exclu­sive good­car­bon origi­nal projects.

The EUR 5.25 million invest­ment is aimed at expan­ding the company’s nature analy­sis and exper­tise, streng­thening the team and brin­ging addi­tio­nal high-quality climate protec­tion projects to the market

At the heart of their model is the realiza­tion that the follo­wing three major chal­lenges of our time are inter­lin­ked and require a unified solu­tion: Global warm­ing (“net zero target”), loss of nature (“biodi­ver­sity target”) and global inequa­lity (“SDG target”). In the coming years, the start-up aims to become an inte­gral part of the carbon offset­ting plans of compa­nies in Germany and beyond.

“This finan­cing round marks a pivo­tal moment for good­car­bon and our mission to provide compa­nies with access to high-quality nature-based solu­ti­ons that enable them to imple­ment their emis­sion reduc­tion stra­te­gies while protec­ting our planet,” says Jérôme Cochet (photo left), foun­der and CEO of good­car­bon. “It is esti­ma­ted that 10 billion tons of carbon reduc­tion can come from nature by 2030, but we need to close the finan­cing gap for high quality instal­la­ti­ons. Many compa­nies are reluc­tant to enter into long-term part­ner­ships with projects due to a lack of avai­la­bi­lity and trans­pa­rency on the actual quality of the projects. With the Ocean 14 Capi­tal fund and Silver­strand Capi­tal on board, we are streng­thening our global network and exper­tise in nature-based solu­ti­ons and have expe­ri­en­ced new part­ners on our side to expand our Good Carbon Origi­nals projects.”

Nature-based solu­ti­ons are projects that aim to protect, sustain­ably manage and restore natu­ral and alte­red ecosys­tems, effec­tively addres­sing social chal­lenges while bene­fiting people and nature (IUCN). These projects have long-term, ecolo­gi­cally and econo­mic­ally sustainable effects for nature, local commu­ni­ties and inves­tors alike. Support­ing early-stage nature-based solu­ti­ons means initia­ting high-impact, high-inte­grity projects that are scalable, drive inno­va­tion, and restore and sustain ecosys­tems. Nature-based solu­ti­ons are indeed the most effec­tive tool in the fight against climate change, biodi­ver­sity loss and social inequality.

“We are deligh­ted to support good­car­bon and its mission to provide compa­nies with access to nature-based solu­ti­ons,” says George Duffield of Ocean 14 Capi­tal. “We are parti­cu­larly impres­sed by their science-based approach to quality and the alignment between product and market. The fact that they are alre­ady working with leading compa­nies such as Deut­sche Tele­kom, Bertels­mann and Melitta clearly demons­tra­tes their poten­tial to lead and make a diffe­rence in this space. We look forward to helping good­car­bon enable more compa­nies to confi­dently deli­ver on their net zero and nature promises.”

https://www.goodcarbon.earth

News

York­shire (UK) — IK Part­ners (“IK”) has acqui­red a mino­rity stake in A‑SAFE through its IK Part­ner­ship II (“IK PF II”) fund. A‑SAFE is a global leader in the deve­lo­p­ment, manu­fac­ture and distri­bu­tion of indus­trial poly­mer safety barrier systems. IK acqui­red its stake from the Smith family, which remains heavily inves­ted. This is the last invest­ment of the IK PF II fund, which is now fully inves­ted. — The finan­cial terms of the tran­sac­tion were not disc­lo­sed. IK Part­ners was advi­sed on this tran­sac­tion by DC Advisory.

A‑SAFE was foun­ded in 1984 and is head­quar­te­red in York­shire, UK. The company manu­fac­tures a wide range of poly­mer-based products that are used in facto­ries and warehou­ses around the world to protect both people and assets from colli­si­ons with vehic­les such as fork­lift trucks. The company employs over 700 people, over 80 of whom work in rese­arch and development.

As a foun­der-led company, A‑SAFE has achie­ved signi­fi­cant orga­nic growth and today serves more than 6,000 custo­mers in over 50 count­ries. Its diverse custo­mer base includes some of the world’s largest compa­nies, inclu­ding Coca-Cola, UPS and Amazon. With the aim of further streng­thening its leading posi­tion in the field of indus­trial poly­mers world­wide, the company has deci­ded to enter into a part­ner­ship with IK.

With the support of IK and its dedi­ca­ted part­ner­ship fund, which focu­ses on mino­rity invest­ments in estab­lished, fast-growing compa­nies, A‑SAFE is poised for further growth. The manage­ment team, led by James and Luke Smith, is deligh­ted with the part­ner­ship with IK. Toge­ther, they want to tap into growth oppor­tu­ni­ties and drive inno­va­tion in order to rede­fine indus­try standards.

James and Luke Smith, Co-CEOs of A‑SAFE, said: “We are deligh­ted to be part­ne­ring with IK. This is an exci­ting oppor­tu­nity for us to conso­li­date our leading posi­tion in the market while expan­ding our global reach, enhan­cing our product offe­ring and incre­asing value for our custo­mers. With IK’s exper­tise and resour­ces, we are confi­dent that the company will conti­nue to grow and we look forward to working with Thomas and his team.”

Thomas Grob (photo © ik part­ners), Part­ner at IK and advi­sor to the IK Part­ner­ship II Fundadded: “A‑SAFE’s expan­sion into new markets and product segments and its commit­ment to inno­va­tion have firmly posi­tio­ned the company as an indus­try leader in work­place safety, secu­rity and effi­ci­ency systems. The company’s ability to anti­ci­pate market needs, coupled with outstan­ding products, has inspi­red great confi­dence in the manage­ment team and its capa­bi­li­ties. We look forward to working with James, Luke and their team over the coming years.”

About A‑SAFE

A‑SAFE was foun­ded in 1984 and is head­quar­te­red in York­shire (UK). A‑SAFE is a leading manu­fac­tu­rer and distri­bu­tor of indus­trial poly­mer safety barrier systems. The company began as a specia­list in poly­ethy­lene extru­sion. Under the leader­ship of the founder’s two sons, James and Luke Smith, the stra­te­gic switch to strong poly­mer barriers took place in 2000. www.asafe.com.

About IK Partners

IK Part­ners (“IK”) is a Euro­pean private equity firm focu­sed on invest­ments in the Bene­lux, DACH region, France, the Nordics and the UK. Since 1989, IK has raised more than 14 billion euros in capi­tal and inves­ted in over 180 Euro­pean compa­nies. IK supports high-poten­tial compa­nies and works with manage­ment teams and inves­tors to create robust, well-posi­tio­ned busi­nesses with excel­lent long-term pros­pects. www. ikpartners.com.

News

Munich — The TIMETOACT GROUP (“TIMETOACT”), a leading provi­der of IT services for the upper midmar­ket, corpo­ra­ti­ons and public insti­tu­ti­ons and a port­fo­lio company of the funds advi­sed by Equis­tone Part­ners Europe, has acqui­red SWP Soft­ware­park GmbH, which opera­tes under the Trust­bit brand. The former Trust­bit Mana­ging Direc­tor Jörg Egretz­ber­ger will become Co-Mana­ging Direc­tor of the TIMETOACT GROUP Austria as part of the merger and will become a share­hol­der in the TIMETOACT Group. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose details of the tran­sac­tion. POELLATH advi­sed TIMETOACT on the legal aspects of the acquisition.

Trust­bit, based in Vienna (Austria), is an IT consul­ting company for digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion and the deve­lo­p­ment of digi­tal busi­ness models. The company supports its cross-indus­try custo­mer base in the busi­ness areas of custo­mer-speci­fic deve­lo­p­ment of custo­mi­zed soft­ware, machine lear­ning & data science and IT consul­ting. Trust­bit employs around 50 people at 3 Austrian locations.

TIMETOACT is a leading provi­der of IT services, prima­rily for medium-sized and large compa­nies in the indus­trial, finan­cial and service sectors as well as public sector orga­niza­ti­ons. The company compri­ses seve­ral specia­li­zed IT compa­nies at 17 loca­ti­ons in Germany, Austria and Switz­er­land as well as in Latvia, Malay­sia, Singa­pore and the USA. TIMETOACT employs over 1,250 people and has a compre­hen­sive port­fo­lio of soft­ware and consul­ting services. The acqui­si­tion of Trust­bit is the eighth successful acqui­si­tion since the funds advi­sed by Equis­tone Part­ners Europe acqui­red a majo­rity stake in June 2021 and marks another important growth step for TIMETOACT.

POELLATH advi­sed TIMETOACT on the acqui­si­tion with the follo­wing Munich-based team:
Dr. Bene­dikt Hohaus, Photo © Poellath (Part­ner, Manage­ment Participations)
Nemanja Burgić, LL.M. (Coun­sel, Lead Part­ner, M&A/Private Equity)
Dr. Verena Sten­zel (Coun­sel, M&A/Private Equity)
Jan Lukas Jung­claus, LL.M. (Stel­len­bosch) (Asso­ciate, Manage­ment Participations)

News

Starnberg/ Munich / Schin­del­legi (Switz­er­land) — Kühne Holding AG has ente­red into a defi­ni­tive agree­ment to acquire the phar­maceu­ti­cal contract manu­fac­tu­rer Aenova Group from the leading inter­na­tio­nal invest­ment company BC Part­ners. As part of the tran­sac­tion, the funds advi­sed by BC Part­ners will reinvest along­side Kühne Holding AG and conti­nue to support Aenova as a mino­rity share­hol­der. The finan­cial terms were not disclosed.

The Aenova Group is one of the world’s leading CDMOs (Contract Deve­lo­p­ment and Manu­fac­tu­ring Orga­niza­ti­ons) in the phar­maceu­ti­cal and health­care indus­try. Head­quar­te­red in Starn­berg near Munich, the company employs around 4,000 people at 14 produc­tion sites world­wide and is a one-stop service provi­der for the deve­lo­p­ment, produc­tion and pack­a­ging of phar­maceu­ti­cals for phar­maceu­ti­cal compa­nies around the world. Under the owner­ship of BC Part­ners, the Aenova Group has deve­lo­ped into one of the ten largest CDMOs in the world. In 2023, Aenova achie­ved record results with pro forma sales of EUR 832 million, an increase of 17% compared to the previous year.

Kühne Holding AG, based in Schin­del­legi (Switz­er­land), bund­les the busi­ness inte­rests of Klaus-Michael Kühne. It has an entre­pre­neu­rial focus, holds a majo­rity stake in Kühne+Nagel Inter­na­tio­nal AG and is the largest single share­hol­der in Hapag-Lloyd AG, Deut­sche Luft­hansa AG and Brenn­tag SE.

Domi­nik de Daniel, CEO of Kühne Holding AGsaid: “With this invest­ment, we are taking an important stra­te­gic step to add health­care and phar­maceu­ti­cal compa­nies with a strong finan­cial base and long-term growth pros­pects to our invest­ment port­fo­lio. Aenova is on a very good path and we look forward to acce­le­ra­ting this further under our leadership.”

BC Part­ners utili­zed both the exten­sive origi­na­tion network of its Hamburg office and its exper­tise in the health­care sector to seize the oppor­tu­nity to invest in Aenova and acqui­red the company outside of an auction process. Health­care is one of BC Part­ners’ core sectors and its dedi­ca­ted health­care invest­ment team has inves­ted more than €6 billion in 21 health­care part­ner­ships since its inception.

Raymond Svider, Chair­man of BC Part­nersadded: “It has been a plea­sure working with Jan and the entire Aenova team. Toge­ther, we have posi­tio­ned the company as a global leader in contract manu­fac­tu­ring and estab­lished a solid foun­da­tion for future growth, with the company now bene­fiting from strong sales momen­tum, a record order back­log and favorable indus­try tail­winds. We are plea­sed that such an important German health­care company can conti­nue its growth trajec­tory under the stra­te­gic leader­ship of Kühne Holding AG. We have a long and successful history of working with fami­lies and foun­ders across Europe and look forward to working closely with Kühne Holding AG and Aenova in this next chap­ter of the company.”

This tran­sac­tion repres­ents another oppor­tu­nity for BC Part­ners’ funds to return signi­fi­cant capi­tal to inves­tors. BC Part­ners has comple­ted nine liqui­dity events in the last 12 months, gene­ra­ting EUR 8 billion in value for funds and co-inves­tors advi­sed by BC Part­ners, inclu­ding exits of port­fo­lio compa­nies Presi­dio, Forno d’Asolo Group, IMA and PetSmart in the last six months alone.

“With the new owner­ship struc­ture, we will conti­nue to imple­ment our stra­tegy to make Aenova the leading CDMO with market-leading capa­bi­li­ties and inno­va­tive specialty tech­no­lo­gies in Europe. With its long-term invest­ment hori­zon, Kühne Holding AG is the perfect comple­ment for the company to support this stra­tegy. It enables us to conti­nue on the path of opera­tio­nal excel­lence in the conven­tio­nal produc­tion busi­ness while buil­ding highly sought-after tech­no­logy plat­forms and deve­lo­p­ment services to meet custo­mer demand in the future,” empha­si­zes Jan Kengel­bach, CEO of Aenova since 2018.

E3X Part­ners (“E3X”) has worked closely with Kühne Holding AG to struc­ture and execute the plan­ned acqui­si­tion. Martin Mix, Mana­ging Part­ner at E3X, an invest­ment and advi­sory firm, comm­ents: “Our part­ner­ship with Kühne Holding AG under­lines our stra­te­gic commit­ment to brin­ging toge­ther the right long-term part­ners to support Aenova’s growth.” Jan-Felix Stolz, Mana­ging Part­ner at E3X, adds: “Aenova has a high stra­te­gic rele­vance for the growing Euro­pean phar­maceu­ti­cal market and we are exci­ted about the company’s prospects.”

- BC Part­ners and Aenova were advi­sed by Jeffe­ries, Kirk­land & Ellis, L.E.K. and PwC.
- Kühne Holding AG and E3X Part­ners were advi­sed by Allen & Overy and EY.

The tran­sac­tion is subject to custo­mary closing condi­ti­ons and the appr­oval of the rele­vant merger control authorities.

About the Aenova Group

The Aenova Group is a leading global contract manu­fac­tu­rer and deve­lo­p­ment service provi­der for the phar­maceu­ti­cal and health­care indus­try. As a one-stop store, Aenova deve­lops, produ­ces and packa­ges all common dosage forms, product groups and active ingre­di­ent clas­ses from phar­maceu­ti­cals to food supple­ments for human and animal health: solid, semi-solid and liquid, sterile and non-sterile, high and low doses, OEB 1 to 5 (Occu­pa­tio­nal Expo­sure Band). Around 4,000 employees at 14 loca­ti­ons in Europe and the USA contri­bute to the company’s success. Further infor­ma­tion can be found at www.aenova-group.com.

About BC Partners

BC Part­ners is a leading invest­ment firm with more than EUR 40 billion in assets under manage­ment in the areas of private equity, private debt and real estate stra­te­gies. BC Part­ners was foun­ded in 1986 and has played an active role in the deve­lo­p­ment of the Euro­pean buy-out market for over three deca­des. Today, BC Part­ners’ inte­gra­ted trans­at­lan­tic invest­ment teams operate from offices in Europe and North America and are focu­sed on our four core sectors: TMT, Health­care, Services and Indus­tri­als, and Consu­mer. Since its incep­tion, BC Part­ners has made over 127 private equity invest­ments in compa­nies with a total value of over €160 billion and is curr­ently inves­t­ing its eleventh private equity buyout fund. www.bcpartners.com.

About E3X Partners

E3X Part­ners is an invest­ment and advi­sory firm specia­li­zing in long-term part­ner­ships with invest­ment holding compa­nies, family offices and busi­ness owners. We offer custo­mi­zed capi­tal solu­ti­ons and stra­te­gic advice in public and private markets with a focus on Europe. Our custo­mi­zed services include invest­ment sourcing, tran­sac­tion execu­tion, port­fo­lio manage­ment, opera­tio­nal value crea­tion and board functions.

E3X Part­ners was foun­ded by Martin Mix and Jan-Felix Stolz and combi­nes exper­tise from the fields of private equity, finan­cial markets and stra­te­gic consul­ting. We forge lasting part­ner­ships based on trust, colla­bo­ra­tion and excel­lence to promote sustainable growth and deli­ver lasting value to our part­ners. www.e3xpartners.com.

 

News

Berlin — Culti­mate Foods, a biotech start-up based in Berlin Biocube and Hanno­ver (Insti­tute of Tech­ni­cal Chemis­try, Leib­niz Univer­si­tät Hanno­ver), successfully closes its seed round to scale up produc­tion proces­ses and expand commer­cial colla­bo­ra­ti­ons and operations.

The EUR 2.3 million finan­cing round was led by High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF), one of Europe’s leading seed inves­tors. In addi­tion to HTGF, Life Science Valley Wachs­tums­fonds, b.value AG and Kale United also parti­ci­pa­ted. The world’s leading food­tech inves­tor Big Idea Ventures also parti­ci­pa­ted in this round.

Culti­mate Foods has deve­lo­ped an alter­na­tive fat that gives plant-based meat substi­tu­tes an authen­tic taste. Although there are many plant-based alter­na­ti­ves on super­mar­ket shel­ves, taste is still the biggest argu­ment that prevents consu­mers from choo­sing these sustainable products. As a B2B part­ner, Culti­mate Foods supplies cell-cultu­red premium fats to the alter­na­tive meat indus­try to solve this problem. The company has alre­ady carried out seve­ral commer­cial pilot projects with leading compa­nies in the food industry.

Culti­mate Foods took its first steps in Göttin­gen at the Life Science Factory, where it was able to get star­ted with its rese­arch imme­dia­tely after the pre-seed round in the well-equip­ped laboratories.

“Science is the key to solving many problems in the food indus­try. With inno­va­tive tech­no­lo­gies, we can deli­ver the meat taste that consu­mers want, while at the same time curbing unethi­cal factory farming and coun­ter­ac­ting climate change by redu­cing CO2 emis­si­ons. Follow your passion and make the world a better place,” says Euge­nia Sagué, co-foun­der and Mana­ging Direc­tor of Culti­mate Foods.

“Culti­mate Foods has achie­ved important mile­sto­nes in a short space of time, built strong rela­ti­onships with the food­tech indus­try and ente­red into colla­bo­ra­ti­ons with univer­si­ties. HTGF is exci­ted to enter a new field of invest­ment and support Culti­mate Foods in revo­lu­tio­ni­zing the alter­na­tive meat indus­try with its cell-cultu­red fat ingre­di­ent. We have the oppor­tu­nity to really make a diffe­rence in the food indus­try,” comm­ents Tilmann Peter­sen, Invest­ment Mana­ger at HTGF.

“As one of the most active inves­tors in agri-food tech­no­logy, we see inno­va­tion in fats as criti­cal to impro­ving the taste, health profile, sustaina­bi­lity and scala­bi­lity of sustainable food. As early pre-seed inves­tors in Culti­mate who have witnessed the team’s deve­lo­p­ment, we are exci­ted to conti­nue to support Culti­mate in this successful seed round as they bring their inno­va­tive fat ingre­di­ent to market,” said Caro­line Mak, Senior Direc­tor at Big Idea Ventures.

“Closing the seed round in today’s fund­rai­sing envi­ron­ment confirms the success of our tech­no­lo­gi­cal approach and the efforts of our team. With a consor­tium of expe­ri­en­ced biotech and food­tech funds on board, we look forward to bene­fiting from both areas of exper­tise as we scale to the next TRL and enter our first markets,” said George Zhelez­nyi, co-foun­der and CEO of Culti­mate Foods.

About Culti­mate Foods

Culti­mate Foods is a cellu­lar agri­cul­ture company that produ­ces plant-based alter­na­tive fat for meat products. Unlike other fat alter­na­ti­ves, the company crea­tes a unique lipid compo­si­tion of the fat that provi­des an authen­tic pork and beef flavor. The company has raised more than EUR 3 million to date and is supported by the strong life science inves­tors HTGF, b.value AG, Life Science Valley Wachs­tums­fonds as well as the largest food­tech funds Big Idea Venture, ProVeg Inter­na­tio­nal and Kale United. www.cultimatefoods.com

About the Life Science Valley Growth Fund

The early-stage fund for life science tech­no­logy spin-offs in Lower Saxony aims to exploit the local commer­cial and entre­pre­neu­rial poten­tial arising from excel­lent life science rese­arch and tech­no­lo­gies. It supports compa­nies in the fields of biotech­no­logy, medi­cal tech­no­logy, digi­tal health, agri­cul­tu­ral scien­ces and food tech­no­logy and promo­tes successful start-ups in tech­no­lo­gi­cal growth areas.

About b.value AG

b.value AG invests in DeepT­ech start-ups that combine excep­tio­nal foun­ders and ground­brea­king tech­no­lo­gies and offer solu­ti­ons for a sustainable world of tomor­row. The profound tech­no­logy exper­tise and many years of opera­tio­nal expe­ri­ence in buil­ding and mana­ging biotech and high-tech compa­nies enable b.value AG to iden­tify the most promi­sing DeepT­ech start-ups and to support them finan­ci­ally and stra­te­gi­cally in order to realize their full poten­tial. Its unique struc­ture and expe­ri­ence allow b.value AG to act both flexi­bly and for the long term.

About Big Idea Ventures

Big Idea Ventures is one of the world’s leading invest­ment compa­nies in the fields of food tech­no­logy, agri­cul­tu­ral tech­no­logy and mate­ri­als science. We specia­lize in inves­t­ing in the world’s most inno­va­tive and sustainable tech­no­logy compa­nies. We combine capi­tal and part­ner­ships to promote econo­mic growth and build new food ecosys­tems. By foun­ding and support­ing pionee­ring compa­nies, we want to reduce the climate impact of food produc­tion and feed the world sustain­ably. Big Idea Ventures has teams in New York, Paris and Singa­pore and has inves­ted in more than 110 compa­nies in 30 countries.

About Kale United

Kale United is a publicly traded holding company that invests in pionee­ring plant and food tech­no­logy compa­nies. The aim is to maxi­mize the impact and increase the finan­cial return at the same time.

About High-Tech Gründerfonds

The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start-ups with growth poten­tial and has supported more than 750 start-ups since 2005. With the launch of the fourth fund, HTGF has around 1.4 billion euros under manage­ment. The team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and start-up experts supports the young compa­nies with know-how, entre­pre­neu­rial spirit and passion. The focus is on high-tech start-ups in the fields of digi­tal tech, indus­trial tech, life scien­ces, chemis­try and rela­ted busi­ness areas. To date, exter­nal inves­tors have inves­ted around EUR 5 billion in the HTGF port­fo­lio in more than 2,000 follow-on finan­cing rounds. In addi­tion, the fund has alre­ady successfully sold shares in more than 180 companies.
The fund inves­tors in the public-private part­ner­ship include the German Fede­ral Minis­try for Econo­mic Affairs and Climate Protec­tion, KfW Capi­tal and 45 compa­nies from a wide range of sectors.

 

News

Frank­furt am Main — Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (DBAG) is selling a signi­fi­cant portion of its stake in Solva­res, a leading provi­der of soft­ware solu­ti­ons for resource and route plan­ning. Five Arrows joins as a part­ner to support the company on its further growth path. The shares in DBAG ECF III, which was advi­sed by DBAG, will also be parti­ally sold. With its invest­ment in Solva­res, DBAG ECF III has successfully arran­ged the succes­sion of the former foun­der-mana­ged company.

Proceeds from the sale slightly above the fair value of the invest­ment as at Decem­ber 31, 2023

DBAG is now reali­zing proceeds from the sale that are slightly higher than the fair value of the invest­ment in the preli­mi­nary conso­li­da­ted balance sheet as at 31 Decem­ber 2023. This results in a slightly posi­tive value contri­bu­tion from the tran­sac­tion in the current quar­ter. The further invest­ment will allow addi­tio­nal value to be gene­ra­ted from the future deve­lo­p­ment of the company: DBAG and DBAG ECF III conti­nue to see very good deve­lo­p­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties for Solva­res, which is now one of the largest Euro­pean plat­forms for resource opti­miza­tion, and will ther­e­fore retain a signi­fi­cant stake. The new share­hol­der, Five Arrows, brings valuable B2B soft­ware and indus­try exper­tise to support the expan­sion of Solva­res’ product port­fo­lio and inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion stra­tegy by acce­le­ra­ting orga­nic growth and acquisitions.

Second sale from the DBAG ECF III portfolio

With the sale of its stake, DBAG ECF III has achie­ved the second realiza­tion from its fund port­fo­lio. Since 2018, the fund has built up a port­fo­lio of three compa­nies. The sale of the invest­ment in BTV Multi­me­dia was the first MBO sale from the DBAG ECF III portfolio.

Dispo­sal under­lines DBAG’s progress in the IT Services and Soft­ware segment 

The successful sale also under­lines the good progress made by DBAG in the IT Services and Soft­ware segment. After buil­ding up exten­sive know-how and a strong network, seven invest­ments have now been made in this segment. The asso­cia­ted share of DBAG’s total port­fo­lio value has increased almost five­fold in the last three years from five to 24 percent (as of Decem­ber 31, 2023).

Leading provi­der of soft­ware solu­ti­ons for resource and route plan­ning in Europe

Solva­res offers its custo­mers indus­try-leading soft­ware solu­ti­ons for plan­ning, control­ling and opti­mi­zing their field service, distri­bu­tion and trans­port logi­stics. Solva­res’ solu­tion plat­form is at the center of resource and mobi­lity manage­ment and supports over 3,000 custo­mers in 45 count­ries in solving complex use cases through proprie­tary algo­rithms and best-of-breed tech­no­lo­gies. This achie­ves tangi­ble effi­ci­ency gains for field service orga­niza­ti­ons and at the same time signi­fi­cantly redu­ces resource consump­tion and CO2 emis­si­ons. With a clear stra­te­gic focus and far-reaching invest­ments, Solva­res has succee­ded in trans­forming itself from a tradi­tio­nal license busi­ness into a powerful SaaS solu­tion provi­der. Turno­ver has increased almost five­fold in the last five years. Acqui­si­ti­ons also contri­bu­ted to the average double-digit orga­nic growth. The targe­ted acqui­si­tion of a total of five compa­nies enab­led further expan­sion in the field sales manage­ment area and comple­men­ted the product port­fo­lio with logi­stics and mobile func­tions. Finally, the inte­gra­tion of a former UK sales part­ner helped with internationalization.

“The high growth dyna­mics of the market coupled with invest­ments in soft­ware code and targe­ted inter­na­tio­nal company acqui­si­ti­ons have made a signi­fi­cant contri­bu­tion to forming a Euro­pean market leader,” comm­ents Tom Alzin, Spokes­man of the Manage­ment Board of Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (photo © DBAG), on the partial sale. He added: “Our decis­ion to focus more on digi­tal busi­ness models is incre­asingly paying off — to the bene­fit of inves­tors in DBAG’s shares and funds.”

Ivan Baga­ric, Chief Execu­tive Offi­cer of Solva­resadds: “Our solu­ti­ons deli­ver signi­fi­cant added value to our custo­mers on a daily basis. Our busi­ness has deve­lo­ped stron­gly in recent years and I look forward to conti­nuing our growth plan in the coming years and deve­lo­ping Solva­res into the Euro­pean market leader for field manage­ment and logi­stics soft­ware. Five Arrows, with its exten­sive global expe­ri­ence in scaling B2B soft­ware busi­nesses and long-term invest­ment perspec­tive, is our part­ner of choice to support us in this next phase of our jour­ney. We are grateful for DBAG’s support to date and are deligh­ted that they will remain our inves­tors along­side Five Arrows.”

About DBAG

Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (DBAG), listed on the stock exch­ange since 1985, is one of Germany’s most renow­ned private equity compa­nies. As an inves­tor and fund advi­sor, DBAG’s invest­ment focus has tradi­tio­nally been on medium-sized compa­nies with a focus on well-posi­tio­ned compa­nies with deve­lo­p­ment poten­tial, prima­rily in the DACH region. The indus­try focus is on manu­fac­tu­ring compa­nies, indus­trial service provi­ders and Indus­try­Tech compa­nies — i.e. compa­nies whose products enable auto­ma­tion, robo­tics and digi­tiza­tion — as well as compa­nies from the broad­band tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons, IT services, soft­ware and health­care sectors. Since 2020, DBAG has also been repre­sen­ted in Italy with its own office in Milan. Assets mana­ged or advi­sed by the DBAG Group amount to appro­xi­m­ately 2.6 billion euros. As part of its stra­te­gic part­ner­ship with ELF Capi­tal Group, DBAG is adding private debt capi­tal to its range of flexi­ble finan­cing solu­ti­ons for SMEs.

News

Wetz­lar / Trois­dorf / Grei­fen­stein — Nach­fol­ge­kon­tor, toge­ther with sonn­tag corpo­rate finance a leading German M&A advi­sory boutique for medium-sized compa­nies, has successfully advi­sed Eloma­trix Eloxal + Ober­flä­chen­tech­nik GmbH (“Eloma­trix”) on its sale to HERNEE HARTANODIC GmbH (“HERNEE”). The two specia­lists for metal proces­sing and surface finis­hing are thus pooling their exper­tise and aiming to achieve further growth and streng­then their market position.

Foun­ded in Colo­gne in 1964, Eloma­trix Eloxal + Ober­flä­chen­tech­nik GmbH has estab­lished itself as an expe­ri­en­ced anodi­zing plant throug­hout Germany. The North Rhine-West­pha­lian company offers specia­li­zed services to its custo­mers, who come from the aero­space, rene­wa­ble energy, auto­mo­tive and mecha­ni­cal engi­nee­ring indus­tries, among others. These range from the anodi­zing of alumi­nium profiles and sheet metal to the finis­hing of proto­ty­pes and series parts in stan­dard and special colors. The surface specia­list combi­nes the highest quality stan­dards and custo­mer focus with short deli­very times.

New owner for Elomatrix

The previous share­hol­der Klaus Schlotz, who took over the tradi­tio­nal company from company foun­der Heinz Erdmann in 1999 and has conti­nuously deve­lo­ped it ever since, is now handing over Eloma­trix to the new owner: HERNEE HARTANODIC GmbH, based in Hesse, is also a proven specia­list in metal proces­sing and surface finis­hing, with a focus on alumi­num surface tech­no­logy. With its specia­li­zed service port­fo­lio such as indi­vi­dual color/gloss anodi­zing and wear-resistant surfaces (hard coating process), HERNEE has been serving a broad custo­mer base for over 30 years. These include groups and compa­nies from the auto­mo­tive and aero­space indus­tries, as well as from the elec­tri­cal engi­nee­ring, semi­con­duc­tor and medi­cal tech­no­logy sectors.

Increase in growth poten­tial through multi­ple synergy effects

By merging with Eloma­trix, HERNEE is streng­thening its service port­fo­lio and further expan­ding its exis­ting custo­mer base. At the same time, the targe­ted use of synergy effects should enable the company to achieve its stra­te­gic growth targets. Klaus Schlotz, part­ner at Eloma­trix, will provide advice during the tran­si­tion phase. He comm­ents: “For over 60 years, Eloma­trix has stood for in-depth expe­ri­ence in alumi­num surface finis­hing. With HERNEE and Jens Neeb in parti­cu­lar, we have now found a part­ner who fits perfectly with the core compe­ten­cies and values of Eloma­trix and will lead the company into a successful future thanks to his many years of expe­ri­ence in the industry”.

Sebas­tian Wissig, the respon­si­ble project mana­ger at Nach­fol­ge­kon­tor, adds: “With their combi­ned resour­ces, both compa­nies are an excel­lent addi­tion to each other and to the market — both opera­tio­nally and stra­te­gi­cally. The many years of acti­vity of Eloma­trix and HERNEE in the market create the ideal condi­ti­ons for signi­fi­cantly acce­le­ra­ting further growth through the iden­ti­fied syner­gies, coher­ently expan­ding the product range and further streng­thening the market position.”

About Nach­fol­ge­kon­tor and sonn­tag corpo­rate finance

Nach­fol­ge­kon­tor GmbH, in asso­cia­tion with sonn­tag corpo­rate finance GmbH, is one of the leading M&A consul­ting firms in the German SME sector. The team of almost 30 experts accom­pa­nies medium-sized entre­pre­neurs exclu­si­vely through the entire sales process. “Our task is to safe­guard life’s work,” is how we see oursel­ves. In doing so, custo­mers bene­fit from a unique approach that has won multi­ple awards from the busi­ness press, and which protects the iden­tity of their compa­nies to a special degree. Thanks to their excel­lent access to medium-sized compa­nies, Nach­fol­ge­kon­tor and sonn­tag corpo­rate finance have also estab­lished them­sel­ves as a strong part­ner at the side of renow­ned natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal major compa­nies and inves­tors in acqui­si­ti­ons. This is also demons­tra­ted by the top posi­tion recently achie­ved at the Merger­mar­ket League Table. With a total of ten accom­pa­nied tran­sac­tions in the first quar­ter of 2024, the M&A consul­tancy ranks first in Germany. www.nachfolgekontor.de www.sonntagcf.com

About Eloma­trix Eloxal + Ober­flä­chen­tech­nik GmbH 
https://www.elomatrix.de/index.html

About HERNEE HARTANODIC GmbH 
https://www.hernee.de/

News

Knorr Brake Holding Corpo­ra­tion, a subsi­diary of Knorr-Bremse AG, signed an agree­ment with a subsi­diary of Alstom S.A. on April 19, 2024 to acquire Alstom’s conven­tio­nal rail signal­ing busi­ness in North America (Alstom Signal­ing North America).

An enter­prise value of around EUR 630 million was agreed as the purchase price. This includes an amount in the mid double-digit million euro range for addi­tio­nal expec­ted project busi­ness. The closing of the tran­sac­tion is subject to custo­mary condi­ti­ons and is expec­ted in summer 2024.

Henge­ler Muel­ler is advi­sing Knorr-Bremse on the tran­sac­tion in an inte­gra­ted team with the US law firm Hughes Hubbard & Reed (part­ner Gerold Nigge­mann, M&A).

Advi­sor Knorr-Bremse: Henge­ler Mueller

M&A: Prof. Dr. Hans-Jörg Ziegen­hain (part­ner, lead), Dr. David Negen­born, Daniel Omas­rei­ter (both asso­cia­tes, all Munich).
Corpo­rate and capi­tal markets law: Dr. Simon Patrick Link (Part­ner), Dr. Lucas Lich­ten­berg (Asso­ciate, both Munich).
Anti­trust law: Dr. Markus Röhrig (Part­ner, Brussels), Dr. Anja Balitzki (Coun­sel, Düsseldorf).
FDI: Dr. Jan Bonhage (Part­ner, Berlin).

Team Knorr-Bremse: The in-house team of Knorr-Bremse AG included Chris­tian Vornehm (Head of Service Line Legal, M&A) and Dr. Moritz Schuler (Head of Corpo­rate Office, Capi­tal Market Law).

About Henge­ler Mueller

Henge­ler Muel­ler is an inter­na­tio­nal law firm with offices in Berlin, Brussels, Düssel­dorf, Frank­furt, London and Munich. With around 320 lawy­ers, 90 of whom are part­ners, the firm specia­li­zes in provi­ding legal advice in complex tran­sac­tions, conten­tious dispu­tes and special situa­tions. Henge­ler Mueller’s clients include major commer­cial enter­pri­ses as well as leading inves­tors and family busi­nesses in Europe and worldwide.

News

Esch­born — Rödl & Part­ner has provi­ded Silver Invest­ment Part­ners (SIP) with compre­hen­sive commer­cial advice on acqui­si­ti­ons in connec­tion with the estab­lish­ment and expan­sion of its majo­rity share­hol­ding in COHEMI Group GmbH (COHEMI), an IT consul­ting group. The newly foun­ded consul­ting group, an alli­ance of SIRIUS Consul­ting & Trai­ning, Acuroc Solu­ti­ons and IQ Solu­ti­ons, is pursuing a long-term buy-and-build stra­tegy. The exis­ting manage­ment of all three compa­nies will remain signi­fi­cantly invol­ved both opera­tio­nally and financially.

This merger of the port­fo­lio compa­nies from IT, process and orga­niza­tio­nal consul­ting has the poten­tial to jointly exploit exis­ting growth oppor­tu­ni­ties in the market and create syner­gies at Group level. For the custo­mers and target group — SMEs and corpo­ra­ti­ons in the DACH region, parti­cu­larly in the chemi­cal, phar­maceu­ti­cal, life scien­ces and energy supply sectors — the inte­gra­tion means a more compre­hen­sive range of consul­ting services. The Group’s core compe­ten­cies include IT gover­nance, IT project manage­ment, (IT) service manage­ment, change manage­ment, asset stra­tegy & perfor­mance manage­ment, data manage­ment as well as soft­ware asset and license management.

SIP was advi­sed on this tran­sac­tion by a Rödl & Part­ner team specia­li­zing in private equity tran­sac­tions, led by part­ner Tobias Beine. Senior Asso­ciate Dr. Maxi­mi­lian Focke and Asso­ciate Simon Holz­wei­ler joined the Tran­sac­tion Services team from Esch­born near Frank­furt am Main.

About Silver Invest­ment Part­ners (SIP)

SIP is an inde­pen­dent inves­tor for equity finan­cing of medium-sized compa­nies in Germany, Austria and Switz­er­land. As an entre­pre­neur-led part­ner, SIP states that it is invol­ved in majo­rity and mino­rity share­hol­dings in compa­nies with sales of between EUR 5 and 100 million, with a focus on compa­nies with sales of between EUR 10 and 50 million.

About COHEMI Group

The COHEMI Group is a consul­ting group with a focus on IT, process and orga­niza­tio­nal consul­ting. Its opera­tio­nal consul­ting compa­nies comprise almost 100 consul­tants (as of March 2024) at four loca­ti­ons in Germany with head­quar­ters in Frank­furt am Main. Accor­ding to the company, it plans to conti­nuously expand its port­fo­lio. The Group is pursuing a buy-and-build stra­tegy and intends to grow well above the market average in the coming years. The manage­ment consists of Chris Kohls­dorf and Michael Kern.

Advi­sor Silver Invest­ment Part­ners: Rödl & Partner

Tobias Beine, Part­ner, Finan­cial Tran­sac­tion & Valua­tion Services, Esch­born, over­all project manage­ment — Finan­cial, Dr. Maxi­mi­lian Focke, Senior Asso­ciate, Finan­cial Tran­sac­tion & Valua­tion Services, Esch­born — Finan­cial, Simon Holz­wei­ler, Asso­ciate, Finan­cial Tran­sac­tion & Valua­tion Services, Esch­born — Financial.

Rödl & Part­ner — The agile caret­a­ker for medium-sized global market leaders
As lawy­ers, tax consul­tants, busi­ness and IT consul­tants and audi­tors, we are repre­sen­ted at 110 of our own loca­ti­ons in around 50 count­ries. Our clients trust our 5,800 colle­agues world­wide. www.roedl.de.

News

Munich — PROM12 Capi­tal Fund I GmbH & Co. KG has acqui­red a majo­rity stake in SOLV­Vi­sion AG. PROM12 is an entre­pre­neur-led private equity company with a focus on profi­ta­ble small and medium-sized compa­nies in German-spea­king count­ries. PROM12 specia­li­zes in part­ne­ring with entre­pre­neurs in the IT, IT services, digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion and tech­no­logy sectors to help them acce­le­rate their growth and create sustainable value. The commer­cial law firm Gütt Olk Feld­haus advi­sed PROM12 Capi­tal Fund I GmbH & Co. KG on this transaction.

SOLV­Vi­sion AG offers high-quality enter­prise and IT service manage­ment services in the areas of consul­ting, quali­fi­ca­tion and process and ITSM plat­form operation.

About PROM12

As an entre­pre­neur-led invest­ment company, PROM12 sees itself as a spar­ring part­ner that supports tech compa­nies in their deve­lo­p­ment into natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal cham­pi­ons. PROM12 brings deep exper­tise from the IT/ IT Services/ Soft­ware indus­try and invests in its selec­ted part­ners to enable sustainable and acce­le­ra­ted growth, crea­ting long-term value. https://prom12.com

Legal advi­sors PROM12: Gütt Olk Feld­haus, Munich

Dr. Kilian Helm­reich (Part­ner, Corpo­rate Law/M&A), Thomas Becker (Of Coun­sel, IP/IT/Data Protec­tion), Isabelle Vran­cken (Senior Asso­ciate, Corpo­rate Law/M&A), Sophie Stef­fen (Asso­ciate, Corpo­rate Law/M&A)
Pusch Wahlig Work­place Law, Munich: Ingo Sappa (Part­ner, Employ­ment Law)

About Gütt Olk Feldhaus

Gütt Olk Feld­haus is a leading inter­na­tio­nal law firm based in Munich. We provide compre­hen­sive advice on commer­cial and corpo­rate law. Our focus is on corpo­rate law, M&A, private equity and finan­cing. In these specia­list areas we also take on the litigation.

News

Zuffen­hau­sen — Porsche Auto­mo­bil Holding SE (Porsche SE) has issued a further bond with a volume of 1.6 billion euros — the largest unra­ted bond on the market. The bond compri­ses two tran­ches with matu­ri­ties until Septem­ber 2029 and Septem­ber 2032 and a volume of EUR 750 million and EUR 850 million respec­tively. The bond was over­sub­scri­bed seve­ral times.

The funds will be used by Porsche SE for the partial early repay­ment of exis­ting finan­cial liabi­li­ties and to build up stra­te­gic liqui­dity for poten­tial acquisitions.

Advi­sor Porsche Auto­mo­bil Holding SE: Henge­ler Mueller

Capi­tal markets law: Alex­an­der G. Rang (part­ner, lead), Julia Weid­ner (coun­sel), Dr. Konrad Schä­fer (asso­ciate, all Frank­furt). Corpo­rate law: Dr. Cars­ten A. Schap­mann, Dr. Gerd Sassen­rath (both part­ners), Manuela Roeding (coun­sel), Dr. Maxi­mi­lian Metzen (asso­ciate, all Düsseldorf).

About Henge­ler Mueller

Henge­ler Muel­ler is an inter­na­tio­nal law firm with offices in Berlin, Brussels, Düssel­dorf, Frank­furt, London and Munich. With around 320 lawy­ers, 90 of whom are part­ners, the firm specia­li­zes in provi­ding legal advice in complex tran­sac­tions, conten­tious dispu­tes and special situa­tions. Henge­ler Mueller’s clients include major commer­cial enter­pri­ses as well as leading inves­tors and family busi­nesses in Europe and worldwide.

News

Frank­furt — The inter­na­tio­nal law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP advi­ses NRDC Equity Manage­ment Company on the acqui­si­tion of Gale­ria Karstadt Kauf­hof out of insol­vency. Toge­ther with entre­pre­neu­rial part­ner Bernd Beetz, NRDC has won the bidding process for the insol­vent depart­ment store chain Gale­ria Karstadt Kauf­hof and concluded the inves­tor agree­ment with the insol­vency admi­nis­tra­tor Stefan Denkhaus.

NRDC is the invest­ment company of Cana­dian entre­pre­neur Richard Baker. Baker has made a name for itself in the global fashion indus­try through a series of shrewd acqui­si­ti­ons. He owns a majo­rity stake in the depart­ment store company Hudson Bay Company (HBC). Among other things, HBC owns the Ameri­can luxury depart­ment store chain Saks Fifth Avenue. The consor­tium that wants to take over Gale­ria also includes former Kauf­hof Super­vi­sory Board Chair­man Bernd Beetz.

Gale­ria Karstadt Kauf­hof is the largest depart­ment store chain in Germany and the second largest depart­ment store group in Europe and filed for insol­vency in Janu­ary 2024 for the third time in the last four years follo­wing the bank­ruptcy of its parent company Signa. Gale­ria opera­tes 92 depart­ment stores in Germany and employs more than 15,000 people, accor­ding to its own figures.

The take­over by NRDC and Bernd Beetz follows a compe­ti­tive bidding process, which the insol­vency admi­nis­tra­tor began shortly after the insol­vency appli­ca­tion and ended shortly after the opening of insol­vency procee­dings with the award of the contract to NRDC and Bernd Beetz. The trans­fer of Gale­ria Karstadt Kauf­hof will take place by way of an insol­vency plan and the closing of the tran­sac­tion is plan­ned for the summer. — Baker was alre­ady the majo­rity owner of Gale­ria Kauf­hof from 2015 to 2019. The company was subse­quently sold to the Austrian René Benko.

The inter­na­tio­nal WEIL team was led by part­ners Robert Rizzo (Corpo­rate, NY), Britta Grauke (Restruc­tu­ring, Frank­furt) and Dr. Chris­tian Tapp­ei­ner (Corpo­rate, Frank­furt) and compri­sed Part­ner Tobias Geer­ling (Tax, Munich), Coun­sel Dr. Matthias Eiden (Restruc­tu­ring, Frank­furt), Coun­sel Thomas Zimmer­mann (Finance, Munich), Coun­sel Dr. Konstan­tin Hoppe (Real Estate / IP/IT, Munich), as well as asso­cia­tes Melina Husic (Restruc­tu­ring, Frank­furt), Hans-Chris­tian Mick (Finance, Frank­furt), Silvia Lengauer (Finance, Munich), Nata­scha Spaeth, Sebas­tian Klein, Jannik Dutt­lin­ger, Alex­an­der Roth­stein (all Corpo­rate, Frank­furt), Caro­lin Vetter­mann (Tax Law, Munich), Alex­an­der Reich, Daniel Reich (both Tax Law, Frank­furt), Laura Kirch­ber­ger (Real Estate, Munich), Benja­min Köpple (Employ­ment Law, Munich), Clarissa Tran (Liti­ga­tion, Frank­furt), David Fier (IP/IT, Munich).

About Weil

Weil, Gotshal & Manges is an inter­na­tio­nal law firm with more than 1,100 lawy­ers. Weil has offices in New York, Boston, Brussels, Dallas, Frank­furt, Hong Kong, Hous­ton, London, Miami, Munich, Paris, Shang­hai, Washing­ton, D.C. and Sili­con Valley. In Germany, the firm has two offices and around 60 lawyers/tax advi­sors in Frank­furt and Munich. The focus here is on provi­ding specia­li­zed advice to natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal clients on cross-border private equity and M&A tran­sac­tions, high-profile liti­ga­tion manda­tes, complex restruc­tu­rings and finan­cings as well as tax structuring.

News

Munich — Proxima Fusion, the first spin-out of the Max Planck Insti­tute for Plasma Physics (IPP), has recei­ved seed funding of 20 million euros to acce­le­rate the cons­truc­tion of the first gene­ra­tion of fusion power plants. The Munich-based start-up has set itself the goal of enab­ling a new era of scalable, emis­sion-free energy. The tech­no­logy for this is based on the prin­ci­ple of opti­mi­zed quasi-isody­na­mic (QI) stel­la­ra­tors and high-tempe­ra­ture superconductors.

Redal­pine leads the seed finan­cing round — with invest­ments from Bayern Kapi­tal, the DeepT­ech & Climate Fund and the Max Planck Foun­da­tion. As an exis­ting inves­tor, UVC Part­ners doubles the pre-seed invest­ment along­side Plural, High-Tech Grün­der­fonds, Wilbe and Visio­na­ries Club.

Inno­va­tive tech­no­logy in the field of compu­ter-based simulations

QI stel­la­ra­tors are one of the most promi­sing tech­no­lo­gies when it comes to tapping CO2-free, safe and almost unli­mi­ted energy. The funda­men­tal scien­ti­fic ques­ti­ons in magne­tic fusion have been inten­si­vely rese­ar­ched for more than six deca­des. Howe­ver, the gene­ra­tion of sustainable and econo­mic­ally viable fusion energy remained a chall­enge. Proxima Fusion builds on the results of the Wendel­stein 7‑X (W7‑X) expe­ri­ment, the world’s largest stel­la­ra­tor at the Max Planck Insti­tute for Plasma Physics.

Dr. Fran­cesco Sciort­ino, co-foun­der and CEO of Proxima Fusion“In April 2023, we star­ted with the tech­ni­cal opti­miza­tion and deve­lo­p­ment of magnets made of high-tempe­ra­ture super­con­duc­tors. We are now making tremen­dous progress in inte­gra­ted design with our Star­Fin­der auto­ma­tion system. The support of high-profile inves­tors confirms the high quality of the team and its pionee­ring impact.” In addi­tion to acce­le­ra­ting deve­lo­p­ment in the areas of hard­ware and soft­ware, Proxima Fusion will use the seed funding in parti­cu­lar to expand the team.

Benja­min Erhart, Gene­ral Part­ner at UVC Part­ners: “Proxima Fusion’s strengths in auto­ma­ted design, AI-assis­ted engi­nee­ring, high-tempe­ra­ture super­con­duc­tor magnet tech­no­logy and the team’s rapid growth and capa­bi­li­ties give us confi­dence in making fusion energy a reality in power plant operations.”

About Proxima Fusion

As the first spin-out of the Max Planck Insti­tute for Plasma Physics, Proxima Fusion is acce­le­ra­ting a para­digm shift in the energy sector. The Munich-based start-up is buil­ding on the pionee­ring W7‑X expe­ri­ment in Germany and is deve­lo­ping the world’s first QI stel­la­ra­tor power plant using high-tempe­ra­ture super­con­duc­tors. The declared aim is to tap into the universe’s ulti­mate energy source in order to gene­rate conti­nuous and relia­ble emis­sion-free energy. In 2023, engi­neers and scien­tists from orga­niza­ti­ons such as the Max Planck Society, MIT and Google foun­ded Proxima Fusion and the company is alre­ady leading Europe into a new era of clean energy. www.proximafusion.com

About UVC Partners

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

News

New York/ Hamburg — The Ameri­can private equity inves­tor KKR has made an offer of €2.8 billion ($3 billion) for the take­over of the German rene­wa­ble energy manu­fac­tu­rer Enca­vis. Enca­vis, based on Grosse Elbstrasse in Hamburg, opera­tes more than 300 wind and solar parks throug­hout Europe — most of them in Germany.

KKR subsi­diary Blitz 21–823 (BidCo) has reached an agree­ment on a volun­t­ary public take­over offer for all outstan­ding shares of Enca­vis at an offer price of EUR 17.50 per share.

The offer price is 33% above the volume-weigh­ted 3‑month average price on March 5, 2024 and 54% above the closing price of the Enca­vis share of € 11.35 on the same day.

The Ameri­can finan­cial inves­tor belie­ves that it has alre­ady secu­red a major stake in Enca­vis, as major share­hol­ders around the Hamburg billionaire Albert Büll want to sell their shares. Büll and his part­ner Corne­lius Liedke are among the larger real estate inves­tors in Hamburg, having built the Munds­burg Tower, the Mercado in Altona and the Neue Flora musi­cal thea­ter, among others. The moti­va­tion for the sale of its Enca­vis shares is unclear.

The Manage­ment Board and Super­vi­sory Board of Enca­vis have unani­mously voted in favor of the stra­te­gic part­ner­ship and plan to recom­mend that share­hol­ders accept the offer.

KKR has submit­ted the offer in a consor­tium that also includes the Viess­mann Group, a German manu­fac­tu­rer of heating and cooling systems, and the private equity inves­tor Abacon Capital.

The take­over is subject to the achie­ve­ment of a mini­mum accep­tance thres­hold of 54.3 % of all outstan­ding Enca­vis shares and the fulfill­ment of stan­dard offer condi­ti­ons such as appr­oval by super­vi­sory autho­ri­ties, anti­trust autho­ri­ties and foreign direct investors.
The tran­sac­tion is expec­ted to be comple­ted in the fourth quar­ter of 2024.

Enca­vis is then delis­ted from the stock exch­ange and trans­fer­red to private ownership.

News

Munich/Burgheim/New York City — Funds advi­sed by Equis­tone Part­ners Europe (“Equis­tone”) sell their majo­rity stake in Sport Group to KPS Capi­tal Part­ners, LP (“KPS”) follo­wing a successful part­ner­ship. — With the support of Equis­tone, the Bava­rian-based group of compa­nies has deve­lo­ped into a leading inter­na­tio­nal specia­list for arti­fi­cial turf and synthe­tic sports and leisure surfaces for outdoor use. Toge­ther with the new owner KPS, this growth course is to be contin­ued. The tran­sac­tion, the finan­cial details of which are not being disc­lo­sed, is subject to the usual regu­la­tory approvals.

Sport Group was foun­ded in 1969 and opera­tes as a global player in the manu­fac­ture of arti­fi­cial turf systems and synthe­tic floor cove­rings for sports and leisure with a strong presence in its home market of Germany as well as in Europe, Austra­lia and the USA. Based in Burg­heim, Bava­ria, the Group offers its custo­mers, inclu­ding well-known soccer clubs and sports compa­nies and orga­ni­zers such as FC Bayern Munich, the US Open and the Olym­pic Games, a compre­hen­sive product port­fo­lio in the form of arti­fi­cial turf, poly­ure­thane surfaces and compon­ents for indus­trial and land­sca­ping applications.

A central compo­nent of the Sport Group’s range of services is end-to-end project support: from the procu­re­ment of raw mate­ri­als and instal­la­tion to after-sales services and main­ten­ance. With a strong focus on rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment, parti­cu­larly in the area of sustaina­bi­lity, Sport Group has estab­lished itself as an indus­try pioneer for sustainable tech­no­lo­gies, products and services, inclu­ding the deve­lo­p­ment of the world’s first carbon-neutral soccer and field field hockey turf and the first and so far only recy­cling plant for arti­fi­cial turf and EPDM rubber. The Group curr­ently unites 19 subsi­dia­ries in nine count­ries under one roof and employs more than 1,900 people worldwide.

In June 2015, Equis­tone acqui­red a majo­rity stake in the Sport Group

Since then, the specia­list for sports surfaces has driven forward its ambi­tious growth targets with the support of Equis­tone: With a total of nine successfully reali­zed acqui­si­ti­ons during the holding period, the group size has been sustain­ably expan­ded, as has its geogra­phi­cal presence in key growth markets such as Austra­lia, the USA and Malay­sia. Another focus was on the conti­nuous expan­sion of Group-wide sustaina­bi­lity exper­tise: the deve­lo­p­ment of sustainable products was signi­fi­cantly advan­ced with targe­ted invest­ments; the profi­ta­bi­lity and profes­sio­na­liza­tion of the Group was also sustain­ably streng­the­ned and adapted to the incre­asing growth. During the joint part­ner­ship with Equis­tone, the Sport Group has thus succee­ded in more than doubling its corpo­rate sales — despite a chal­len­ging econo­mic envi­ron­ment due to the coro­na­vi­rus pande­mic and disrupted supply chains.

Toge­ther with the new owner KPS, the Sport Group’s growth is now to be taken to a new level. “The global dimen­sion and the large number of growth oppor­tu­ni­ties in this market segment make long-term invest­ments very attrac­tive. Sport Group has deve­lo­ped extre­mely well in recent years. The stra­te­gic steps we have taken toge­ther with the manage­ment team have sustain­ably streng­the­ned the company and helped to expand its leading posi­tion in the Euro­pean market to the inter­na­tio­nal arena,” explains Dr. Marc Arens, Senior Part­ner and Coun­try Head DACH/NL at Equistone.

Chris­toph von Nitzsch, CEO of Sport Group, adds: “The joint part­ner­ship with Equis­tone has been extre­mely successful — toge­ther we have been able to signi­fi­cantly inten­sify our growth in recent years and conti­nue our inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion. We look forward to conti­nuing this successful course with KPS and to further advan­cing our goal of setting new stan­dards in sustaina­bi­lity within our industry.”

On the Equis­tone side, the funds were advi­sed by Dr. Marc Arens, Maxi­mi­lian Göppert, Moritz Treude and Mark Feiler.

Advi­sor to Equistone: 

Houli­han Lokey (Lead M&A), William Blair (M&A),
BCG (Commer­cial)
Deloitte (Finan­cial)
Ernst&Young (Tax & EHS)
Latham (Legal)
PwC (Data Analytics)
Crescendo (Commu­ni­ca­ti­ons)
Good­win (finan­cing)

Latham & Watkins LLP advi­sed Equis­tone Part­ners Europe with the follo­wing team:

Burc Hesse (Part­ner, lead), Dr. Sebas­tian Pauls (Part­ner), Dr. Julia Schö­fer, Dr. Manuel Schmutz­ler, Julian Glaub, Dr. Corinna Freu­den­ma­cher (all Asso­ciate, all Corpo­rate, Munich), Dr. Susan Kempe-Müller (Part­ner), Daniela Jaeger, Gracia Engwaya (both Asso­ciate, all IP), Dr. Max Hauser (Part­ner), Judith Jacob (Asso­ciate, both Anti­trust), Joachim Gritt­mann (Coun­sel, Regu­la­tory), Dr. Wolf-Tassilo Böhm (Coun­sel), Clemens Ganz (Asso­ciate, both Data Protec­tion), Sven Nickel (Coun­sel), Marie-Chris­tine Welp (Asso­ciate, both Real Estate), Ralph Drae­ger, Verena Birke (both Asso­ciate, Finance, all Frank­furt), Dr. Ulf Kieker (Part­ner), Manuela Minsel (Asso­ciate, Tax), Dr. Tobias Leder (Part­ner), Martina Hölzer (Asso­ciate, both Employ­ment, all Munich), Dr. Stefan Bartz (Coun­sel, Compli­ance), Kath­rin Krim­mer (Legal Analyst, Liti­ga­tion, both Hamburg), and with further support from the Latham & Watkins offices in London, Hous­ton, Boston and Washing­ton D.C.

About Equis­tone Part­ners Europe

The funds advi­sed by Equis­tone Part­ners Europe are among the most active Euro­pean equity inves­tors with a team of more than 40 invest­ment specia­lists in seven offices in Germany, Switz­er­land, the Nether­lands, France and the UK. The Equis­tone funds invest prima­rily in estab­lished medium-sized compa­nies with a good market posi­tion, above-average growth poten­tial and an enter­prise value of between EUR 50 and 500 million. Since incep­tion, the funds have inves­ted equity in more than 180 tran­sac­tions. The port­fo­lio of Equis­tone funds curr­ently compri­ses around 50 compa­nies across Europe, inclu­ding around 20 invest­ments in Germany, Switz­er­land, the Nether­lands and Belgium. For more infor­ma­tion, visit www.equistonepe.com.

About Sport Group
www.sportgroup-holding.com

About KPS Capi­tal Part­ners, LP
https://de.kpsfund.com

News

Luxem­bourg — Toge­ther with the Euro­pean Circu­lar Bioe­co­nomy Fund (ECBF), the French agri­cul­tu­ral tech­no­logy company Weenat has successfully closed a Series C finan­cing round tota­ling EUR 8.5 million. Other inves­tors in this round are Pymwy­mic, LIBERSET, and IDIA Capi­tal Inves­tis­se­ment. The funding will enable Weenat to expand its inno­va­tions across Europe and streng­then the agri­cul­tu­ral community’s resi­li­ence to climate change through the use of cutting-edge technology.

Expan­sion and impact on farmers across Europe

Since its foun­da­tion in 2014, Weenat has estab­lished itself as a tech­no­lo­gi­cal market leader and pionee­red the first wire­less weather station connec­ted to a mobile appli­ca­tion. Since then, the company has deve­lo­ped real exper­tise in the manu­fac­ture of relia­ble sensors and culti­va­ted in-house know­ledge in the fields of engi­nee­ring, machine lear­ning, agro­nomy and metrology.

With a decade of expe­ri­ence, Weenat is now profi­ta­ble in its core opera­tion and has more than 25,000 sensors deployed across Europe. The network is supported by over 200 local part­ners, inclu­ding leading coope­ra­ti­ves, retail­ers and food indus­tries in France, Spain and Germany. Weenat not only coll­ects exten­sive data­sets of spatial and cali­bra­ted weather and soil water data, but also provi­des solu­ti­ons for the food and agri­cul­ture indus­try to promote climate resi­li­ent prac­ti­ces. This unique blend of capa­bi­li­ties posi­ti­ons Weenat for robust expan­sion across Europe and beyond.

” As a leading player in weather data and water manage­ment, Weenat’s goal is to deploy its inno­va­tions across Europe and provide farmers with effec­tive and user-friendly solu­ti­ons, explains ” Jérôme Le Roy. ” In 2023, our 10,000 soil sensors led to the conser­va­tion of 32 million cubic meters of water. The poten­tial impact of scaling our solu­ti­ons across all areas of Europe is truly amazing! “.

Inno­va­tions to combat water scar­city in agriculture

Climate change is an unde­niable reality that will make water scar­city and manage­ment a major envi­ron­men­tal chall­enge for deca­des to come. This situa­tion has a profound impact on farmers, as agri­cul­ture accounts for 70 percent of the world’s freshwa­ter with­dra­wals, and more than half of this water is used inef­fi­ci­ently due to a lack of suita­ble tools.

Weenat is commit­ted to helping farmers over­come the chal­lenges of water scar­city, with inno­va­tion at the heart of its stra­tegy. Through the successful acqui­si­tion of Weather Measu­res, a data-driven agtech start-up, in 2021, the company streng­the­ned its R&D&D capa­bi­li­ties and remains commit­ted to provi­ding cutting-edge tech­no­lo­gies to the farming commu­nity, whether through inter­nal deve­lo­p­ment or exter­nal acquisitions.

Under­stan­ding soil dyna­mics remains the biggest chall­enge for irri­ga­tion equip­ment. For this reason, Weenat has laun­ched an ambi­tious R&D program aimed at real-time moni­to­ring of soil water content throug­hout the root zone depth in all plots in Europe. Laun­ched in 2023, this program uses data from Weenat’s exten­sive network of ground sensors, the largest in Europe, along­side satel­lite imaging and arti­fi­cial intelligence.

The company used the combi­ned exper­tise of its data scien­tists, agro­no­mists and meteo­ro­lo­gists and has alre­ady achie­ved promi­sing scien­ti­fic results. It will now acce­le­rate its inno­va­tion path to provide the entire farming commu­nity with key data for the coming years.

” With climate change and water scar­city bearing down on us, Weenat’s track record of profi­ta­ble growth stands out in the fast-growing precis­ion irri­ga­tion market. A world-class foun­ding team and a high level of scien­ti­fic excel­lence have earned them the trust of growers and a leading posi­tion in France. We are very confi­dent that Weenats can make its mark on the wider market and are exci­ted about its poten­tial for excep­tio­nal impact! ” concludes Stéphane Rous­sel, Part­ner of the Euro­pean Circu­lar Bioe­co­nomy Fund (ECBF).

About Weenat

Weenat provi­des the agri­cul­tu­ral commu­nity with the agro-meteo­ro­lo­gi­cal data they need to moni­tor the clima­tic and agro­no­mic condi­ti­ons of their plots in real time, from sowing to harvest. Thanks to Weenat, farmers and the agri­cul­tu­ral indus­try have accu­rate infor­ma­tion to anti­ci­pate climate hazards and opti­mize their agri­cul­tu­ral manage­ment. Foun­ded in 2014 by Jérôme Le Roy, the French company AgTech curr­ently has 60 employees, more than 200 part­ners and agri­cul­tu­ral distri­bu­tors ( coope­ra­ti­ves, retail­ers, rese­arch insti­tu­tes and agri­cul­tu­ral compa­nies ), more than 25,000 users, 25,000 sensors instal­led and is deve­lo­ping its offer in 8 Euro­pean count­ries ( France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Nether­lands, Luxem­bourg, Switz­er­land ). www.weenat.com

About the inves­tors in Weenat’s Series C finan­cing round:

Euro­pean Circu­lar Bioe­co­nomy Fund (ECBF)

The Euro­pean Circu­lar Bioe­co­nomy Fund ( ECBF ) is a private venture capi­tal fund dedi­ca­ted exclu­si­vely to the bioe­co­nomy and the circu­lar economy. Laun­ched by the Euro­pean Commis­sion, it invests in visio­nary Euro­pean entre­pre­neurs who are driving the tran­si­tion from a fossil-based to a bio-based economy. The ECBF aims to cata­lyze the tran­si­tion to a sustainable future by inves­t­ing in later-stage compa­nies with high inno­va­tion poten­tial, favorable returns and sustainable impact. The ECBF was foun­ded in 2020 and mana­ges a total of € 300 million. It focu­ses on deploy­ing capi­tal in attrac­tive and impactful compa­nies based in the EU-27 or 16 HORIZON 2020 count­ries. The Luxem­bourg-based fund is advi­sed by Hauck & Aufhäu­ser Funds Services S.A. as Alter­na­tive Invest­ment Fund Mana­ger (AIFM) and by the expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment team of EZBF Manage­ment GmbH based in Germany. www.ecbf.vc

Pymwy­mic

Pymwy­mic has been at the fore­front of the tran­si­tion to inves­t­ing with care for people and the planet since 1994. Supported by 200 indi­vi­du­als, fami­lies, entre­pre­neurs and angel inves­tors and toge­ther with insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors, we have laun­ched two impact funds focu­sed on sustainable deve­lo­p­ment goals. Pymwymic’s Healthy Ecosys­tems Impact Fund I (closed in 2021) has nine port­fo­lio compa­nies (two of which are exiting) that are deve­lo­ping solu­ti­ons to preserve and restore our ecosys­tems. We are curr­ently inves­t­ing through the Healthy Food Systems Impact Fund II, support­ing the trans­for­ma­tion of entre­pre­neurs who are trans­forming our food system from farm to fork.

LIBERSET

LIBERSET is a trans­at­lan­tic invest­ment firm with offices in the US and Europe that supports the growth of inno­va­tive compa­nies that promote indus­trial tran­si­tion and decar­bo­niza­tion. Their mission is to invest in compa­nies that deve­lop breakth­rough solu­ti­ons that address global indus­trial inef­fi­ci­en­cies and solve major pain points. The inves­tor commu­nity consists of family groups, family offices, expe­ri­en­ced CEOs and entre­pre­neurs active in the fields of agri­cul­ture, food, cosme­tics, energy, mobi­lity, buil­ding manage­ment and cons­truc­tion. LIBERSET is commit­ted to support­ing the trans­at­lan­tic growth of its port­fo­lio compa­nies and helping them to build sustainable global value creation.

IDIA Capi­tal Investissement

IDIA Capi­tal Inves­tis­se­ment brings toge­ther the proprie­tary invest­ment acti­vi­ties of the Crédit Agri­cole Group, which focus on mino­rity invest­ments to support mid-caps and SMEs across all busi­ness sectors. It has reco­gni­zed exper­tise in the areas of food, wine and energy tran­si­tion. IDIA Capi­tal Inves­tis­se­ment also mana­ges the Crédit Agri­cole Group’s land and forestry groups and moni­tors Crédit Agri­cole S.A.’s invest­ments in certain funds. The total funds mana­ged by IDIA Capi­tal Inves­tis­se­ment (via invest­ment vehic­les such as CARD, CA Grands Crus, Grands Crus Inves­tis­se­ments, CA Tran­si­ti­ons, LCL Crois­sance, Ambi­tion Agri Agro Inves­tis­se­ment, etc.) amount to € 2.2 billion. The company is aiming to invest between € 1 million and € 50 million. IDIA Capi­tal Inves­tis­se­ment is a port­fo­lio manage­ment company autho­ri­zed by the AMF (French Finan­cial Markets Autho­rity) under no. GP-15000010.

News

Munich — Maxburg Capi­tal Manage­ment GmbH has successfully comple­ted the place­ment of the new fund gene­ra­tion “Maxburg Fund IV” with capi­tal commit­ments tota­ling EUR 450 million.
Maxburg Fund IV pursues a private equity stra­tegy and invests prima­rily through equity and equity-rela­ted invest­ments (mainly majo­rity and/or control­ling stakes) in private compa­nies, mainly in the DACH region. POELLATH advi­sed Maxburg Capi­tal Manage­ment GmbH on the final closing of Maxburg Fund IV for EUR 450 million.

Maxburg Fund IV’s global inves­tor base includes a large number of insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors, inclu­ding public and private pension funds, foun­da­ti­ons, insu­rance compa­nies and family offices from Europe, North America and Asia.

POELLATH advi­sed Maxburg on the fund struc­tu­ring and fund­rai­sing on all corpo­rate, tax, distri­bu­tion and other regu­la­tory issues as well as on all inves­tor nego­tia­ti­ons with the follo­wing Frank­furt team:
— Dr. Peter Bujot­zek, LL.M. (Part­ner, Lead Part­ner, Private Funds), Photo ©Poellath
— Dr. André Blischke (Coun­sel, Private Funds)
— Fran­zisca Anna Stucken­berg (Senior Asso­ciate, Private Funds / Regu­la­tory Law)
— Dr. Thomas Becker (Asso­ciate, Private Funds)

About POELLATH

POELLATH is a market-leading inter­na­tio­nal busi­ness and tax law firm with more than 180 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

Bonn — CData Soft­ware, a leading provi­der of connec­ti­vity solu­ti­ons for data, has announ­ced the acqui­si­tion of Data Virtua­lity, a global provi­der of data inte­gra­tion and data manage­ment solu­ti­ons, from HTGF. HTGF was one of the first inves­tors in a seed round in 2012 and will sell its shares as part of the stra­te­gic takeover.

With the acqui­si­tion of Data Virtua­lity, CData provi­des its custo­mers with powerful, centra­li­zed data inte­gra­tion plat­forms that solve the biggest chal­lenges in data manage­ment. CData is the only data manage­ment vendor to have laun­ched a bimo­dal inte­gra­tion package that allows custo­mers to use both data repli­ca­tion and live data inte­gra­tion to connect to their data on a common plat­form. With Data Virtua­lity, CData is now expan­ding its ability to support compa­nies with an enter­prise-wide data virtua­liza­tion plat­form for company-wide access to live data.

Data Virtua­lity provi­des live connec­ti­vity for direct system-to-system data access and data virtua­liza­tion solu­ti­ons for a unified and control­led data layer. It comple­ments and extends the exis­ting CData Drivers products, which enable point-to-point connec­ti­vity between systems, and Connect Cloud, which enables multi-point connec­tions between cloud applications.

“The acqui­si­tion of Data Virtua­lity comple­ments our exis­ting live connec­ti­vity products with a virtua­liza­tion plat­form for compa­nies with more complex data archi­tec­ture and we are deligh­ted to welcome them to our team. With the inte­gra­tion of Data Virtua­lity into our product port­fo­lio, we can now offer compa­nies a complete set of repli­ca­tion and live access tools that work both on-premise and in the cloud or in hybrid tech­no­logy stacks. CData is uniquely posi­tio­ned to acce­le­rate data virtua­liza­tion initia­ti­ves for enter­pri­ses at every stage of deve­lo­p­ment. We are looking forward to the future,” says Amit Sharma, CEO and co-foun­der of CData

“Data Virtua­lity proudly shares CData’s mission to empower orga­niza­ti­ons to unleash and maxi­mize the full poten­tial of their data. Toge­ther, our global scale and market-leading tech­no­logy offer a tremen­dous oppor­tu­nity to fulfill busi­ness requi­re­ments more flexi­bly. By abstrac­ting the tech­ni­cal comple­xity with our newly combi­ned tech­no­logy suite, we support the demo­cra­tiza­tion of data and enable more people in compa­nies to work effi­ci­ently with data. HTGF has been a relia­ble and cons­truc­tive part­ner from the very begin­ning and has always provi­ded us with valuable support,” explains Dr. Nick Golo­vin, foun­der and CEO of Data Virtua­lity (photo).

“As a seed inves­tor, we are very plea­sed to be part of this stra­te­gic acqui­si­tion between CData and Data Virtua­lity. It is an important mile­stone in the resha­ping of the data manage­ment and data inte­gra­tion land­scape and offers signi­fi­cant oppor­tu­ni­ties for growth and inno­va­tion. Dr. Nick Golo­vin, CEO and foun­der of Data Virtua­lity, and his team have demons­tra­ted exem­plary inno­va­tion, stra­te­gic plan­ning, opera­tio­nal excel­lence and resi­li­ence and have achie­ved remar­kable results,” comm­ents Axel Nitsch, Prin­ci­pal at HTGF.

About Data Virtuality

Data Virtua­lity GmbH deve­lops and distri­bu­tes data inte­gra­tion solu­ti­ons that enable compa­nies to simplify the acces­si­bi­lity and usabi­lity of data in order to gain insights more quickly. The solu­tion revo­lu­tio­ni­zes the tech­no­lo­gi­cal concept of data virtua­liza­tion and can be built on exis­ting and new data land­scapes. With our expe­ri­ence in support­ing global compa­nies such as BSH Haus­ge­räte, New York Univer­sity (NYU), Crédit Agri­cole and Part­nerRe, Data Virtua­lity solves the complex chal­lenges of data inte­gra­tion and manage­ment in large orga­niza­ti­ons. With more than 200 ready-made connec­tors, Data Virtua­lity supports compa­nies in imple­men­ting modern data archi­tec­tures such as hybrid and multi-cloud, data fabric and data mesh.

About CData Software

CData Soft­ware is a leading provi­der of data access and connec­ti­vity solu­ti­ons. Our self-service data products and connec­ti­vity solu­ti­ons provide univer­sal access to live data from hundreds of popu­lar on-premise and cloud appli­ca­ti­ons. Milli­ons of users world­wide, inclu­ding Sales­force, Office Depot and Holi­day Inn, rely on CData to enable advan­ced analy­tics, drive cloud adop­tion and create a more connec­ted enter­prise. CData can be used by any user, is available in any appli­ca­tion and was deve­lo­ped for any company. CData is thus rede­fi­ning the data-driven company. Find out more at www.cdata.com

About High-Tech Gründerfonds

The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start-ups with growth poten­tial and has supported more than 700 start-ups since 2005. With the launch of the fourth fund, HTGF has around 1.4 billion euros under manage­ment. The team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and start-up experts supports the young compa­nies with know-how, entre­pre­neu­rial spirit and passion. The focus is on high-tech start-ups in the fields of digi­tal tech, indus­trial tech, life scien­ces, chemis­try and rela­ted busi­ness areas. To date, exter­nal inves­tors have inves­ted around EUR 5 billion in the HTGF port­fo­lio in more than 2,000 follow-on finan­cing rounds. In addi­tion, the fund has alre­ady successfully sold shares in more than 180 companies.
Fund inves­tors in the public-private part­ner­ship include the German Fede­ral Minis­try for Econo­mic Affairs and Climate Protec­tion, KfW Capi­tal, and 45 compa­nies from a wide range of industries.

 

News

Frankenthal/Pfalz/Leipzig — Menold Bezler has advi­sed the private share­hol­ders of Fran­ken­tha­ler Pres­se­ver­trieb GmbH & Co KG (FPV) based in Frankenthal/Pfalz on the merger with 4Press GmbH & Co KG from Machern near Leip­zig, the largest press whole­sa­ler in Germany. The merger is still subject to appr­oval by the Cartel Office. — FPV supplies more than 4,500 retail­ers in southern Hesse, the Pala­ti­nate and nort­hern Baden-Würt­tem­berg with press products. FPV’s share­hol­ders are three private share­hol­ders and ten publishers/national distributors.

4Press was crea­ted in 2023 from the merger of Verlags­grosso Nord, Verlags­grosso Ost and Presse Vertrieb Berlin and has nine loca­ti­ons. Follo­wing the merger, the sales area will increase to around 22,000 press retailers.

Menold Bezler advi­sed the private share­hol­ders of Fran­ken­tha­ler Pres­se­ver­trieb on all legal aspects of the merger. The merger is a further step in the concen­tra­tion in press distri­bu­tion that has been ongo­ing for years.

Advi­sor Fran­ken­tha­ler Pres­se­ver­trieb GmbH & Co. KG: Menold Bezler (Stutt­gart)
Dr. Axel Klumpp (part­ner, lead), Dr. Felix Gegler (both corpo­rate law/M&A), Ralf-Diet­rich Ties­ler (part­ner, employ­ment law)

About Menold Bezler

Menold Bezler is a commer­cial law firm in Stutt­gart with a part­ner­ship struc­ture and 300 employees. More than 120 profes­sio­nals offer legal advice, tax advice, audi­ting and busi­ness manage­ment advice from a single source. Our clients include well-known medium-sized compa­nies, listed corpo­ra­ti­ons, the public sector and its compa­nies as well as non-profit orga­niza­ti­ons. www.menoldbezler.de.

News

Düssel­dorf — Sach­se­n­En­er­gie AG acqui­res a solar park in Poland. The sellers are Gold­beck Solar GmbH and the SUNCATCHER Group. Both deve­lop and build solar and energy systems. — ARQIS advi­sed Sach­se­n­En­er­gie AG on the purchase of a solar park in Poland.

The solar park is a 9 MWp solar complex — a clus­ter of two ground-moun­ted solar parks in the western Polish town of Barli­nek. Equip­ped with over 16,500 solar modu­les, the plants in Barli­nek are expec­ted to produce 8,982 GWh of elec­tri­city per year. This corre­sponds to supp­ly­ing around 4,000 house­holds. The plant was comple­ted and put into opera­tion at the site at the begin­ning of 2024. The park is to be expan­ded to a capa­city of 11.1 MW by the end of 2024.

As a full-service provi­der for public services, the Sach­se­n­En­er­gie Group relia­bly supplies custo­mers throug­hout Saxony with energy, water, tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons, energy-rela­ted services and modern infra­struc­ture. It is the largest muni­ci­pal supplier in eastern Germany. The company aims to expand its rene­wa­ble energy busi­ness through PV and wind projects deve­lo­ped in-house and through further acqui­si­ti­ons in Germany and Europe. With the solar park in Barli­nek, Sach­se­n­En­er­gie AG is acqui­ring its first ground-moun­ted PV system in Poland, ther­eby expan­ding its geogra­phi­cal presence.

ARQIS worked for Sach­se­n­En­er­gie AG for the first time. The lead part­ner Dr. Lars Laeger was recom­men­ded by the market. The mandate is signi­fi­cant for the firm as it impres­si­vely under­lines its special focus on M&A in regu­la­ted indus­tries, in parti­cu­lar rene­wa­bles. ARQIS was supported in Poland by Wolf Theiss in local law.

Advi­sor Sach­se­n­En­er­gie AG: ARQIS (Düssel­dorf)

Dr. Lars Laeger, photo © Arqis (Lead, M&A), Part­ner: Dr. Fried­rich Gebert (Public and Regu­la­tory), Coun­sel: Jens Knip­ping (Tax), Mana­ging Asso­cia­tes: Kamil Flak, Dr. Denis Schütz (both M&A), Asso­cia­tes: Dr. Bern­hard Gröhe, Luise Schü­ling (both Public and Regulatory)

Wolf Theiss (Poland): Igor Muszyn­ski, Pawel Szumow­ski, Marika Grzybowska

About ARQIS

ARQIS is an inde­pen­dent busi­ness law firm opera­ting inter­na­tio­nally. Around 80 lawy­ers and legal specia­lists advise dome­stic and foreign compa­nies at the highest level on German, Euro­pean and Japa­nese commer­cial law. With the focus groups Tran­sac­tions, HR.Law, Japan, Data.Law, Risk and Regu­la­tory, the firm is geared towards provi­ding compre­hen­sive advice to its clients. The law firm was foun­ded in 2006 and has offices in Düssel­dorf, Munich and Tokyo as well as a talent hub in Berlin. For more infor­ma­tion, visit www.arqis.com.

News

Munich ‑PANGEA Unter­neh­mer­ka­pi­tal GmbH takes over GETECO GmbH. The acqui­si­tion was made via the soft­ware holding company NUBE Soft­ware GmbH, with which PANGEA focu­ses on the acqui­si­tion of majo­rity inte­rests in medium-sized B2B soft­ware companies.

With more than 10,000 daily users, GETECO has estab­lished itself as a specia­list for soft­ware solu­ti­ons for social insti­tu­ti­ons and offers specia­li­zed solu­ti­ons. GETECO gene­ra­tes 65% of its turno­ver from inte­gra­tion assis­tance and child and youth welfare. The two foun­ders, Theo Prinz and Concetta Prinz-Guarda­basso, will remain asso­cia­ted with GETECO as mana­ging directors.

PANGEA Unter­neh­mer­ka­pi­tal, based in Munich, sees itself as a part­ner for entre­pre­neurs who are plan­ning their succes­sion or looking for invest­ments for further growth, whether in the short or long term. The focus is on invest­ments in estab­lished medium-sized compa­nies in German-spea­king count­ries with sustainable and profi­ta­ble busi­ness models.

Legal advi­sors to PANGEA Unter­neh­mer­ka­pi­tal GmbH: Gütt Olk Feld­haus, Munich
Dr. Sebas­tian Olk (Part­ner, Corpo­rate Law/M&A), Thomas Becker (Of Coun­sel, IP/IT/Software), Dr. Domi­nik Forst­ner (Senior Asso­ciate, Corpo­rate Law/M&A), Sophie Stef­fen (Asso­ciate, Corpo­rate Law/M&A)

About Gütt Olk Feldhaus

Gütt Olk Feld­haus is a leading inter­na­tio­nal law firm based in Munich. We provide compre­hen­sive advice on commer­cial and corpo­rate law. Our focus is on corpo­rate law, M&A, private equity and finan­cing. We also handle the liti­ga­tion in these specia­list areas. www.gof-partner.com

 

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