ALTERNATIVE FINANCING FORMS
FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND INVESTORS

Author: Tatjana Anderer

Gründerin des FYB-Verlag
News

Berlin — Aigno­stics, a spin-off of Charité — Univer­si­täts­me­di­zin Berlin and the Berlin Insti­tute of Health (BIH) that deve­lops AI-based solu­ti­ons for patho­logy, today announ­ced the closing of a €5m seed funding. Böhrin­ger Ingel­heim Venture Fund (BIVF) acted as lead inves­tor, with parti­ci­pa­tion from High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF), the VC Fonds Tech­no­lo­gie of IBB Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft, and Future Capital.

Formally, the deve­lo­p­ment of Aigno­stics began in early 2018 when rese­ar­chers from Charité and TU Berlin were accepted into BIH’s Digi­tal Health Acce­le­ra­tor (DHA) program to further deve­lop their inno­va­tive rese­arch in AI-based patho­logy and “Explainable AI” into a spin-off company.

Howe­ver, the foun­da­tion for Aigno­stics was laid much earlier, by Prof. Frede­rick Klau­schen, deputy. Direc­tor of the Insti­tute of Patho­logy at Charité, and rese­ar­chers from the Fraun­ho­fer Gesell­schaft and TU Berlin, led by Prof. Klaus-Robert Müller, Direc­tor of the Berlin Center for Machine Lear­ning (BZML), who filed their first patent for AI-based patho­logy back in 2011. Prof. Klau­schen, who studied physics as well as medi­cine, reco­gni­zed the poten­tial of AI for patho­logy early on. “While patho­lo­gists are excel­lent at compre­hen­si­vely analy­zing the morpho­lo­gi­cal features of tissues in indi­vi­dual samples, AI is parti­cu­larly well-suited for evalua­ting indi­vi­dual features in a stan­dar­di­zed and quan­ti­ta­tive manner, as well as unco­ve­ring corre­la­ti­ons in larger data­sets, such as clini­cal trials,” explains Prof. Klauschen.

Aigno­stics’ proprie­tary “Explainable AI” plat­form is parti­cu­larly well suited for such unco­ve­ring of new contexts. It is based on rese­arch by the Fraun­ho­fer Gesell­schaft, Charité and TU Berlin and allows to over­come the often criti­ci­zed “black box” problem of AI in patho­logy. “Explainable AI is a new and exci­ting field in modern AI rese­arch with a lot of poten­tial for both acade­mia and indus­try,” said Prof. Müller. “For exam­ple, we can train our AI with tissue samples that have a posi­tive or nega­tive response to therapy. We can then have the AI graphi­cally “explain” to us which morpho­lo­gi­cal charac­te­ristics distin­gu­ish the posi­tive cases from the nega­tive cases,” Dr. Maxi­mi­lian Alber, CTO of Aigno­stics, explains further. “This tech­no­logy is not only essen­tial for routine diagno­stics, where it can help verify the func­tio­ning of AI appli­ca­ti­ons, but is also a very inte­res­t­ing approach to find poten­tial new biomar­kers that can predict therapy response,” adds Prof. Klauschen.

“What makes us unique, howe­ver, is not only our tech­no­logy, but also our orga­niza­tio­nal struc­ture. We have exten­sive access to multi­mo­dal data as well as patho­lo­gists, which allows us to deve­lop tail­o­red algo­rithms for a wide variety of issues, from diagno­stics to rese­arch to CDx. In addi­tion, our close networ­king with Charité and TU Berlin is a great advan­tage, as we deve­lop our appli­ca­ti­ons in constant exch­ange with compu­ter scien­tists, rese­ar­chers, as well as patho­lo­gists as “end users”,” explains Viktor Matyas, CEO of Aigno­stics. “We are also very grateful for the support of Charité, BIH and Ascen­ion, without which we would not have come this far,” Matyas continues.

Aigno­stics will use the finan­cing to expand its port­fo­lio in phar­maceu­ti­cal rese­arch as well as fund longer-term projects aimed at deve­lo­ping companion/complementary diagno­stics (CDx) for routine diagno­stics. “We find Aigno­stics’ approach very promi­sing and think that more speci­fic diagno­stics will enable more perso­na­li­zed, effec­tive treat­ment for pati­ents,” said Dr. Alex­an­der Ehlgen of BIVF.

About Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim Venture Fund GmbH
The Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim Venture Fund (BIVF) supports early-stage rese­arch and tech­no­lo­gies through stra­te­gic invest­ments. Led by Frank Kalk­bren­ner, Global Head of the Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim Venture Fund. With a volume of €300 million, the BIVF invests in biotech and start-up compa­nies that have the poten­tial to deve­lop breakth­rough tech­no­lo­gies. The BIVF port­fo­lio curr­ently consists of 34 compa­nies. In addi­tion, the BIVF supports the crea­tion of new compa­nies based on promi­sing rese­arch projects at univer­si­ties or acade­mic insti­tu­ti­ons. The BIVF’s inte­rest in young, tech­no­logy-orien­ted compa­nies reflects its commit­ment to promo­ting inno­va­tive ideas and new scien­ti­fic approa­ches. The BIVF thus crea­tes oppor­tu­ni­ties for Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim to expand into new busi­ness areas with a focus on onco­logy, rege­ne­ra­tive medi­cine, infec­tious dise­a­ses and digi­tal health. www.boehringer-ingelheim-venture.com

About High-Tech Gründerfonds
The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start-ups with growth poten­tial. With a volume of around EUR 900 million spread across three funds and an inter­na­tio­nal part­ner network, HTGF has supported almost 600 start-ups since 2005. His team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and start-up experts supports the young compa­nies with know-how, entre­pre­neu­rial spirit and passion. The focus is on high-tech start-ups from the fields of digi­tal busi­ness models, indus­trial tech, life scien­ces, chemis­try and rela­ted busi­ness areas. More than €2.5 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in more than 1,600 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. In addi­tion, the fund has alre­ady successfully sold shares in more than 100 companies.
Inves­tors in the public-private part­ner­ship include the German Fede­ral Minis­try for Econo­mic Affairs and Energy, KfW Capi­tal, the Fraun­ho­fer-Gesell­schaft and the 32 companies.

About Future Capital
Future Capi­tal (www.future-capital.com) is a public-private part­ner­ship between the state of Hesse and Sanofi-Aven­tis Deutsch­land GmbH. Since 1999, we have been support­ing early-stage and start-up compa­nies in the health­care sector with capi­tal, network and know-how. The company is head­quar­te­red in Frank­furt and we invest in our region, but also in Germany and Europe.

About IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft
IBB Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft(www.ibb-bet.de) provi­des venture capi­tal to inno­va­tive Berlin-based compa­nies and has estab­lished itself as the market leader in early stage finan­cing in Berlin. The funds are prima­rily used for the deve­lo­p­ment and market launch of inno­va­tive products or services and for busi­ness concepts in the crea­tive indus­tries. Since March 2015, two funds mana­ged by IBB Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft are in the invest­ment phase, the VC Fonds Tech­no­lo­gie Berlin II with a fund volume of EUR 60 million and the VC Fonds Krea­tiv-Wirt­schaft Berlin II with a fund volume of EUR 40 million. Both VC funds are finan­ced by funds from Inves­ti­ti­ons­bank Berlin (IBB) and the Euro­pean Regio­nal Deve­lo­p­ment Fund (ERDF), mana­ged by the State of Berlin. Since 1997, IBB Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft has provi­ded appro­xi­m­ately EUR 1.52 billion to over 210 Berlin-based crea­tive and tech­no­logy compa­nies in consor­tia with part­ners, of which IBB Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft has inves­ted EUR 217 million as lead, co-lead or co-investor.

About Ascen­ion
Ascen­ion GmbH (www.ascenion.de) is an inde­pen­dent tech­no­logy trans­fer company with parti­cu­lar exper­tise in the life scien­ces. It is a part­ner of more than 30 rese­arch insti­tu­ti­ons, univer­si­ties and univer­sity hospi­tals in Germany and Europe. Parti­cu­lar strengths are the support of spin-offs and project deve­lo­p­ment. As a tech­no­logy trans­fer part­ner of BIH and Charité, Ascen­ion accom­pa­nied the foun­ders and scien­tists and helped to launch the spin-off toge­ther with the BIH-Digi­tal Health Acce­le­ra­tor. In close coor­di­na­tion with BIH, Ascen­ion accom­pa­nied the nego­tia­tion of essen­tial contracts on the way to the foun­da­tion and finan­cing. www.ascenion.de

News

Berlin — SMP advi­sed venture capi­ta­list La Fami­glia on the launch of its second fund. With a volume of 50 million, the fund is signi­fi­cantly larger than the first gene­ra­tion of funds laun­ched in 2017 and is desi­gned to support Tran­sTech compa­nies. Skype foun­der Niklas Zenn­ström as well as fund foun­der Jean­nette zu Fürs­ten­berg, the family offices of the Oetker, Hymer and Swarov­ski fami­lies as well as other well-known inves­tors parti­ci­pate in La Fami­glia II. La Fami­glia was compre­hen­si­vely advi­sed on legal and tax matters by the team led by SMP part­ner Fabian Euhus.

“Deve­lo­pers of trans­for­ma­tive tech­no­lo­gies are on a mission to improve human well-being. This important endea­vor will be further advan­ced with the launch of the new La Fami­glia Fund. We are plea­sed to have served as legal advi­sors to the team in this effort,” said SMP part­ner Fabian Euhus.

About La Famiglia
La Fami­glia is a venture capi­ta­list based in Berlin. The VC is mana­ged by Jean­nette zu Fürs­ten­berg (photo r.) and Judith Mutters­bach-Dada (photo l.).

About SMP
SMP is a specia­list tax and commer­cial law firm opera­ting in the core areas of corpo­rate, funds, liti­ga­tion, tax and tran­sac­tions. SMP attor­neys and tax advi­sors repre­sent a wide variety of clients. These include emer­ging tech­no­logy compa­nies and family-run medium-sized enter­pri­ses as well as corpo­ra­ti­ons and private equity/venture capi­tal funds. Since its foun­da­tion in 2017, SMP has become one of the leading addres­ses for venture capi­tal, private equity and fund struc­tu­ring in Germany. The firm and its part­ners have been reco­gni­zed natio­nally and inter­na­tio­nally by JUVE, Best Lawy­ers, Legal 500, Focus, and Cham­bers and Part­ners. Today, SMP employs over 50 expe­ri­en­ced lawy­ers and tax advi­sors in three offices in Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne.

Consul­tant La Fami­glia: SMP
Dr. Fabian Euhus (Lead Part­ner, Fund Struc­ture), Partner
Dr. Helder Schnitt­ker (Tax), Partner
David John (Fund), Associate
Dr. Sebas­tian Schwarz (Tax), Senior Associate
Lenn­art Lorenz (Regu­la­tory), Asso­cia­ted Partner
Dr. Niklas Ulrich (Regu­la­tory), Associate

News

Munich — Inter­na­tio­nal law firm Clif­ford Chance has The new private equity mana­ger Maguar Capi­tal has acqui­red HR soft­ware provi­der HRworks with its first funds (Maguar I Fund). A select group of insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors, inclu­ding Aber­deen Stan­dard Invest­ments, EMZ Part­ners, Golding Capi­tal Part­ners and LFPE, are co-inves­t­ing with the Maguar I Fund.

The acqui­si­tion finan­cing is provi­ded by Joh. Beren­berg, Goss­ler & Co.KG provi­ded. The tran­sac­tion is subject to custo­mary regu­la­tory appr­ovals and is expec­ted to close in Septem­ber 2020.

HRworks is an inte­gra­ted Soft­ware-as-a-Service (SaaS) provi­der of HR soft­ware with a focus on the SME segment (small and medium-sized enter­pri­ses) in Germany. The company focu­ses on key HR func­tions such as time manage­ment, travel, people manage­ment, recruit­ment and employee bene­fits. HRworks was foun­ded in 1999 and curr­ently serves 210,000 users and over 1,700 custo­mers. The company opera­tes a scalable tech­no­logy plat­form and curr­ently employs 60 FTEs in its offices in Berlin, Frank­furt and Frei­burg im Breisgau.

Maguar Capi­tal is a German private equity mana­ger focu­sing exclu­si­vely on small cap soft­ware invest­ments in the DACH region. Foun­ded in 2019 by Arno Poschik, Gunther Thies and Matthias Ick, Maguar specia­li­zes in part­ner­ships with foun­der-led B2B soft­ware compa­nies that have an EBITDA of circa one million to six million euros. Maguar supports these compa­nies in reali­zing their growth potential.

Clif­ford Chance Finance Part­ner Barbara Mayer-Traut­mann said, “We are plea­sed to advise Maguar, the new private equity mana­ger, on this tran­sac­tion in turbu­lent times in the highly dyna­mic tech­no­logy-rela­ted private equity market.”

Arno Poschik, foun­der of Maguar, comm­ents: “It was important, espe­ci­ally for this tran­sac­tion, to have Clif­ford Chance, an expe­ri­en­ced legal advi­sor in the private equity sector, on our side. The Clif­ford Chance team impres­sed us with its effi­ci­ency and commer­cial approach. We hope that more invest­ments will follow shortly.”

Advi­sor Maguar Capi­tal GmbH: Clif­ford Chance
Manage­ment Part­ner Barbara Mayer-Traut­mann (Finance, Munich)

About Clif­ford Chance
Clif­ford Chance, one of the world’s leading law firms, is present for its clients with around 3,400 legal advi­sors in all major busi­ness centers around the world. In Germany, Clif­ford Chance is repre­sen­ted by around 300 lawy­ers, audi­tors, tax advi­sors and soli­ci­tors in Düssel­dorf, Frank­furt am Main and Munich.

News

London/ Frankfurt/ Munich — Finan­cial inves­tor Advent Inter­na­tio­nal acqui­res a 30% stake in Aareon AG. Accor­ding to Aareal Bank AG, the purchase price for the invest­ment amounts to EUR 260 million. As part of the tran­sac­tion, the company was paid approx. EUR 960 million. The closing of the tran­sac­tion is subject to custo­mary condi­ti­ons, with closing expec­ted in Q4 2020. The London and German offices of the inter­na­tio­nal law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP advi­sed the finan­cial inves­tor Advent Inter­na­tio­nal on the acqui­si­tion of a 30% stake in Aareon AG

Mainz-based Aareon AG is a leading Euro­pean provi­der of soft­ware solu­ti­ons for the property sector and a subsi­diary of Aareal Bank AG, a leading inter­na­tio­nal provi­der of finan­cing solu­ti­ons and services, parti­cu­larly in the property sector.

Advi­sor Advent: Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP
The combi­ned London/German Weil team was led on this tran­sac­tion by Corpo­rate Part­ners Jona­than Wood (London) and Dr. Ansgar Wimber, photo (Frank­furt) and was supported by Coun­sel Max Oppen­hei­mer and Ellie Fialho (both Corpo­rate, London), Manuel-Peter Fringer (Corpo­rate, Munich), Benja­min Rapp (Tax, Munich) and Svenja Wach­tel (Liti­ga­tion, Munich) as well as Asso­cia­tes Sebas­tian Bren­ner, Kai Neumann (both Corpo­rate, Frank­furt), Florian Wessel, Andreas Fogel, Sandra Kühn, Corne­lia Tu (all Corpo­rate, Munich), Dr. Barbara Sand­fuchs (IP/IT Law, Munich), Markus Cejka (Finance, Frank­furt), Mareike Pfeif­fer and Lili­anna Ranody (both Labor Law, Frankfurt).

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

News

Frank­furt am Main — Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (DBAG) invests in conga­tec Holding AG (conga­tec), a leading supplier of compu­ter modu­les for indus­trial appli­ca­ti­ons. In the context of a manage­ment buy-out (MBO), DBAG Fund VIII, which is advi­sed by DBAG, will acquire the majo­rity of the shares from the foun­ding share­hol­ders. DBAG will invest around 23 million euros along­side the fund; in future, it will hold around 20 percent of the shares. In addi­tion, the conga­tec manage­ment will also parti­ci­pate. The closing of the purchase agree­ment is subject to the appr­oval of the anti­trust autho­ri­ties and is sche­du­led for the fourth quar­ter of 2020. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price.

The MBO of conga­tec Holding AG is the second invest­ment of DBAG Fund VIII, which invests in medium-sized compa­nies — mainly in German-spea­king count­ries. The fund’s invest­ment period had star­ted on August 1, 2020; in the middle of the month, DBAG had struc­tu­red the fund’s first tran­sac­tion with the MBO of Multi­mon AG.

Global market leader in computer-on-modules
conga­tec Holding AG (www.congatec.com), head­quar­te­red in Deggen­dorf, Bava­ria, is a fast-growing tech­no­logy company in the field of embedded compu­ting with a focus on high-perfor­mance so-called compu­ter-on-modu­les (CoM) and indus­trial single-board compu­ters (SBC). conga­tec focu­ses on the hard­ware design of CoMs, which account for around 80 percent of sales. CoMs are used for speci­fic appli­ca­ti­ons within a broa­der system, for exam­ple in indus­trial robots, image proces­sing or ultra­so­nic devices, and typi­cally have to meet speci­fic requi­re­ments, for exam­ple high relia­bi­lity as well as longe­vity even under adverse condi­ti­ons, real-time proces­sing or zero error tole­rance, often imple­men­ted in small sizes. CoMs are complete compu­ting units, they consist of a proces­sor, memory and proces­sor peri­pherals and are opti­mi­zed for speci­fic appli­ca­ti­ons. CoMs are essen­tial prere­qui­si­tes for advan­cing digi­tiza­tion because, for exam­ple, they make it possi­ble to network physi­cal and virtual objects and have them work toge­ther through infor­ma­tion and commu­ni­ca­tion tech­no­lo­gies. CoMs are also needed for arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence applications.

In the compu­ter-on-module segment, the company, foun­ded in 2004, is the global market leader with a broad custo­mer base ranging from start-ups to inter­na­tio­nal blue-chip compa­nies. conga­tec has subsi­dia­ries in the USA, Taiwan, China, Japan and Austra­lia as well as in Great Britain, France and the Czech Repu­blic. 270 employees gene­ra­ted $126 million in reve­nue in 2019. This reve­nue is spread across a wide range of appli­ca­ti­ons — as a result, the company has so far hardly been affec­ted by the Covid 19 pandemic.

Growth through inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion and new proces­sor types
More than two thirds of congatec’s custo­mers come from the Euro­pean econo­mic area, and the share of sales to custo­mers in the USA or Asia is growing. This is expec­ted to acce­le­rate in the coming years. In addi­tion to grea­ter inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion, an expan­sion of the product range to include CoMs for new proces­sor types is also expec­ted to drive the company’s growth. A key driver here is also the rapidly growing demand for higher-perfor­mance compu­ting solu­ti­ons in edge appli­ca­ti­ons, among others, in which CoMs in a network provide compu­ting power in real time on a decen­tra­li­zed basis — unlike cloud solu­ti­ons. In addi­tion, congatec’s RTS Hyper­vi­sor is an inno­va­tive soft­ware solu­tion that can set new stan­dards in terms of real-time perfor­mance — both as a stand-alone soft­ware solu­tion and in conjunc­tion with the CoMs produ­ced by congatec.

“We expect contin­ued strong growth in digi­tiza­tion,” said Dr. Rolf Schef­fels (photo), member of the DBAG Manage­ment Board, on the occa­sion of the contract signing. He contin­ued, “The pande­mic has given another strong boost to the ‘Inter­net of Things’ and ‘Indus­try 4.0’ — this will give a further boost to demand for the compu­ter compon­ents requi­red for this.” In recent years, DBAG has been inten­si­vely invol­ved with compa­nies in the embedded elec­tro­nics sector and has alre­ady inves­ted in a compa­ra­ble busi­ness model with its stake in duagon Holding AG. “This expe­ri­ence has now paid off in the assess­ment of the invest­ment oppor­tu­nity,” said DBAG board member Dr. Scheffels.

The Chair­man of congatec’s Manage­ment Board, Jason Carlson, today poin­ted to the diverse market poten­tial: “In DBAG, we have found a part­ner for the further deve­lo­p­ment of our company that is well versed in key end markets for our custo­mers and brings finan­cing exper­tise and M&A expe­ri­ence to the table — with DBAG and DBAG Fund VIII, we are well posi­tio­ned to take advan­tage of market opportunities.”

About Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG
Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG, a listed company, initia­tes closed-end private equity funds and invests — predo­mi­nantly along­side DBAG funds — in well-posi­tio­ned medium-sized compa­nies with poten­tial. DBAG focu­ses on indus­trial sectors in which German SMEs are strong by inter­na­tio­nal stan­dards. An incre­asing propor­tion of equity invest­ments are in compa­nies in the new focus sectors of broad­band tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons, IT services/software and health­care. The long-term, value-enhan­cing entre­pre­neu­rial invest­ment approach makes DBAG a sought-after invest­ment part­ner in the German-spea­king region. The capi­tal mana­ged and advi­sed by the DBAG Group amounts to appro­xi­m­ately 2.5 billion euros.

News

Berlin — AImo­tive has closed a USD 20 million finan­cing round. The finan­cing round was led by Lead Ventures. Szeche­nyi Venture Fund and exis­ting inves­tors Prime Ventures, Samsung, Robert Bosch Venture Capi­tal, Inven­ture, Draper Asso­cia­tes and B Capi­tal Group also participated.

AImo­tive, active in the deve­lo­p­ment of soft­ware and other compon­ents for self-driving cars, will use the new capi­tal, among other things, for further inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion, espe­ci­ally in the key regi­ons of Munich, Germany and Detroit, USA.

Consul­tant AImo­tive: Vogel Heerma Waitz 
Sabine Röth, photo (part­ner)

About Vogel Heerma Waitz 
Vogel Heerma Waitz is a Berlin-based law firm specia­li­zing in growth capi­tal, tech­no­logy and media that has been in opera­tion since May 2014.

News

Güters­loh — The Swiss mecha­ni­cal engi­nee­ring company ROTZINGER GROUP AG has taken over the site in Viersen/North Rhine-West­pha­lia and a large part of the product port­fo­lio manu­fac­tu­red there from the pack­a­ging specia­list Synte­gon Tech­no­logy GmbH. The process and pack­a­ging tech­no­logy company was a divi­sion of Robert Bosch GmbH until 2019. The acqui­si­tion is still subject to appr­oval by the rele­vant anti­trust authorities.

ROTZINGER intends to realign and sustain­ably deve­lop the Vier­sen site. The company is acqui­ring the port­fo­lios in the areas of filling and closing machi­nes as well as parts of the process tech­no­logy for bars and sugar confec­tion­ery as part of an asset deal. Excluded from the sale are the process plants for the produc­tion of jelly products, which Synte­gon will trans­fer to its subsi­diary Makat Candy Tech­no­logy GmbH.

ROTZINGER was compre­hen­si­vely advi­sed on the take­over by a team of BRANDI Rechts­an­wälte in Güters­loh, Detmold, Hano­ver, Pader­born and Biele­feld specia­li­zing in M&A tran­sac­tions under the leader­ship of part­ner Dr. Franz Tepper (photo) on corpo­rate law, labor law and IT law. In Switz­er­land, Dr. Max Nägeli of the law firm Probst Part­ner in Winter­thur advi­sed the purcha­ser. BRANDI and Probst Part­ner frequently work toge­ther in cross-border tran­sac­tions and are both foun­ding members of the law firm network PANGEA NET.

ROTZINGER GROUP AG in Kaiseraugst/Switzerland with its compa­nies DEMAUREX SA, ROTZINGER AG and TRANSVER AG was foun­ded in 1948 and is today a leading supplier of convey­ing, storage and product flow control systems for products in the choco­late, cookie, phar­maceu­ti­cal and other indus­tries. The systems are deve­lo­ped and manu­fac­tu­red at the Kaiser­augst plant and then assem­bled and commis­sio­ned at the customer’s site. The joint-stock company, which is run as a family busi­ness with appro­xi­m­ately 85 employees, is also a specia­list in feeding pack­a­ging machi­nes with products and trans­port­ing them away.

Synte­gon Tech­no­logy GmbH, head­quar­te­red in Waib­lin­gen/­Ba­den-Würt­tem­berg, is a global supplier of process and pack­a­ging tech­no­logy for the food and phar­maceu­ti­cal indus­tries. After the take­over of Robert Bosch Pack­a­ging Tech­no­logy GmbH by the invest­ment company CVC Capi­tal Part­ners last year, the company had been rena­med Synte­gon Tech­no­logy. It employs around 6,100 people, around half of whom work in Germany. The company is repre­sen­ted at over 30 loca­ti­ons in more than 15 count­ries and gene­ra­ted sales of around 1.3 billion euros in 2019.

Synte­gon Tech­no­logy GmbH was repre­sen­ted by the Stutt­gart office of CMS Hasche Sigle under the leader­ship of Dr. Claus-Peter Fabian.

Advi­sors to ROTZINGER GROUP AG: BRANDI Attor­neys at Law
Dr: Franz Tepper, Part­ner (Lead, Corporate/M&A), Gütersloh
Dr. Cars­ten Chris­to­phery, Asso­ciate (Corporate/M&A), Gütersloh
Eva-Maria Gott­schalk, Part­ner (Corporate/M&A), Gütersloh
Björn Mai, Asso­ciate (Labor Law), Detmold
Dr. Oliver Ebert, Part­ner (Labor Law), Hanover
Dr. Chris­toph Rempe, Part­ner (IP/IT, Anti­trust Law), Bielefeld
Daniela Deifuß-Kruse, Part­ner (Envi­ron­men­tal Law), Paderborn

Probst Part­ner (Winter­thur, Switzerland)
Dr. Max Nägeli (Corpo­rate)

Advi­sors to Synte­gon Tech­no­logy GmbH: CMS Hasche Sigle, Stuttgart
Dr. Claus-Peter Fabian, Part­ner (Lead Part­ner, Corporate/M&A)
Dr. Kai Wallisch, Coun­sel (Corporate/M&A)
Simone Phil­ipp, Senior Asso­ciate (Corporate/M&A)
Dr. Chris­tian Haell­migk, Part­ner (Anti­trust Law)
Malena Hansen, Asso­ciate (Anti­trust)

About BRANDI Rechtsanwälte
BRANDI Rechts­an­wälte is one of the leading medium-sized commer­cial law firms in West­pha­lia and Hano­ver with offices in Biele­feld, Detmold, Güters­loh, Hano­ver, Pader­born and Minden as well as coope­ra­tion offices in Paris and Beijing. More than 90 lawy­ers, 23 of whom are also nota­ries, advise compa­nies in all areas of natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal busi­ness law and public law. BRANDI is a foun­ding member of the inter­na­tio­nal network PANGEA NET. For more infor­ma­tion about BRANDI Attor­neys at Law, visit www.brandi.net.

News

Munich — Career Part­ner GmbH has sold its stake in PROAKTIV Manage­ment GmbH as part of a manage­ment buy-out. Career part­ner was advi­sed on this tran­sac­tion by the commer­cial law firm Gütt Olk Feld­haus.

PROAKTIV Manage­ment was foun­ded in 1995 and is today a reco­gni­zed premium provi­der of in-house and open trai­ning in the areas of manage­ment, sales and commu­ni­ca­tion. The inter­na­tio­nal custo­mer base consists of market-leading compa­nies from indus­try, trade and services.

Career Part­ner is one of the leading full-service provi­ders of private higher educa­tion in Germany and the holding company of IUBH Inter­na­tio­nal Univer­sity of Applied Scien­ces. Career Part­ner is a port­fo­lio company of Oakley Capital.

Legal advi­sors Career Part­ner GmbH: Gütt Olk Feld­haus, Munich
Adrian von Prit­t­witz (Part­ner, Lead), Dr. Sebas­tian Olk (Part­ner), Isabelle Vran­cken (Senior Asso­ciate), Ricarda Theis (Asso­ciate, all Corporate/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. In these specia­list areas we also take on the litigation.

News

Grün­wald near Munich/London — SOLUTIO AG and PANTHEON have closed their second joint fund of funds SOLUTIO PREMIUM Private Equity VII with subscrip­tion commit­ments of EUR 553 million (final closing). This is another ten percent more than the prede­ces­sor fund SOLUTIO PREMIUM Private Equity VI, for which 500 million euros had been raised as of July 2017.

“The ten percent increase proves that the trend towards off-market corpo­rate invest­ments among insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors such as banks, insu­rance compa­nies and pension funds is conti­nuing,” said Robert Massing (photo), CEO of SOLUTIO AG. “The Corona crisis does not change this, on the contrary: the vast majo­rity of insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors keep the share of alter­na­tive assets in their port­fo­lios stable or even increase it, even in times of crisis. Thus, they bene­fit from the curr­ently tending lower entry prices for corpo­rate invest­ments due to the Corona pandemic.”

For the profes­sio­nal struc­tu­ring of the port­fo­lio, SOLUTIO AG again coope­ra­tes with its London-based joint venture part­ner PANTHEON, which with its know-how of more than 35 years and a mana­ged volume of more than 50 billion US dollars occu­p­ies a top posi­tion in this industry.

“After the great success of the previous program, it was obvious that we would conti­nue our coope­ra­tion with SOLUTIO for the bene­fit of our insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors,” said Ralph Günther, who is respon­si­ble for PANTHEON’s busi­ness in German-spea­king countries.

The stra­te­gic invest­ment program SOLUTIO PREMIUM Private Equity VII focu­ses on small and medium-sized target funds for corpo­rate acqui­si­ti­ons (buy-outs) in the core markets of Europe and the USA. For a balan­ced risk-return profile, funds from the fund of funds are inves­ted in both primary programs and secon­dary tran­sac­tions. The term is 13 years from first closing (July 2031) plus a three-time exten­sion option of one year each.

The succes­sor fund with the same stra­tegy is expec­ted to be laun­ched in the first half of 2021.

SOLUTIO AG
SOLUTIO AG, foun­ded in Munich in 1998, deve­lops inno­va­tive invest­ment concepts espe­ci­ally for the needs of German and Austrian insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors in the field of real assets. SOLUTIO initia­tes invest­ment concepts exclu­si­vely toge­ther with mana­gers who have a proven track record of above-average success. The company itself also parti­ci­pa­tes in all invest­ment concepts. Over the past 22 years, SOLUTIO AG and its joint venture part­ners have laun­ched 16 invest­ment programs in the asset clas­ses of private equity, infra­struc­ture and private debt with a total volume of 4.7 billion euros. www.solutio.ag

About PANTHEON
Pantheon is a leading global private markets fund inves­tor, inves­t­ing on behalf of over 600 insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors. These include public and private pension systems, insu­rance compa­nies and foun­da­ti­ons. The company was foun­ded in 1982 and has since become a renow­ned address for solu­ti­ons in primary and secon­dary invest­ments in non-listed assets across all phases and regi­ons. Our custo­mi­zed invest­ment solu­ti­ons include sepa­rate account, regio­nal primary fund, secon­dary, co-invest­ment, infra­struc­ture and real asset programs.

As of March 31, 2020, Pantheon over­sees $50.7 billion in assets*. The company curr­ently employs 340 people, inclu­ding 100 invest­ment profes­sio­nals, in offices in London, San Fran­cisco, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul**,Bogotá**, Tokyo and Dublin.

Pantheon, in addi­tion to senior members of the Pantheon team, is majo­rity owned by Affi­lia­ted Mana­gers Group Inc. (“AMG”). AMG is a New York Stock Exch­ange (NYSE) listed global asset manage­ment company with inte­rests in leading invest­ment manage­ment bouti­ques. The share­hol­der struc­ture, in which Pantheon’s manage­ment holds a signi­fi­cant stake, provi­des the basis for a long-term part­ner­ship and thus enables the manage­ment team to further deve­lop the business.

News

Paris/ Munich — Casdin Capi­tal, a New York-based invest­ment firm focu­sed on the life scien­ces and health­care indus­try, was advi­sed by Baker McKen­zie in leading the over­sub­scri­bed $50 million Series B fund­rai­sing exten­sion round for DNA Script. — Other inves­tors in the expan­ded Series B finan­cing round include Dana­her Life Scien­ces, Agilent Tech­no­lo­gies, Merck KGaA, Darm­stadt, Germany, M. Ventures, LSP Life Science Part­ners, Bpifrance Large Venture Fund and Illu­mina Ventures.

Proceeds from the expan­ded Series B finan­cing round will enable DNA Script to acce­le­rate the deve­lo­p­ment of its enzy­ma­tic DNA synthe­sis (EDS) plat­form tech­no­logy — speci­fi­cally to support the launch of the company’s SYNTAX™ DNA bench­top printer.

“With a cross-border team of specia­li­zed lawy­ers in the field of biotech­no­logy life scien­ces, we were able to bring the tran­sac­tion to a swift close toge­ther with our client,” commen­ted Bert­hold Hummel, lead corpo­rate part­ner in Munich.

Foun­ded in 2011, Casdin Capi­tal, LLC brings deep under­stan­ding, exper­tise and a long-term perspec­tive to finan­cing the next gene­ra­tion of life scien­ces inno­va­tion. Casdin Capi­tal specia­li­zes in the firm’s diagno­stics and mole­cu­lar infor­ma­tion port­fo­lio and has inves­ted in many of the leading pioneers, inclu­ding but not limi­ted to Foun­da­tion Medi­cine, Invi­tae, Adap­tive Biotech­no­lo­gies, Flati­ron Health and 23andMe.

DNA Script was foun­ded in Paris in 2014 and is the world leader in the produc­tion of de novo synthe­tic nucleic acids using an enzy­ma­tic tech­no­logy. The company’s goal is to acce­le­rate inno­va­tion in life scien­ces and tech­no­logy through rapid, afforda­ble and high-quality DNA synthe­sis. DNA Script’s approach takes advan­tage of nature’s billi­ons of years of evolu­tion in DNA synthe­sis to enable genome-scale synthesis.

Baker McKenzie’s Corpo­rate / M&A and Life Scien­ces team regu­larly advi­ses large phar­maceu­ti­cal, finan­cial inves­tor and biotech compa­nies on early stage dome­stic and inter­na­tio­nal health­care tran­sac­tions. Most recently, Baker McKen­zie advi­sed BioMed­Part­ners on its EUR 10.7 million Series A equity finan­cing in Tubu­lis, Cure­Vac on its stra­te­gic mRNA tech­no­logy colla­bo­ra­tion with GSK, LSP Life Science Part­ners on a USD 38.5 million Series B finan­cing in DNA Script, listed 4SC AG in a capi­tal increase and inter­na­tio­nal private place­ment, Gala­pa­gos in its 10-year global rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment colla­bo­ra­tion with Gilead, MODAG in a EUR 12 million Series A finan­cing, Hita­chi Chemi­cal Company, Tokyo, in its acqui­si­tion of German apceth Biopharma, Forbion as lead inves­tor in a EUR 17 mn. Series C equity finan­cing of Omei­cos Thera­peu­tics and in a USD 54 million Series A equity finan­cing of Gotham Thera­peu­tics Corpo­ra­tion, Mundi­pharma in the sale of its Limburg produc­tion, Cure­Vac AG in a colla­bo­ra­tion with Eli Lilly and Hill­house Capi­tal as co-inves­tor in the EUR 50 million Series C finan­cing of Hookipa Biotech.

Legal advi­sor Casdin Capi­tal: Baker McKenzie
Lead Corporate/M&A: Bert­hold Hummel, Foto (Part­ner, Munich), Gautier Valdi­guié (Asso­ciate, Paris)
Other lawy­ers invol­ved: Corporate/M&A: Matthieu Grol­lemund (Part­ner, Paris), Mada­lina-Geor­gi­ana Asan­dului (Asso­ciate, Paris)
Tax: Guil­laume Le Camus (Part­ner, Paris), Robin Gaulier (Senior Asso­ciate, Paris)
Employ­ment: Jere­mie Paubel (Part­ner, Paris), Roxane Raissi (Asso­ciate, Paris)

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

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

News

Essen/ Frank­furt a. Main - thys­sen­krupp Eleva­tor, a leading global player in the market for eleva­tors and escala­tors (E&E), will operate as an inde­pen­dent company with new owner­ship struc­tures from today. All rele­vant regu­la­tory autho­ri­ties have uncon­di­tio­nally appro­ved the acqui­si­tion by Advent and Cinven. Working with the new owners as stra­te­gic and finan­cial part­ners will allow thys­sen­krupp Eleva­tor to conti­nue its ambi­tious corpo­rate plans: to expand its strong market posi­tion and tech­no­lo­gi­cal market leadership.

With global opera­ti­ons and over 50,000 employees, thys­sen­krupp Eleva­tor gene­ra­ted earnings of around eight billion euros in fiscal year 2018/2019. The most important busi­ness area is the main­ten­ance of around 1.4 million eleva­tors and escala­tors. This is ensu­red by 24,000 service tech­ni­ci­ans all over the globe.

The product port­fo­lio of thys­sen­krupp Eleva­tor covers a wide range — from eleva­tor systems for resi­den­tial and commer­cial proper­ties to tech­no­lo­gi­cally sophisti­ca­ted, tailor-made solu­ti­ons for state-of-the-art high-rise buil­dings such as One World Trade Center in New York. In addi­tion to eleva­tor systems, the port­fo­lio also includes escala­tors and moving walks, passen­ger boar­ding bridges, stair and plat­form lifts, and indi­vi­dual service models for all products. All this adds up to a compre­hen­sive range of products and services for a broad spec­trum of urban mobility.

In the context of COVID-19 thys­sen­krupp Eleva­tor once again demons­tra­tes a high level of crisis resi­li­ence. Thanks to a special focus on stable service busi­ness, a global presence, a dedi­ca­ted manage­ment team and a highly moti­va­ted work­force, work contin­ued even under diffi­cult condi­ti­ons. In system-rele­vant buil­dings, such as hospi­tals and public faci­li­ties, mobi­lity has thus been ensured.

The strong market posi­tion of thys­sen­krupp Eleva­tor and its inno­va­tive tech­no­lo­gies convin­ced Advent and Cinven. Both are fami­liar with the company’s rele­vant growth markets and have alre­ady successfully inves­ted in 130 compa­nies in the indus­trial and busi­ness services sectors. The consor­tium shares a common invest­ment philo­so­phy: sustainable further growth of leading compa­nies. The focus is always on long-term value creation.

Ranjan Sen (photo), Mana­ging Part­ner and Head of Germany at Advent Inter­na­tio­nal, comm­ents: “We are deligh­ted to conti­nue support­ing thys­sen­krupp Eleva­tor as an inde­pen­dent company. We see signi­fi­cant poten­tial to further expand our market posi­tion and intend to leverage our coll­ec­tive exper­tise and finan­cial resour­ces for further sustainable growth.”

Bruno Schick, Part­ner and Head of DACH and Emer­ging Europe at Cinven, adds: “In close part­ner­ship with manage­ment and employees we will further deve­lop thys­sen­krupp Eleva­tor by inves­t­ing in orga­nic growth and targe­ted acqui­si­ti­ons. Our clear goal is to create resour­ces to further streng­then and expand thys­sen­krupp Elevator’s global presence — parti­cu­larly in Asia — through addi­tio­nal acqui­si­ti­ons, new and energy-effi­ci­ent products, and invest­ment in rese­arch & and development.”

Follo­wing the successful closing, thys­sen­krupp Eleva­tor will relo­cate its head­quar­ters to the vici­nity of Düssel­dorf Airport. The move is sche­du­led to take place in the first quar­ter of 2021.

About thys­sen­krupp Eleva­tor AG
With custo­mers in over 100 count­ries served by more than 50,000 employees, thys­sen­krupp Eleva­tor achie­ved sales of around €8.0 billion in fiscal year 2018/2019. Over 1,000 loca­ti­ons around the globe form a dense sales and service network, ensu­ring opti­mum proxi­mity to custo­mers. thys­sen­krupp Eleva­tor has estab­lished itself as one of the world’s leading eleva­tor compa­nies since ente­ring the market 40 years ago and became inde­pen­dent in August 2020. The company’s most important busi­ness area is the service provi­ded by more than 24,000 tech­ni­ci­ans for around 1.4 million trans­port solu­ti­ons world­wide. The product port­fo­lio ranges from passen­ger and freight eleva­tors to modern, custo­mi­zed solu­ti­ons for modern high-rise buil­dings — such as the One World Trade Center in New York. In addi­tion to escala­tors, the port­fo­lio also includes moving walks, passen­ger boar­ding bridges, stair and plat­form lifts, and tail­o­red service solu­ti­ons such as MAX, the industry’s first predic­tive main­ten­ance solu­tion — cove­ring a broad spec­trum of urban mobility.

News

Hamburg — A team led by Dr. Jörg Schewe, Part­ner at Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek in Hamburg, provi­ded legal advice to Danish recy­cling company Scan­me­tals A/S and its inves­tor KIRK KAPITAL A/S on the acqui­si­tion of 85 percent of the shares in inde­pen­dent Scan­me­tals Deutsch­land GmbH. With the tran­sac­tion, Scan­me­tals A/S takes over a recy­cling plant in Germany and can increase its annual metal reco­very from 30,000 to 45,000 tons. KIRK KAPITAL A/S, mino­rity inves­tor in Scan­me­tals A/S, has supported the company and manage­ment in the transaction.

Scan­me­tals A/S is a recy­cling company foun­ded in 2002 based on sustainable tech­no­logy for opti­mal use of resour­ces. Through inno­va­tive and effec­tive solu­ti­ons, the recy­cling company reco­vers and refi­nes metal­lic waste from inci­ne­ra­tors. Scan­me­tals A/S has opera­ti­ons in Slagelse, Denmark and Birming­ham, UK.

The share­hol­ders of KIRK KAPITAL A/S are direct descen­dants of Ole Kirk Kris­ti­an­sen, the foun­der of LEGO, namely Gunhild Kirk Johan­sen (3rd gene­ra­tion), Casper Kirk Johan­sen (4th gene­ra­tion), Morten Kirk Johan­sen (4th gene­ra­tion) and Anders Kirk Johan­sen (4th gene­ra­tion). Since 2007, part of the Kirk Johan­sen family’s asset and invest­ment acti­vi­ties have been conso­li­da­ted in KIRK KAPITAL A/S.

Advi­sors to KIRK KAPITAL A/S / Scan­me­tals A/S: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek
Dr. Jörg Schewe (M&A/Corporate, Lead)
Chris­toph Proch­nau, LL.B. (M&A/Corporate, Due Diligence)
Fabian G. Gaffron (Tax)
Dr. Kai Erhardt (Corpo­rate Finance, Acqui­si­tion Financing)
Jana Maria Siemens, LL.B. (Labor Law, Due Diligence)
Katha­rina Waszc­zyn­ski (Commer­cial Contracts, Due Dili­gence), all Hamburg

News

Munich — The law firm Gütt Olk Feld­haus has advi­sed Scalable Capi­tal GmbH on its largest finan­cing round to date. Fresh capi­tal of €50 million was raised as part of the Series D finan­cing round. This brings the total finan­cing volume since Scalable Capi­tal was foun­ded to 116 million euros.

Scalable Capi­tal is the largest digi­tal asset mana­ger in Europe with over two billion euros in assets under manage­ment. In June 2020, Scalable Capi­tal also laun­ched a neo-broker, a digi­tal plat­form where custo­mers can trade stocks, ETFs and funds. The funds now raised will be used to expand Scalable Capital’s leading posi­tion as a digi­tal asset mana­ger and to further acce­le­rate growth in the brokerage and B2B business.

In addi­tion to a new inves­tor, exis­ting inves­tors Black­Rock, HV Holtz­brinck Ventures and Tengel­mann Venturesalso parti­ci­pa­ted in the finan­cing round.

Legal advi­sors to Scalable Capi­tal GmbH: Gütt Olk Feld­haus, Munich
Adrian von Prit­t­witz, Photo (Part­ner, Corporate/M&A, Lead), Thomas Becker (Of Coun­sel, IP/IT/Data Protec­tion), Isabelle Vran­cken (Senior Asso­ciate), Ricarda Theis (Asso­ciate, both Corpo­rate M&A)

MOOG: Marc Sälzer (Tax Law)
Inhouse: Dr. Alexis Dará­nyi (Chief Legal Offi­cer), Florian von Kampen (Senior Legal Counsel)

News

Munich — Baker McKen­zie advi­sed Cure­Vac AG on a stra­te­gic colla­bo­ra­tion agree­ment with Glax­oS­mit­h­Kline (GSK) to rese­arch, deve­lop, gene­rate and commer­cia­lize up to five mRNA-based vacci­nes and mono­clonal anti­bo­dies (mAbs) to combat infec­tious dise­ase patho­gens. The colla­bo­ra­tion comple­ments GSK’s exis­ting mRNA exper­tise with CureVac’s inte­gra­ted mRNA platform.

Further deve­lo­p­ment of mRNA-based vacci­nes and thera­pies could play a criti­cal role in miti­ga­ting future pande­mics. The two compa­nies are combi­ning their mRNA exper­tise to combat a wide range of infec­tious dise­ase patho­gens. These projects were speci­fi­cally selec­ted to take full advan­tage of this plat­form tech­no­logy, while also addres­sing unmet medi­cal needs and asso­cia­ted econo­mic burdens.

Cure­Vac is entit­led to payments for deve­lo­p­ment and regu­la­tory mile­sto­nes of up to EUR 320 million and for commer­cial mile­sto­nes of up to EUR 380 million. — In addi­tion, Cure­Vac recei­ves tiered royal­ties on product sales. In addi­tion, GSK will make a one-time payment of EUR 120 million and a refundable payment of EUR 30 million. The latter will be due as soon as CureVac’s indus­trial produc­tion faci­lity curr­ently under cons­truc­tion in Germany has recei­ved its GMP (Good Manu­fac­tu­ring Prac­tice) certi­fi­ca­tion from the rele­vant autho­ri­ties. Under the terms of the agree­ment, GSK will also make an equity invest­ment of EUR 150 million in Cure­Vac, repre­sen­ting just under 10% of CureVac’s share capital.

“We are very plea­sed to support Cure­Vac in this important colla­bo­ra­tion agree­ment with GSK, which brings toge­ther two world-class compa­nies to further deve­lop their mRNA-based vacci­nes and thera­pies to combat a wide range of infec­tious dise­ase agents,” commen­ted Dr. Constanze Ulmer-Eilfort (pictu­red), lead part­ner at Baker McKen­zie on the transaction.

Cure­Vac is a long-stan­ding client of Baker McKen­zie. Under the leader­ship of Dr. Constanze Ulmer-Eilfort, Baker McKen­zie advi­sed Cure­Vac on, among other things, the colla­bo­ra­tion agree­ments with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foun­da­tion and CEPI, and most recently on the stra­te­gic part­ner­ship with Genmab A/S for the deve­lo­p­ment of mRNA-based anti­body thera­pies (Decem­ber 2019).

Legal advi­sor Cure­Vac AG: Baker McKenzie
Lead: IP: Dr. Constanze Ulmer-Eilfort, LL.M. (Part­ner, Munich)
IP: Julia Schie­ber (Senior Asso­ciate, Zurich), Andreas Jauch (Senior Asso­ciate, Frankfurt),
Anti­trust: Dr. Chris­tian Burholt (Part­ner, Berlin)
Pharma: Dr. Thilo Räpple (Part­ner, Frankfurt)

News

Ambi­enta SGR renews its Board of Direc­tors and nomi­na­tes Carla Ferrari (photo) as Presi­dent. After twelve years as Chair­man of the Board of Direc­tors, Anto­nio Segni hands over the mandate to Carla Ferrari. Alfredo Alta­villa has also been appoin­ted to the Board as a non-execu­tive direc­tor Ambi­enta SGR SpA (“Ambi­enta”), Europe’s largest sustaina­bi­lity-focu­sed invest­ment company, appoints Carla Ferrari as Presi­dent of the Board of Directors.

Carla Ferrari holds senior posi­ti­ons in a number of Italian blue chip finan­cial insti­tu­ti­ons. Having previously served as a non-execu­tive direc­tor on Ambienta’s board from 2008 to 2012, Carla now takes over the role from Anto­nio Segni, who is leaving the board after twelve years of service. In addi­tion, Alfredo Alta­villa is appoin­ted to the Board as a non-execu­tive direc­tor. Alta­villa holds a number of key posi­ti­ons in leading Italian and inter­na­tio­nal indus­trial companies.

Nino Tron­chetti Provera, Mana­ging Part­ner and foun­der of Ambi­enta, stated: “I would like to thank the previous Board of Direc­tors for their excel­lent work. My special thanks go to Anto­nio Segni, who was Chair­man of the Board for twelve years and assu­med this role only a few months after Ambi­enta was foun­ded. At the same time, I welcome the return of Carla Ferrari and extend a warm welcome to Alfredo Alta­villa: I am sure that toge­ther we will achieve further important goals. I am very plea­sed to have a woman at the head of Ambienta’s Board of Direc­tors: this is the best start for the next three years, which will play a signi­fi­cant role for the company.”

About Ambi­enta
Ambi­enta is a sustaina­bi­lity-focu­sed asset mana­ger with AUM of appro­xi­m­ately €1.5 billion and a leader in apply­ing envi­ron­men­tal sustaina­bi­lity trends to invest­ments. Ambi­enta opera­tes from Milan, London and Dussel­dorf and focu­ses on invest­ments in private and public compa­nies driven by envi­ron­men­tal mega­trends. In the private equity markets, Ambi­enta mana­ges the largest pool of capi­tal for this stra­tegy in the world and has made thirty-eight invest­ments across Europe in the resource effi­ci­ency and envi­ron­men­tal sectors.

News

Munich, Germany — Tubu­lis today announ­ced the closing of a €10.7 million Series A finan­cing round. This is inten­ded to drive the deve­lo­p­ment of a new class of highly stable and potent Anti­body Drug Conju­ga­tes (ADCs, “anti­body-drug conju­ga­tes”) and to support the further growth of the company. Tubu­lis closes €10.7M Series A finan­cing was led jointly by BioMed­Part­ners and High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) with addi­tio­nal parti­ci­pa­tion from Seven­ture Part­ners, copa­rion, Bayern Kapi­tal and OCCIDENT as well as high net worth indi­vi­du­als and the founders.

Tubu­lis is a spin-off company that emer­ged in 2019 from the Leib­niz Rese­arch Insti­tute Berlin (FMP) and Ludwig Maxi­mi­lian Univer­sity (LMU) Munich to realize the thera­peu­tic poten­tial of ADCs for the treat­ment of cancer and other diseases.

“Tubu­lis’ goal is to use our dual plat­form to deve­lop ADCs that are perfectly matched to the dise­ase in ques­tion. Funding from such an expe­ri­en­ced consor­tium is further vali­da­tion of our tech­no­logy and reflects the current renais­sance that the field of ADCs is expe­ri­en­cing. The capi­tal gained will enable us to further advance the plat­forms and deve­lop our first two selec­ted ADC candi­da­tes towards the clinic,” said Domi­nik Schu­ma­cher, CEO and co-foun­der of Tubu­lis (photo: right, next to co-foun­der Dr. Jonas Helma-Smets).

“Tubu­lis is directly addres­sing the current limi­ta­ti­ons in ADCs and actively shaping the future of ADC thera­peu­tics for the treat­ment of a variety of diffe­rent dise­a­ses. We look forward to support­ing the Tubu­lis team as they build their busi­ness in this rapidly growing area that is in dire need of inno­va­tive solu­ti­ons,” Michael Wacker, Part­ner at BioMedPartners

Tubu­lis’ unique and versa­tile ADC port­fo­lio consists of two proprie­tary tech­no­lo­gies. These are based on scien­ti­fic results from the rese­arch groups of Prof. Chris­tian Hacken­ber­ger (FMP), Prof. Hein­rich Leon­hardt (LMU) and Dr. Jonas Helma-Smets, who are all co-foun­ders of the company. Further­more, Jonas Helma-Smets serves as CSO of the company.

Both plat­forms address the comple­xity of modern ADC design in terms of protein format, drug potency, and drug hydro­pho­bicity. P5 conju­ga­tion is a novel tech­no­logy for cysteine-selec­tive conju­ga­ti­ons. It allows the deve­lo­p­ment of parti­cu­larly stable ADCs with unpre­ce­den­ted linker stabi­lity and chemi­cal flexi­bi­lity. This enables rapid iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of poten­tial deve­lo­p­ment candi­da­tes. The Tub-tag® plat­form is inspi­red by the biology of micro­tu­bu­les. The Tub-tag® modi­fi­ca­tion of the anti­body crea­tes a favorable microen­vi­ron­ment for the coupling of the most chal­len­ging drugs. In addi­tion, the Tub-tag® deri­ved from the human system redu­ces the risk of adverse immune reac­tions. The combi­na­tion of these plat­forms addres­ses the key chal­lenges in the field, ADC stabi­lity as well as drug-deri­ved toxicity.

Tubu­lis intends to prefe­ren­ti­ally use these tech­no­lo­gies for inter­nal drug iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and deve­lo­p­ment, with the goal of gene­ra­ting novel ADCs that deeply inter­fere with the biology of the respec­tive indication.During the spin-off phase, the company has alre­ady been awarded seve­ral start-up prizes. These include the Venture.Med 2019 “Outstan­ding Start-up Award,” the “Leib­niz Entre­pre­neur­ship Award,” and being named an offi­cial “EIT Health Success Story.” Further­more, Tubu­lis is a company supported by the EIT Health Inves­tor Network.

About Tubu­lis
Tubu­lis uses proprie­tary tech­no­lo­gies to deve­lop novel drugs whose mecha­nisms of action go deep at the root cause of the dise­ase in ques­tion. Our goal is to expand the thera­peu­tic poten­tial of so-called Anti­body Drug Conju­ga­tes (ADCs). We want to usher in a new era in this product class and ther­eby achieve better results for pati­ents. With our proprie­tary deve­lo­p­ment approach to ADCs, Tubu­lis will advance a number of product candi­da­tes that can be used for multi­ple indi­ca­ti­ons. For more infor­ma­tion, visit www.tubulis.com or follow us on Linke­dIn and Twit­ter. www.tubulis.com

About BioMed­Part­ners
BioMed­Part­ners is an inde­pen­dent Euro­pean venture capi­tal firm based in Basel. It acts as a lead or co-lead inves­tor, provi­ding private capi­tal to early to mid-stage life science compa­nies. Since 2002, BioMed­Part­ners has inves­ted in seve­ral highly inno­va­tive compa­nies, 22 of which have alre­ady been successfully acqui­red by leading biopharma compa­nies or have comple­ted an IPO. BioMed­Part­ners has more than CHF 350 million in capi­tal available and has estab­lished itself as one of the leading early-stage health­care inves­tors in Europe with a strong team of expe­ri­en­ced indus­try experts and an exten­sive network in science and pharma.

In Febru­ary 2018, the company announ­ced the closing of BioMed­In­vest III, its third equity and corpo­rate capi­tal fund of over CHF 100 million. In this third fund, BioMed­Part­ners focu­ses on support­ing compa­nies with highly inno­va­tive early-stage tech­no­logy plat­forms. One of BioMed­In­vest III’s first invest­ments was the Swiss immuno-onco­logy company Amal SA (Geneva), which was acqui­red by Böhrin­ger Ingel­heim in June 2019. www.biomedvc.com.

About Seven­ture Partners
With €750m net commit­ments under manage­ment as of the end of 2018, Seven­ture Part­ners is a leading venture capi­tal firm in Europe. Since 1997, Seven­ture Part­ners has been inves­t­ing in inno­va­tive busi­nesses with high growth poten­tial in two fields: Life scien­ces across Europe, Israel, Asia and North America and Digi­tal tech­no­lo­gies in France and Germany. In Life scien­ces, the main areas of focus include “clas­sic” approa­ches such as biotech­no­logy and phar­maceu­ti­cals, diagno­stic and medtech, indus­trial biotech­no­logy, as well as “beyond the pill” approa­ches such as MICRO­BIOME-linked inno­va­tions, nutri­tion, food­tech, digital/connected health and perso­na­li­zed medi­cine. www.seventure.fr/en

About copa­rion
copa­rion is a venture capi­tal inves­tor for young, German tech­no­logy compa­nies. With a fund volume of 275 million euros, copa­rion is making a signi­fi­cant contri­bu­tion to rapid and sustainable growth. copa­rion supports entre­pre­neu­rial vision with know-how without inter­fe­ring in the opera­tio­nal busi­ness. With many years of expe­ri­ence in venture capi­tal and in buil­ding up compa­nies, the copa­rion team reco­gni­zes poten­tial and opens up new perspec­ti­ves. copa­rion finan­ces exclu­si­vely toge­ther with co-inves­tors. The focus is on the startup and young growth phase. The fund invests up to 10 million euros per company, usually in seve­ral finan­cing rounds of 1–5 million euros each. copa­rion has offices in Colo­gne and Berlin. www.coparion.vc

About Bayern Kapital
Bayern Kapi­tal GmbH, based in Lands­hut, was foun­ded in 1995 as a wholly owned subsi­diary of LfA Förder­bank Bayern on the initia­tive of the Bava­rian state govern­ment. As the venture capi­tal company of the Free State of Bava­ria, Bayern Kapi­tal provi­des equity capi­tal to the foun­ders of inno­va­tive high-tech compa­nies and young, inno­va­tive tech­no­logy compa­nies in Bava­ria. Bayern Kapi­tal curr­ently mana­ges thir­teen invest­ment funds with an invest­ment volume of around 500 million euros. To date, Bayern Kapi­tal has inves­ted around 330 million euros of venture capi­tal in around 280 inno­va­tive tech­no­logy-orien­ted compa­nies from a wide range of sectors, inclu­ding life scien­ces, soft­ware & IT, mate­ri­als & new mate­ri­als, nano­tech­no­logy and envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­logy. www.bayernkapital.de

About OCCIDENT
OCCIDENT is an inter­na­tio­nal venture capi­tal inves­tor with offices in Zug and Munich, is owner-mana­ged and invests its own assets. The claim is to make a posi­tive contri­bu­tion to society through sustainable and meaningful investments.

OCCIDENT invests in inno­va­tive deep tech start­ups with excel­lent tech­no­lo­gies from the life­sci­en­ces, digi­tal and high-tech sectors with broad appli­ca­ti­ons and the poten­tial for value-gene­ra­ting further deve­lo­p­ment. The geogra­phi­cal invest­ment focus is Germany and Switz­er­land. Initial finan­cing is prefer­a­bly from seed finan­cing round or later and from 0.5 million euros. OCCIDENT is charac­te­ri­zed in parti­cu­lar by its profound under­stan­ding of tech­no­logy and the versa­tile support of its port­fo­lio compa­nies by a compe­tent team of experts. For more infor­ma­tion, please visit www.occident.group.

About High-Tech Gründerfonds
The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start-ups with growth poten­tial. With a volume of around EUR 900 million spread across three funds and an inter­na­tio­nal part­ner network, HTGF has supported almost 600 start-ups since 2005. His team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and start-up experts supports the young compa­nies with know-how, entre­pre­neu­rial spirit and passion. The focus is on high-tech start-ups from the fields of digi­tal busi­ness models, indus­trial tech, life scien­ces, chemis­try and rela­ted busi­ness areas. More than €2.5 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in more than 1,600 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. In addi­tion, the fund has alre­ady successfully sold shares in more than 100 companies.

News

Munich — The Zur Rose Group has acqui­red Tele­Cli­nic GmbH (“Tele­Cli­nic”), based in Munich, for a purchase price in the mid double-digit million euro range.

Tele­Cli­nic was foun­ded in 2015 by Katha­rina Jünger and has quickly estab­lished itself as the leading tele­me­di­cine provi­der in Germany. The company provi­des tele­me­di­cine services, inclu­ding digi­tal prescrip­ti­ons and dise­ase certi­fi­ca­tes that are compli­ant with German health insu­rance reim­bur­se­ment regu­la­ti­ons. After a diagno­sis by a specia­list, pati­ents who are self-paying receive an e‑prescription based on a Tele­Cli­nic solu­tion via app on their cell phone, which they can redeem at an on-site or mail-order phar­macy. Online sick notes can be sent directly to the employer via email. Doctors can join the plat­form easily and without obli­ga­tion and offer their exper­tise flexi­bly and regard­less of location.

The Swiss Zur Rose Group is Europe’s largest e‑commerce phar­macy and one of the leading medi­cal whole­sa­lers in Switz­er­land. It also opera­tes the leading market­place in Southern Europe for phar­macy-bran­ded health and perso­nal care products. The company has an inter­na­tio­nal presence, inclu­ding Germany’s best-known phar­macy brand DocMor­ris. Zur Rose employs more than 1,800 people at its sites in Switz­er­land, Germany, the Nether­lands, Spain and France. In 2019, it gene­ra­ted sales of 1,569 million Swiss francs (inclu­ding medpex) at

Advi­sor Zur Rose Group: P+P Pöllath + Partners 
Dr. Michael Inhes­ter (Part­ner, Lead Part­ner, M&A, Munich)
Adal­bert Makos (Coun­sel, M&A, Munich)
Daniel Wied­mann, LL.M. (NYU) (Asso­cia­ted Part­ner, Anti­trust Law, Frankfurt)
Matthias Ober­bauer (Asso­ciate, M&A, Munich)

News

Frank­furt a. Main — Tech­no­logy inves­tor Brock­haus Capi­tal Manage­ment (BCM) has successfully gone public despite the coro­na­vi­rus pande­mic. 115 million flowed into the acqui­si­tion treasury as a result of the capi­tal increase. at an issue price of 32 euros per share, the tech­no­logy inves­tor is valued at 332 million euros. — The exclu­si­vely new secu­ri­ties are to go to insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors as part of a private place­ment. BCM plans to use the proceeds to acquire other compa­nies in sectors such as health­care, soft­ware and envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­logy. BCM speaks of “tech­no­logy cham­pi­ons in the German SME sector with B2B busi­ness models”.

Foun­der Marco Brock­haus (photo) and the manage­ment team, which curr­ently still jointly holds 33 percent of BCM and will remain the largest share­hol­der group even after the dilu­tion resul­ting from the IPO, have commit­ted to a lock-up period of two years. Marco Brockhaus’s team is not allo­wed to sell any shares for that long.

The IPO was accom­pa­nied by the US banks Citi­bank and Jeffe­ries. Commerz­bank was on board as joint bookrunner.

A total of 3,593,750 new shares were placed in the private place­ment. Assum­ing full exer­cise of the green­shoe option, the gross proceeds amount to appro­xi­m­ately EUR 115 million. Within the scope of the private place­ment, members of the Manage­ment Board, Super­vi­sory Board and employees of BCM as well as members of the manage­ment of BCM subsi­dia­ries parti­ci­pa­ted in the capi­tal increase in the total amount of EUR 1 million.

About Brock­haus Capi­tal Management
BCM AG, head­quar­te­red in Frank­furt am Main, is a tech­no­logy group that acqui­res high-margin and high-growth tech­no­logy cham­pi­ons with B2B busi­ness models in the German midmar­ket. With a unique plat­form approach and a long-term hori­zon, BCM actively and stra­te­gi­cally supports its subsi­dia­ries to achieve long-term profi­ta­ble growth across indus­tries and count­ries. At the same time, BCM hereby offers access to these non-listed German tech­no­logy cham­pi­ons, which are other­wise inac­ces­si­ble to capi­tal market investors.

News

Stuttgart/ Berlin — SMP advi­sed the inter­na­tio­nal growth inves­tor Acton Capi­tal Part­ners (Acton Capi­tal) on its invest­ment in the digi­tal indus­trial market­place Laser­hub. In addi­tion, exis­ting inves­tors Project A and Point Nine Capi­tal also parti­ci­pa­ted in the Series A finan­cing round, which was led by Acton Capi­tal as lead inves­tor. Laser­hub alre­ady successfully raised a seven-figure sum last summer; at the time, SMP had acted along­side Project A.

So far, Laser­hub is repre­sen­ted with its offer on the markets in Germany, Austria and France. The company now plans to use the fresh capi­tal to drive its expan­sion across Europe. 
Fritz Oidt­mann (photo)
, Mana­ging Part­ner at Acton Capi­tal: “With its sustainable busi­ness model, Laser­hub will be one of the pioneers of digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion in the manu­fac­tu­ring industry.”

Acton Capi­tal recei­ved compre­hen­sive legal advice from a team led by SMP part­ner Benja­min Ullrich. SMP has alre­ady supported the growth inves­tor in the course of various invest­ments in the past — most recently with its invest­ments in Lemo­neOne, expert­lead and The Female Company.

About Laser­hub
Laser­hub is a B2B startup based in Stutt­gart, Germany, that has deve­lo­ped a verti­cally inte­gra­ted, multi-vendor procu­re­ment plat­form for custom metal parts. The smart algo­rithm links the indi­vi­dual wishes of the custo­mer with the resour­ces of the produ­cers from the Laser­hub network for the order. This redu­ces both process and parts costs for procu­rers, as well as orde­ring and proces­sing times. The advan­tage for produ­cers is the utiliza­tion of free manu­fac­tu­ring resour­ces, which leads to an increase in profi­ta­bi­lity. Laser­hub acts as the sole contrac­tual part­ner for all parties invol­ved and is respon­si­ble for the entire process: from auto­ma­tic quota­tion gene­ra­tion to order place­ment, imple­men­ta­tion, logi­stics and invoi­cing. The company was foun­ded in 2017 by Adrian Raidt, Chris­toph Rößner and Jonas Schweizer.

Acton Capi­tal
Acton Capi­tal Part­ners is an inter­na­tio­nal growth inves­tor based in Munich. Since 1999, the Acton team has inves­ted in consu­mer Inter­net compa­nies in Europe and North America. The main areas of invest­ment are SaaS, re/e‑commerce, Future of Work, mobi­lity, health­care and FinTech. Acton Capital’s active port­fo­lio compa­nies include Home­ToGo, Cluno, Expert­Lead and Zenjob. To date, the team has inves­ted more than €600 million in appro­xi­m­ately 90 compa­nies over five fund generations.

Project A
Project A is an inter­na­tio­nal venture capi­tal firm. The early-stage inves­tor and opera­ting VC in the field of digi­tal tech­no­lo­gies is head­quar­te­red in Berlin. The company was foun­ded in 2012. The port­fo­lio includes compa­nies such as Cata­wiki, World­Re­mit, Home­day, Spry­ker, KRY, senn­der, Voi and Trade Republic.

About SMP
SMP is a specia­list tax and commer­cial law firm opera­ting in the core areas of corpo­rate, funds, liti­ga­tion, tax and tran­sac­tions. SMP attor­neys and tax advi­sors repre­sent a wide variety of clients. These include emer­ging tech­no­logy compa­nies and family-owned mid-sized compa­nies as well as corpo­ra­ti­ons and private equity/venture capi­tal funds. Since its foun­da­tion in 2017, SMP has become one of the leading addres­ses for venture capi­tal, private equity and fund struc­tu­ring in Germany. Today, SMP employs over 50 expe­ri­en­ced lawy­ers and tax advi­sors in three offices in Berlin, Hamburg and Colo­gne. www.smp.law

Advi­sor Acton Capi­tal: SMP
Dr. Benja­min Ullrich (Lead/Corporate Law), Partner
Dr. Adrian Haase (Corpo­rate Law), Senior Associate

News

Munich — User­lane — the deve­lo­pers of a leading digi­tal adop­tion solu­tion(photo from left Felix Eich­ler, Hart­mut Hahn and Kajetan A. Uhlig) — has successfully closed a Series B finan­cing round led by Five Elms Capi­tal. The backers inves­ted a total of around ten million euros, inclu­ding exis­ting inves­tors such as Capna­mic, High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) and main incu­ba­tor, an early-stage inves­tor of the Commerz­bank Group. The invest­ment will drive Userlane’s inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion and acce­le­rate product deve­lo­p­ment. The goal of these steps is to help compa­nies around the world improve adop­tion of the growing number of soft­ware solu­ti­ons that are criti­cal to busi­ness success.

“We see our custo­mers adop­ting soft­ware solu­ti­ons — espe­ci­ally given current market condi­ti­ons — to manage a more home office and remote work orien­ted work­force. Each of these custo­mers relies on User­lane to help their employees use soft­ware faster and effec­tively manage the increased demand for soft­ware support. With this new invest­ment, we are able to expand our inter­na­tio­nal presence and acce­le­rate our product road­map while provi­ding opti­mal support to our custo­mers across diffe­rent markets and time zones,” explains Hart­mut Hahn, CEO of Userlane.

“The need for digi­tal soft­ware adop­tion solu­ti­ons is growing expo­nen­ti­ally as orga­niza­ti­ons deploy more appli­ca­ti­ons to manage an incre­asingly complex and geogra­phi­cally disper­sed work­force. Hart­mut and his team have brought toge­ther an extre­mely talen­ted team, foste­red an incre­di­ble culture and deve­lo­ped an impres­sive product, all with limi­ted resour­ces. We look forward to helping the company build on its foun­da­tion of success and signi­fi­cantly increase its presence in the U.S. market,” said Joe Onofrio, Part­ner at Five Elms Capital

User­lane has seen increased demand since March­De­spite this period of econo­mic uncer­tainty, the number of compa­nies rely­ing on Userlane’s tech­no­logy has grown rapidly. In addi­tion to fast-growing tech­no­logy compa­nies like Celo­nis, Perso­nio and Freight­hub, large inter­na­tio­nal orga­niza­ti­ons like Beiers­dorf, Linde and Alli­anz have star­ted working with User­lane to empower their users and employees.

At the heart of User­lane tech­no­logy are inter­ac­tive step-by-step guides that can be laye­red over any brow­ser-based soft­ware. These guides can be crea­ted without prior tech­ni­cal know­ledge and lead users through complex proces­ses directly in the appli­ca­tion. Unlike video tuto­ri­als, User­lane commu­ni­ca­tes live with soft­ware users by using auto­ma­ti­cally coll­ec­ted data from the under­ly­ing appli­ca­tion to guide them through hundreds of actions. Users can learn how to complete any task within the soft­ware plat­form through their own actions, which in turn increa­ses soft­ware adoption.

The trend toward a remote work­force and the costs asso­cia­ted with imple­men­ting soft­ware to manage a more complex orga­niza­tion are putting tremen­dous pres­sure on compa­nies. User­lane is speci­fi­cally desi­gned to help compa­nies acce­le­rate their digi­tiza­tion efforts and promote effi­ci­ent and accu­rate soft­ware adop­tion. User­lane has enab­led custo­mers to reduce trai­ning and support costs by up to 75%, roll out new soft­ware and/or proces­ses three times faster, and onboard end users in half the time. Userlane’s plat­form has and will conti­nue to help compa­nies be more agile and respond more quickly to new challenges.

About User­lane
User­lane is an award-winning digi­tal adop­tion plat­form that helps compa­nies world­wide maxi­mize soft­ware adop­tion and usage. Users are intro­du­ced to new soft­ware with User­lane through inter­ac­tive in-app guidance and real-time contex­tual support. With over 200 inter­na­tio­nal custo­mers, the company is one of the top 50 tech start­ups in Europe and ranks 26th on the FAZ list of top German compa­nies. www.userlane.com.

About Five Elms Capital
Five Elms Capi­tal is a global inves­tor in fast-growing B2B soft­ware busi­nesses that users love. Five Elms provi­des capi­tal and resour­ces to help compa­nies acce­le­rate growth and further cement their role as indus­try leaders. For more infor­ma­tion, visit www.fiveelms.com.

About Capna­mic Ventures
Capna­mic Ventures is one of Europe’s leading early-stage venture capi­tal inves­tors, based in Berlin and Colo­gne. The VC’s invest­ment focus is on tech­no­logy start­ups in German-spea­king count­ries. In addi­tion, Capna­mic invests with inter­na­tio­nal co-inves­tors. All port­fo­lio compa­nies are supported by Capnamic’s global indus­try network. The exten­sive know-how of the Capna­mic team is based on more than 80 invest­ments, nume­rous successful trade sales and IPOs as well as own entre­pre­neu­rial expe­ri­ence in the invest­ment team. Capna­mic is led by Chris­tian Siegele, Jörg Binnen­brü­cker and Olaf Jacobi and as Mana­ging Part­ner. www.capnamic.com

About main incubator
main incu­ba­tor is the early-stage inves­tor and rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment unit of Commerz­bank Group. It inves­ti­ga­tes future tech­no­lo­gies that are rele­vant to the economy and society, and promo­tes and deve­lops sustainable solu­ti­ons. He deve­lops proto­ty­pes based on future tech­no­lo­gies such as addi­tive prin­ting, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, cross reality, Inter­net of Things, networks, robo­tics and quan­tum compu­ting, often in colla­bo­ra­tion with part­ners from indus­try and rese­arch. In this way, it actively helps to shape future-proof products, solu­ti­ons and infra­struc­tures. — Main Incu­ba­tor GmbH, or main incu­ba­tor for short, is a wholly owned subsi­diary of Commerz­bank AG based in Frank­furt am Main.

About High-Tech Gründerfonds
The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start-ups with growth poten­tial. With a volume of around EUR 900 million spread across three funds and an inter­na­tio­nal part­ner network, HTGF has supported almost 600 start-ups since 2005. His team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and start-up experts supports the young compa­nies with know-how, entre­pre­neu­rial spirit and passion. The focus is on high-tech start-ups in the fields of digi­tal tech, indus­trial tech, life scien­ces, chemis­try and rela­ted busi­ness areas. More than €2.5 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in more than 1,600 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. In addi­tion, the fund has alre­ady successfully sold shares in more than 100 companies.Investors in the public-private part­ner­ship include the German Fede­ral Minis­try for Econo­mic Affairs and Energy, KfW Capi­tal, the Fraun­ho­fer-Gesell­schaft and the 32 compa­nies. Inves­tors in the public-private part­ner­ship include the German Fede­ral Minis­try for Econo­mic Affairs and Energy, KfW Capi­tal, the Fraun­ho­fer-Gesell­schaft and the 32 companies.

News

Frank­furt a.M. — Herbert Smith Freeh­ills has advi­sed heidel­pay Group on the acqui­si­tion of Paysafe Pay Later, a specia­list in pay-later payment methods, from Paysafe Group. The tran­sac­tion is still subject to regu­la­tory appr­oval and is expec­ted to close in the third quar­ter of 2020. Until then, the two compa­nies will conti­nue to operate as inde­pen­dent organizations.

Paysafe Pay Later (payo­lu­tion GmbH) deve­lops payment solu­ti­ons for online and offline commerce. As part of the inter­na­tio­nal Paysafe Group, a leading specia­li­zed payment plat­form with over 20 years of expe­ri­ence in the online payment busi­ness, Paysafe Pay Later offers indi­vi­dual solu­ti­ons for the DACH region.

heidel­pay is one of the fastest growing German tech compa­nies for inter­na­tio­nal payments. With over 17 years of expe­ri­ence in e‑commerce and as a BaFin-appro­ved payment insti­tu­tion, heidel­pay offers compa­nies of all sizes the ability to process payments world­wide. Since 2020, the inves­tor KKR has been the majo­rity share­hol­der of the heidel­pay Group.

heidelpay’s latest invest­ment is part of the company’s stra­tegy to drive Euro­pean expan­sion and expand its product offe­ring for its own custo­mers in the area of Pay Later payment methods.

Herbert Smith Freeh­ills had alre­ady advi­sed the heidel­pay foun­ders and the inves­tor AnaCap Finan­cial Part­ners on the sale of a majo­rity stake to the invest­ment company KKR in 2019. In 2017, the firm had assis­ted the heidel­pay foun­ders in the sale of a majo­rity stake to AnaCap Finan­cial Partners.

Advi­sor heidel­pay Group: Herbert Smith Freeh­ills (Frank­furt)
Dr. Nico Abel, Photo (Part­ner, Lead), Rüdi­ger Hoff­mann (Coun­sel; both Corporate/M&A), Dr. Marcel Nuys (Part­ner), Dr. Florian Huer­kamp (Coun­sel; both Anti­trust; both Düssel­dorf), Kai Liebrich (Part­ner, Finance / Regu­la­tory), Moritz Kunz (Part­ner, Labor Law / Data Protec­tion), Dr. Stef­fen C. Hörner (Part­ner, Tax), Dr. Julius Brandt (Senior Asso­ciate), Tatiana Guens­ter, Quenie Hubert (both Asso­cia­tes; all Corporate/M&A), Mirko Gleits­mann (Asso­ciate, Anti­trust Law, Düssel­dorf), Dr. Hannes Jacobi (Senior Asso­ciate, Finance / Regu­la­tory), Dr. Simone Zieg­ler (Senior Asso­ciate, Labor Law / Data Protection)

News

Frank­furt a. M./ Munich — Apax Digi­tal, the growth capi­tal arm of London-based finan­cial inves­tor Apax Part­ners has inves­ted in Price f(x) AG (“Pricefx”). As part of the Series C finan­cing round, Pricefx recei­ved addi­tio­nal capi­tal of USD 65 million. The company has thus raised around USD 130 million in capi­tal to date. The finan­cing round was led by Apax Digi­tal with parti­ci­pa­tion from legacy inves­tors. The Frank­furt and Munich offices of the inter­na­tio­nal law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP advi­sed Apax Digi­tal on this transaction.

Foun­ded in 2011 in Pfaf­fen­ho­fen a.d. Glonn and opera­ting globally in five loca­ti­ons, Pricefx is a global leader in cloud-based pricing models as “Soft­ware as a Service” and offers a compre­hen­sive range of solu­ti­ons. Pricefx will use the funding to expand and soli­dify its leading global market posi­tion as a cloud soft­ware plat­form, as well as to acce­le­rate product inno­va­tion, expand its part­ner network and explore stra­te­gic acquisitions.

Advi­sor Apax Digi­tal: Weil Gotshal & Manges
The Weil tran­sac­tion team was led by Frank­furt-based Corpo­rate Part­ner Dr. Kamyar Abrar (photo) and was supported by asso­cia­tes Thomas Weise, Aurel Hille, Stef­fen Giolda (all Corpo­rate, Frank­furt), Mareike Pfeif­fer (Labor Law, Frank­furt), Alisa Preis­sler (Tax, Frank­furt), Dr. Barbara Sand­fuchs (IP/IT, Munich) and para­le­gal Kris­tina Thiel (Labor Law, Frankfurt).

Advi­sor Price (fx): Shear­man & Sterling
Part­ner Dr. Alfred Koss­mann, Coun­sel Annette Petow and Asso­cia­tes Dr. Aliresa Fatemi, Sven Opper­mann and Denise Tayler (all Frank­furt M&A) and Part­ners Michael Dorf (San Francisco/Menlo Park M&A) and Larry Crouch (San Francisco/Menlo Park Tax).

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

News

Munich — Bird & Bird LLP has advi­sed Gamma Commu­ni­ca­ti­ons plc (Gamma) on the acqui­si­tion of 80% of the shares in HFO Holding AG (HFO), one of the leading SIP trunk provi­ders in Germany, which also includes the distri­bu­tor Epsi­lon. There is an acqui­si­tion option for the remai­ning 20% for the next three years.

Gamma is a leading provi­der of Unified Commu­ni­ca­ti­ons as a Service (UCaaS) in the UK, Spain and the Nether­lands and has iden­ti­fied Germany as a key target market as part of its expan­sion stra­tegy. Accor­ding to the company, the over­all German market has around 36 million PBX exten­si­ons, but a cloud pene­tra­tion of only around 6%. Thus, the market for cloud tele­phony is expec­ted to grow steadily over the next few years.

Gamma’s goal is to deve­lop and sell a market-leading cloud PBX solu­tion through the chan­nel to acce­le­rate HFO’s growth in the emer­ging cloud PBX market in Germany. HFO also offers B2B mobile services through its subsi­diary Epsi­lon Tele­com — most recently selling over 100,000 connec­tions per year. This also provi­des an oppor­tu­nity for Gamma to sell a mobile cloud PBX product through this channel.

Advi­sor Gamma Commu­ni­ca­ti­ons plc: Bird & Bird LLP
Part­ner Stefan Münch (photo), Part­ner Stephan Kübler, LL.M., Coun­sel Michael Gass­ner, Asso­cia­tes Marcel Nurk and Mari­jana Simo­nova (all Corporate/M&A, Munich), Part­ner Dr. Ralph Panzer, Asso­cia­tes Julia Gottin­ger and Laura Schild­berg (all Labor Law, Munich) Part­ner Dr. Henri­ette Picot, Part­ner Dr. Alex­an­der Duis­berg, Asso­ciate Goek­han Kosak (all Tech & Comms, Munich), Part­ner Dr. Markus Körner, Asso­ciate Maxi­mi­lian Hillen­kamp (both Trade­mark Law, Munich), Senior Coun­sel Vale­rian Jenny (Foreign Trade Law, Frank­furt), Part­ner Neil Blun­dell, Part­ner Simon Allport, (both Corporate/M&A) Legal Dirc­tor Nick Heap (Corpo­rate Finance) all London, Asso­ciate Pauline Toet (Corpo­rate, Candi­tate Notary, The Hague).

Bird & Bird has advi­sed Gamma for many years, e.g. in 2014 on the IPO in London or recently on the public offe­ring for VOZTELECOM OIGAA360, S.A. (“VozTe­le­com”). VozTe­le­com is one of the leading provi­ders of cloud PBX solu­ti­ons in Spain and, along with the major fixed and mobile opera­tors, has the largest cloud PBX busi­ness. Neil Blun­dell, Part­ner in London, says: “We are deligh­ted to support Gamma in their expan­sion in Europe. It’s a very exci­ting company and has perfor­med incre­di­bly well since going public. Bird & Bird has a super­bly inte­gra­ted inter­na­tio­nal M&A group, and the teams in the UK, Germany, Spain and the Nether­lands have worked first class to deli­ver these deals. We look forward to conti­nuing to support Gamma on their future jour­neys, both in the UK and internationally.”

News

Aachen — The Aachen-based GRÜN Soft­ware Group was able to win the Nurem­berg family offices Fontas and Mogk as finan­ci­ally strong part­ners for its growth plans to build up a group of medium-sized B2B soft­ware compa­nies. The inves­tors have taken a signi­fi­cant mino­rity stake. Foun­der and CEO Dr. Oliver Grün remains majo­rity share­hol­der. Bird & Bird LLP advi­sed the Nurem­berg-based family offices Fontas and Mogk on their invest­ment in Aachen-based GRÜN Soft­ware Group. You take over a signi­fi­cant mino­rity shareholding

The aim of the part­ner­ship is to promote the growth of the GRÜN Soft­ware Group with today 150 employees by acqui­si­tion & further deve­lo­p­ment of soft­ware compa­nies with indus­try soft­ware within the frame­work of a “Buy & Build” stra­tegy: “Through our new, strong part­ners, we comple­ment our expe­ri­ence in buil­ding medium-sized soft­ware compa­nies with the neces­sary capi­tal for acqui­si­ti­ons. This crea­tes an owner-mana­ged plat­form for invest­ments in soft­ware compa­nies that is unique in this form,” says a plea­sed Dr. Oliver Grün.

The invest­ment team at GRÜN will be supported by Prof. Dr. Rainer Lauter­bach and Fabian Durst in the future. This will also streng­then the group’s finan­cial exper­tise: “Our joint approach of combi­ning soft­ware and finan­cial know-how is a new offe­ring in the market of medium-sized soft­ware compa­nies, which is curr­ently under­go­ing a strong conso­li­da­tion phase due to succes­si­ons and market chan­ges,” says Prof. Lauterbach.

To streng­then and expand the opera­tio­nal busi­ness of the GRÜN Soft­ware Group, which curr­ently offers solu­ti­ons for non-profit orga­niza­ti­ons and educa­tion provi­ders, Dirk Hönscheid, the company’s long-time autho­ri­zed signa­tory and COO, was also appoin­ted to the manage­ment board.

As part of a change in legal form, the company will no longer trade under the name GRÜN Soft­ware AG, but under GRÜN Soft­ware Group GmbH. All exis­ting cont­acts, contracts and coope­ra­ti­ons remain unchanged.

Consul­tant GRÜN Soft­ware Group: WSS Redpoint Cologne

Advi­sors to the Fontas and Mogk family offices: Bird & Bird Frankfurt
Part­ner Dr. Michael Jüne­mann (photo) and Acco­ciate Johan­nes Wirtz, LL.M.

News

Frank­furt a.M. — The inter­na­tio­nal law firm Good­win has advi­sed Storm Ventures on a €60 million Series C finan­cing round for sola­ris­Bank.

The finan­cing round was led by HV Holtz­brinck Ventures; in addi­tion to Storm Ventures, Vulcan Capi­tal and Samsung Cata­lyst Fund parti­ci­pa­ted. The strength of the round is also reflec­ted in the fact that about half of the funding was raised from exis­ting inves­tors; these were led by yabeo and supported by BBVA, SBI Group, ABN AMRO Ventures, Global Brain, Hegus and Lake­star.

Storm Ventures is a Sili­con Valley-based venture capi­tal firm focu­sed on early-stage invest­ments in leading B2B compa­nies, inclu­ding Aire­space (sold to Cisco), Blues­hift, Echo­Sign (sold to Adobe), Marketo (sold to Adobe), MobileI­ron, Sendoso, Splash­top and Work­ato. The company has also inves­ted in leading Euro­pean start­ups, inclu­ding Algo­lia, Digi­tal Shadows and Talkdesk.

Berlin-based sola­ris­Bank AG is the first banking-as-a-service plat­form with a full banking license that enables compa­nies to offer their own finan­cial products. APIs give part­ners access to the bank’s modu­lar services. Inclu­ding the current Series C finan­cing round, sola­ris­Bank has raised a total of more than 160 million euros in the past four years.

Advi­sors Storm Ventures: Good­win, Frank­furt a.M./Silicon Valley
Gregor Klenk, Photo (Private Equity, Frank­furt); Craig Schmitz (FinTech, Sili­con Valley/Los Ange­les; both Lead); Asso­ciate: Joana Pamu­kova (Private Equity, Frankfurt)

News

Munich — Strong signal in the COVID 19 crisis: Golding raises almost 200 million euros from private debt funds for medium-sized compa­nies. The COVID-19 pande­mic is caus­ing massive dislo­ca­tion in econo­mies and finan­cial markets world­wide. Many compa­nies, espe­ci­ally small and medium-sized ones, run into liqui­dity bott­len­ecks that they cannot absorb through tradi­tio­nal finan­cing chan­nels such as bank loans. In such times of crisis, private debt funds gain in importance. In this phase, Golding Capi­tal Part­ners successfully closed the first subscrip­tion period of the Golding Private Debt 2020 fund with a volume of almost 200 million euros.

At present, access to addi­tio­nal capi­tal needed in the short term is consider­a­bly rest­ric­ted for many compa­nies. The crisis-indu­ced decline in tradi­tio­nal forms of finan­cing, such as bank loans or the more liquid capi­tal markets, has resul­ted in liqui­dity problems, in some cases threa­tening the very exis­tence of SMEs in parti­cu­lar. Private debt funds gain addi­tio­nal importance in such times of crisis. They can close the finan­cing gap in the case of growth finan­cing, acqui­si­ti­ons, refi­nan­cing, but also tempo­rary liqui­dity bott­len­ecks and offer sustainable solu­ti­ons with alter­na­tive forms of financing.

Foun­der and CEO Jeremy Golding: “The Corona crisis has shown that compa­nies need quick and uncom­pli­ca­ted “cash injec­tions”. This is the only way they can main­tain opera­ti­ons and secure jobs. Banks are often not suita­ble finan­cing part­ners due to incre­asingly strin­gent regu­la­ti­ons and capi­tal requi­re­ments. Private debt funds, on the other hand, can directly provide alter­na­tive finan­cing solu­ti­ons and often support compa­nies with long-term capi­tal — at a much better risk and return profile.”

The invest­ment stra­tegy of the Golding Private Debt 2020 fund is to build a broadly diver­si­fied port­fo­lio of prima­rily bila­te­ral finan­cings nego­tia­ted directly with medium-sized compa­nies in Europe and North America (“corpo­rate direct lending”). The focus is on senior secu­red loans; subor­di­na­ted loans are also taken into account on a selec­tive basis. Depen­ding on the market envi­ron­ment, Golding also invests in selec­ted funds with a focus on special situa­tions invol­ving, for exam­ple, the oppor­tu­ni­stic acqui­si­tion of loans in the secon­dary market or speci­fic complex corpo­rate situa­tions. The plan is to set up 15 to 20 primary and secon­dary funds as well as co-invest­ments as an oppor­tu­ni­stic addi­tion. To date, one co-invest­ment has alre­ady been imple­men­ted and the first primary funds have been subscribed.

Proven crisis resistance
Alre­ady during and after the global econo­mic crisis of 2008/2009, the private debt asset class demons­tra­ted excel­lent crisis resis­tance compared to other asset clas­ses. Nega­tive valua­tion discounts in the private debt market, for exam­ple, were fully offset after around nine months. Such low vulnerabi­lity in crises contri­bu­tes signi­fi­cantly to rising demand in this segment. Current market analy­ses confirm this clear growth trend: around one-third of the inter­na­tio­nal inves­tors surveyed are plan­ning to invest more heavily in private debt in view of the Corona crisis.

“For our inves­tors, it pays to invest in private debt funds. Not only because our offe­rings in this area are parti­cu­larly stable and resi­li­ent due to our diver­si­fied approach and broad diver­si­fi­ca­tion to around 600 — 800 tran­sac­tions world­wide. But also because it enables us to gene­rate attrac­tive risk-adjus­ted returns and, with an average net IRR of 7 to 8 percent, we have an excel­lent perfor­mance. In the ongo­ing low-inte­rest envi­ron­ment, this is an excel­lent invest­ment oppor­tu­nity for insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors,” says Mana­ging Direc­tor and CIO Dr. Matthias Reicher­ter.

Golding was one of the pioneers in this asset class in 2003 and can ther­e­fore draw on many years of successful invest­ment exper­tise in the private debt market. Golding curr­ently mana­ges around EUR 3.5 billion in this asset class for insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors. Capi­tal is curr­ently spread across 17 invest­ment programs (inclu­ding funds of funds, co-invest­ment funds and mana­ged accounts).

About Golding Capi­tal Part­ners GmbH
Golding Capi­tal Part­ners GmbH is one of the leading inde­pen­dent asset mana­gers for private equity, private debt and infra­struc­ture in Europe. With a team of over 100 employees based in Munich, Luxem­bourg, London, New York and Tokyo, Golding Capi­tal Part­ners supports insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors in buil­ding their invest­ment stra­tegy and mana­ges assets of over €9 billion. The appro­xi­m­ately 200 insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors include insu­rance compa­nies, pension funds, foun­da­ti­ons, family offices as well as banks, savings banks and coope­ra­tive banks.

News

Hamburg — CORVEL advi­sed heidel­pay Group GmbH (“heidel­pay”) on its invest­ment in Till­hub GmbH. Till­hub offers retail­ers digi­tal payment methods via an all-in-one iPad POS system. Well-known custo­mers of Till­hub are Klier Hair Group GmbH and Fleu­rop AG. Heidel­pay is thus expan­ding its exper­tise in the PoS (Point of Sale) area and conti­nuing to drive its growth and omnich­an­nel approach. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the size of the investment.

Heidel­pay is one of the fastest growing German tech compa­nies for inter­na­tio­nal payments and offers its own solu­ti­ons such as invoice and install­ment purchase, direct debit, online bank trans­fer or prepay­ment as well as on well-known provi­ders of credit cards or wallet solu­ti­ons. Since 2020, the inves­tor KKR has been the majo­rity share­hol­der of heidelpay.

Advi­sor heidel­pay: CORVEL LLP (Hamburg)
Dr. Felix Brammer (photo), Asso­ciate: Thomas Sievers

News

Frank­furt a. Main/ Munich — The inter­na­tio­nal law firm Latham & Watkins LLP has advi­sed funds advi­sed by Triton on the finan­cing in connec­tion with the acqui­si­tion of the RENK Group. In addi­tion to a high-yield bond (senior secu­red notes, 144A/Reg S) placed with insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors with a volume of EUR 320 million, a matu­rity in July 2025 and a coupon of 5.75 percent p.a. Senior secu­red credit faci­li­ties (Super Senior Revol­ving Credit Faci­li­ties) with a volume of EUR 40 million (cash line) and EUR 167.5 million (guaran­tee line). The Senior Secu­red Notes are listed on The Inter­na­tio­nal Stock Exch­ange (Offi­cial List).

The tran­sac­tion was accom­pa­nied by a banking syndi­cate consis­ting of Gold­man Sachs Inter­na­tio­nal, Commerz­bank, Credit Suisse, Deut­sche Bank and UniCre­dit Bank.

Latham & Watkins advi­sed Triton with the follo­wing team:
Dr. Rüdi­ger Malaun (Part­ner, Munich), Dr. Alex­an­der Lentz (Part­ner, joint lead), Gregory Walker (Coun­sel), Jan Penselin, Jana Sichel­schmidt, Peter Neuböck (Asso­cia­tes, all Capi­tal Markets), Alex­an­dra Hage­lü­ken (Part­ner), Cora Gran­ne­mann (Coun­sel, both Banking, all Frank­furt), Stefan Süß (Part­ner, Tax, Munich), Verena Seevers (Asso­ciate, Tax, Hamburg)

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