ALTERNATIVE FINANCING FORMS
FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND INVESTORS

Author: Tatjana Anderer

Gründerin des FYB-Verlag
News

Munich — The invest­ment company EMH Part­ners has acqui­red a double-digit mino­rity stake in Brain­lab AG, a leading global provi­der of soft­ware-based medi­cal tech­no­logy. With its products, Brain­lab enables the precise, mini­mally inva­sive treat­ment of a wide range of clini­cal condi­ti­ons. The company’s core compe­ten­cies are in the areas of infor­ma­tion-guided surgery, radio­sur­gery and precis­ion radio­the­rapy, as well as digi­tal networ­king for infor­ma­tion exch­ange in the opera­ting room.

Brain­lab, based in Munich, was foun­ded in 1989 by Stefan Vils­meier. With its inno­va­tive soft­ware and hard­ware solu­ti­ons, the company has quickly become one of the global leaders in the indus­try. More than 4,500 hospi­tals world­wide, inclu­ding 750 of the top 1,000 cancer centers, alre­ady trust Brainlab’s soft­ware and hard­ware solu­ti­ons. In Germany, all 36 univer­sity hospi­tals rely on the company’s products.

“We have found the ideal part­ner in EMH Part­ners,” says Stefan Vils­meier, foun­der and CEO of Brain­lab AG. “The entre­pre­neu­rial approach and the strong focus on digi­ta­liza­tion and inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion convin­ced me. EMH Part­ners shares our vision to provide more acces­si­ble and effec­tive treat­ments for pati­ents around the world with inno­va­tive technologies.”

“Brain­lab shows what German SMEs are capa­ble of. The company is revo­lu­tio­ni­zing medi­cal tech­no­logy world­wide,” says Sebas­tian Kuss (photo), Mana­ging Part­ner of EMH Part­ners. “We are very plea­sed to support this idea­li­stic and highly inno­va­tive company in its future deve­lo­p­ment and thus indi­rectly contri­bute to better medi­cal care.” Brain­lab gene­ra­ted sales of around €275 million in fiscal year 2017 and opera­tes profi­ta­bly on a sustainable basis. The company employs a total of 1,370 people at 18 loca­ti­ons, inclu­ding more than 450 rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment engineers.

Last year, German Chan­cellor Angela Merkel atten­ded the opening cerem­ony of the new head­quar­ters at the former Munich-Riem Airport. In doing so, she prai­sed Brain­lab as an exam­ple of an inno­va­tive Germany. Tech­no­lo­gies deve­lo­ped by Brain­lab include image-guided maxillofacial, ENT and ortho­pe­dic surgery, spine, trauma and neuro­sur­gery, intra­ope­ra­tive imaging and inte­gra­ted surgi­cal solu­ti­ons. Compli­ca­ted surgi­cal proce­du­res become more effi­ci­ent and easier with Brainlab’s tech­no­lo­gies. In addi­tion, the company’s soft­ware solu­ti­ons simplify treat­ment plan­ning and the exch­ange and opti­miza­tion of medi­cal image data. They thus ensure faster diagno­sis and coor­di­na­tion between the trea­ting physi­ci­ans. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the amount of EMH’s invest­ment in Brainlab.

Brain­lab is alre­ady the fifth invest­ment of the EMH Digi­tal Growth Fund. EMH Part­ners invests in medium-sized Euro­pean compa­nies with high growth and digi­tiza­tion poten­tial. In doing so, the private equity firm relies on a long-term “build and scale” approach, in which the port­fo­lio compa­nies bene­fit not only from the capi­tal, but also and above all from the digi­tiza­tion exper­tise and entre­pre­neu­rial back­ground of the EMH team. In addi­tion to Brain­lab, the port­fo­lio includes Occhio, a leading company in Germany for high-quality design light­ing; the Kiveda Group, the leading multich­an­nel provi­der of fitted kitchens; Native Instru­ments, the world’s leading tech­no­logy company for music produc­tion and DJing ; and Design Offices, the German market leader in corpo­rate coworking.

About EMH Partners
EMH Part­ners is a Euro­pean invest­ment company by entre­pre­neurs for entre­pre­neurs based in Munich. The next-gene­ra­tion private equity firm bridges the gap between venture capi­tal and buyout funds by support­ing the growth of medium-sized compa­nies with capi­tal and digi­tiza­tion exper­tise. — Foun­ded in 2010 by entre­pre­neurs Maxi­mi­lian and Sebas­tian Kuss, EMH Part­ners laun­ched the EMH Digi­tal Growth Fund in 2017 with a fund volume of €350 million. Inclu­ding a co-invest­ment program by the inves­tors, the invest­ment volume is 700 million euros. EMH Part­ners follows a “build and scale” stra­tegy and provi­des part­ner­ship support to its port­fo­lio compa­nies. www.emh.com

About Brain­lab
Brain­lab deve­lops, manu­fac­tures and markets soft­ware-based medi­cal tech­no­logy for precise, mini­mally inva­sive proce­du­res. The core compe­tence lies in the areas of infor­ma­tion-guided surgery, radio­sur­gery, precis­ion radio­the­rapy and digi­tal networ­king for the exch­ange of infor­ma­tion and know­ledge among medi­cal profes­sio­nals in the opera­ting room. Brain­lab tech­no­logy enables more effi­ci­ent treat­ments in the field of radio­sur­gery as well as in other nume­rous surgi­cal disci­pli­nes such as neuro­sur­gery, ortho­pe­dics, trauma surgery, ENT, maxillofacial and spine surgery. Foun­ded in 1989, the medium-sized company employs 1,370 people at 18 loca­ti­ons world­wide and is among the market leaders with more than 11,800 systems instal­led in over 100 count­ries. www.brainlab.com

News

Munich/Landshut — Bayern Kapi­tal invests in All3DP, opera­tor of a leading global inter­net plat­form for 3D prin­ting, in a series A2 closing. Bayern Kapi­tal had alre­ady inves­ted in the Series A1 finan­cing round around two years ago and now played a key role in struc­tu­ring the current round. The exis­ting inves­tors HTGF and Deut­sche Bala­ton AG are still on board. New addi­ti­ons are two busi­ness angels from the BayStartUP inves­tor network. All3DP opera­tes the online maga­zine All3DP.com, which provi­des infor­ma­tion about 3D prin­ting oppor­tu­ni­ties in the consu­mer and small busi­ness segments. The number of users is over 800,000 monthly, as All3DP foun­ders Stefan Schwarz-Ulrich, Anatol Locker, Mathias Plica (photo from left to right) explai­ned. All3DP also connects its users to 3D prin­ting service provi­ders via its own price compa­ri­son platform.

With the successful, English-language online maga­zine All3DP.com, the Munich-based start-up informs a broad target group from the consu­mer and small-busi­ness segment about the possi­bi­li­ties of 3D prin­ting. In addi­tion, users are refer­red directly to 3D prin­ting service provi­ders. This makes All3DP the inter­na­tio­nal market leader in this segment. More than 800,000 users visit the All3DP.com website each month, of which about 40 percent are from North America.

The 3D prin­ting market is growing at a rapid pace, with the number of desk­top 3D prin­ters sold doubling every year. All3DP’s custo­mers come from all over the world, with a focus on North America and Europe. The finan­cing round now closed will enable the company to keep pace with the strong growth of the market and expand its market-leading position.

Dr. Georg Ried, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Bayern Kapi­tal, says: “All3DP has deve­lo­ped excel­lently, the user numbers are impres­sive. Ther­e­fore, we have parti­ci­pa­ted in this round again with full convic­tion. Because All3DP combi­nes important aspects: Market leader­ship with a convin­cing and scalable busi­ness model in a highly inte­res­t­ing market that offers excep­tio­nal future prospects.

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 eleven invest­ment funds with an invest­ment volume of around 325 million euros. To date, Bayern Kapi­tal has inves­ted around 273 million euros of equity capi­tal in around 260 inno­va­tive tech­no­logy-orien­ted compa­nies from a wide range of sectors, inclu­ding life scien­ces, soft­ware & IT, mate­ri­als & new mate­ri­als, nano­tech­no­logy and envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­logy. As a result, more than 5,000 jobs have been perma­nently crea­ted in Bava­ria in sustainable compa­nies. www.bayernkapital.de

News

Ingel­heim am Rhein, Germany — German phar­maceu­ti­cal group Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim has acqui­red all shares in Austria-based Vira­The­ra­peu­tics GmbH, a biophar­maceu­ti­cal company rese­ar­ching inno­va­tive virus-based immu­no­the­ra­peu­tics for the treat­ment of cancer. Through this biotech acqui­si­tion with a tran­sac­tion volume of 210 million euros, Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim is further expan­ding its commit­ment in this area. Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim was advi­sed on this tran­sac­tion by GleissLutz.

Back in 2016, Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim ente­red into a colla­bo­ra­tion with Vira­The­ra­peu­tics: Their goal was to deve­lop onco­ly­tic viru­ses, which are among the most promi­sing new thera­peu­tic approa­ches in cancer rese­arch. In this context, the Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim Venture Fund (BIVF) was alre­ady one of the core inves­tors in the Austrian company. A purchase option had also been agreed as part of the coope­ra­tion. Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim has now exer­cised this. Gleiss Lutz had alre­ady compre­hen­si­vely advi­sed Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim on the conclu­sion of the coope­ra­tion in 2016.

Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim is one of the world’s top 20 phar­maceu­ti­cal compa­nies. Head­quar­te­red in Ingel­heim, Germany, Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim has 145 affi­lia­ted compa­nies world­wide and employs a total of appro­xi­m­ately 50,000 people. In 2017, Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim gene­ra­ted sales of just under 18.1 billion euros. At more than three billion euros, rese­arch & deve­lo­p­ment expen­dit­ures corre­spond to 17.0 percent of sales.

The law firm Maybach Görg Lenn­eis Geréd Rechts­an­wälte GmbH advi­sed on Austrian law.

Dr. Jan Wilhelm Bolt from Boeh­rin­ger Ingelheim’s legal depart­ment was in charge of the transaction.

Advi­sor Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim: Gleiss Lutz
Dr. Martin Viciano Gofferje (Part­ner, Lead, Corporate/M&A, Berlin), Dr. Alex­an­der Schwarz (Part­ner, Corporate/M&A, Düssel­dorf) and Dr. Herwig Lux (Coun­sel, IP, Stutt­gart) advi­sed Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim on this transaction.

News

London/ Frank­furt a. M./ Munich — The Frank­furt and Munich offices of the inter­na­tio­nal law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP have advi­sed the finan­cial inves­tor Noval­pina Capi­tal on the squeeze-out of the mino­rity share­hol­ders of Olym­pic Enter­tain­ment Group, which is listed on the stock exch­ange in Tallinn, Esto­nia. The squeeze-out took place after the successful comple­tion of the take­over bid for all shares in the Olym­pic Enter­tain­ment Group in May 2018 by Odys­sey Europe AS, a company control­led by Noval­pina Capi­tal, and was appro­ved by over 92% of the votes cast at the Extra­or­di­nary Gene­ral Meeting of Olym­pic Enter­tain­ment Group held on Septem­ber 10, 2018.

Olym­pic Enter­tain­ment Group is a leading opera­tor of casi­nos and provi­der of sports betting in six markets in the Euro­zone (Esto­nia, Latvia, Lithua­nia, Italy, Slova­kia and Malta).

Weil is also advi­sing the finan­cial inves­tor Noval­pina Capi­tal in connec­tion with the ongo­ing delis­ting process and other corpo­rate reor­ga­niza­tion measu­res at Olym­pic Enter­tain­ment Group.

Noval­pina Capi­tal was foun­ded in 2017 by Stephen Peel, former head of TPG Europe, and Stefan Kowski, who has been a prin­ci­pal at TPG Hong Kong and most recently acted as mana­ging direc­tor at Center­bridge Partners.

Advi­sors to Noval­pina Capi­tal: Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP
The Weil tran­sac­tion team is led by part­ner Prof. Dr. Gerhard Schmidt and supported by part­ners Tobias Geer­ling (Tax, Munich), as well as coun­sel Dr. Heiner Drüke (Corpo­rate, Frank­furt) and asso­cia­tes Manuel-Peter Fringer (Corpo­rate, Munich), Benja­min Rapp (Tax, Munich) and Daniel Zhu (Corpo­rate, Munich).

News

Düsseldorf/ Frank­furt a. M. — Aareal Bank Group has reached an agree­ment with the Bundes­ver­band Deut­scher Banken e.V. (BdB) on the acqui­si­tion of all shares in Düssel­dor­fer Hypo­the­ken­bank AG. The closing of the tran­sac­tion is subject to regu­la­tory appr­ovals and is curr­ently plan­ned to take place in 2018. The preli­mi­nary purchase price is appro­xi­m­ately EUR 162 million. The final purchase price is subject to fluc­tua­tions in market value up to the closing date.

Advi­sor to Aareal Bank Group: Henge­ler Muel­ler Part­ner­schaft von Rechts­an­wäl­ten mbB
Part­ner­Hen­ge­ler Muel­ler provi­ded compre­hen­sive advice to Aareal on the tran­sac­tion. The part­ners Prof. Dr. Johan­nes Adolff (Corporate/M&A), Dr. Dirk H. Blie­se­ner (Banking Regu­la­tory), Dr. Lucina Berger (Corpo­rate), Dr. Chris­tian Hoefs (Labor) (all Frank­furt) and Dr. Alf-Henrik Bischke (Anti­trust, Düssel­dorf) as well as asso­cia­tes Loretta Lang (M&A), Dr. Jan Häller (Corpo­rate) and Jan L. Stef­fen (Banking Regu­la­tory) (all Frank­furt) were active.

News

Munich, Germany — Unter­neh­mer­tum Venture Capi­tal Part­ners (UVC Part­ners), btov Part­ners (btov Indus­trial Tech­no­lo­gies Fund) and AM Ventures have inves­ted in DyeM­an­sion GmbH as part of the appro­xi­m­ately EUR 4.5 million finan­cing round for the company.

Munich-based DyeM­an­sion offers indus­trial solu­ti­ons for surface finis­hing and colo­ring of addi­tively manu­fac­tu­red plas­tic parts. The entire solu­tion deve­lo­ped by DyeM­an­sion is refer­red to as a ‘print-to-product’ work­flow and covers all steps of the finis­hing process from raw part to finis­hed product. Alre­ady trus­ted by more than 400 custo­mers for color and finish solu­ti­ons, inclu­ding many 3D prin­ting service provi­ders and manu­fac­tu­r­ers from various indus­tries such as auto­mo­tive, life­style, retail, medi­cal and sport­ing goods, DyeMansion’s effec­tive ‘print-to-produce’ work­flow enables them to offer their custo­mers high-quality addi­tively manu­fac­tu­red products. As a result, the Munich-based company was able to quickly estab­lish itself as the world market leader in this field. DyeMansion’s solu­ti­ons are now compa­ti­ble with all powder-based tech­no­lo­gies, such as those from EOS, HP, 3D Systems and Prod­ways, and can be used regard­less of geometry.

Advi­sor Unter­neh­mer­Tum Venture Capi­tal Part­ners GmbH: GÖRG Part­ner­schaft von Rechts­an­wäl­ten mbB
Dr. Chris­tian Glauer, Asso­ciate Part­ner; Dr. Bernt Paudtke, Part­ner; Tobias Reichen­ber­ger, Asso­ciate, (all M&A / Corpo­rate); Dr. Ulrich Fülbier, Part­ner, Labor Law; Dr. Mela­nie Ries, Asso­ciate, IP & IT (all Munich)

Advi­sors to DyeM­an­sion GmbH: Orrick, Herring­ton & Sutcliffe LLP
Dr. Sven Greu­lich, LL.M., EMBA, Part­ner; Dr. Johan­nes Josef Rüberg, Mana­ging Asso­ciate; Vanessa Sousa Höhl, Inter­na­tio­nal Asso­ciate (all M&A / Corpo­rate, Düsseldorf)

About Unter­neh­mer­Tum Venture Capi­tal Partners
Unter­neh­mer­tum Venture Capi­tal Part­ners (UVC Part­ners) is an early-stage venture capi­tal firm that invests speci­fi­cally in tech­no­logy-based start­ups in the Indus­trial Tech­no­lo­gies, Enter­prise Soft­ware and Mobi­lity sectors. EUR 0.5 — 3 million are inves­ted per invest­ment round and up to EUR 12 million in total in successful investments.

Port­fo­lio compa­nies bene­fit from the exten­sive invest­ment and exit expe­ri­ence of the manage­ment team and from the close coope­ra­tion with Unter­neh­mer­TUM, Europe’s leading inno­va­tion and start-up center. With its more than 180 employees and more than 100 indus­try part­ners, Unter­neh­mer­TUM has many years of expe­ri­ence in buil­ding young compa­nies. Through the part­ner­ship, UVC Part­ners can offer start­ups unique access to talent, custo­mers and part­ners. The port­fo­lio includes invest­ments such as Flix­Bus, Carjump (Freer2Move), KONUX, Blick­feld, 3YOURMIND and Vimcar.

About btov Part­ners Indus­trial Tech­no­lo­gies Fund
btov is a Euro­pean venture capi­tal company mana­ging appro­xi­m­ately EUR 375 million in insti­tu­tio­nal funds, part­ner funds and direct invest­ments from private inves­tors. btov teams in St.Gallen, Berlin, Munich and Luxem­bourg support start-ups with highly ambi­tious teams toge­ther with expe­ri­en­ced entre­pre­neurs from the btov network. The Indus­trial Tech­no­lo­gies team of btov Part­ners supports compa­nies like compo­nent, module and system hard­ware manu­fac­tu­r­ers with embedded soft­ware up to provi­ders of appli­ca­tion and infra­struc­ture soft­ware for the indus­try. The tech­no­logy focus is on robo­tics & auto­no­mous vehic­les, “machine lear­ning”, indus­try 4.0 and IoT, data secu­rity (cyber­se­cu­rity), elec­tro­nics & photo­nics, addi­tive manu­fac­tu­ring, energy conver­sion and storage, medi­cal and quan­tum technologies.

About AM Venture Holding GmbH
AM Ventures Holding GmbH (AMV) is an inde­pen­dent, stra­te­gic inves­tor focu­sed on indus­trial 3D prin­ting. The company was foun­ded in 2015 by Dr. Hans J. Langer, CEO of the EOS Group. With the goal of estab­li­shing gene­ra­tive manu­fac­tu­ring as a key tech­no­logy of the future, AMV finan­ces and deve­lops start­ups that deal with inno­va­tive systems, soft­ware, mate­ri­als or appli­ca­ti­ons in indus­trial 3D prin­ting. In addi­tion, AMV deve­lops and opera­tes appli­ca­tion-speci­fic manu­fac­tu­ring faci­li­ties in which gene­ra­tive manu­fac­tu­ring is used for series produc­tion. Thus, the company offers unique access to tech­no­lo­gies, expert know­ledge and the network of the Langer Group — such as EOS, the world’s leading tech­no­logy provi­der in indus­trial 3D prin­ting of metals and plas­tics, and Scan­Lab, the tech­no­logy leader for high-precis­ion scan­ning solutions.

News

Frank­furt a.M. — With the renow­ned M&A/Private Equity lawyer Dr. Tobias Fenck (photo ), GÖRG has been able to gain a reco­gni­zed tran­sac­tion expert. Tobias Fenck joins the firm on Septem­ber 15, 2018 from Bryan Cave Leigh­ton Pais­ner, where he most recently led the Frank­furt office. Toge­ther with Dr. Fenck, the two asso­cia­tes Markus Beyer and Robert Schind­ler move to the Frank­furt office of GÖRG.

Dr. Fenck advi­ses prima­rily in the areas of M&A, private equity and venture capi­tal. His long-stan­ding clients include funds, medium-sized and owner-mana­ged compa­nies as well as inter­na­tio­nal corpo­ra­ti­ons. In the tran­sac­tion area, he prima­rily advi­ses in the mid-cap and small-mid-cap segment. Recently, Dr. Fenck has advi­sed clients in various service sectors, regu­la­ted indus­tries, and in the tech/IT environment.

Dr. Jens-Diet­rich Mitzlaff from GÖRG’s law firm manage­ment on the addi­tion of Dr. Fenck and his team: “We are very plea­sed to have gained Tobias Fenck, a distin­gu­is­hed lawyer in the field of M&A/private equity. The change confirms our stra­tegy of combi­ning orga­nic growth through annual part­ner appoint­ments from our own ranks with exter­nal, stra­te­gic part­ner appoint­ments. It also demons­tra­tes the attrac­ti­ve­ness of our firm as one of the few remai­ning German inde­pen­dent law firms. Due to his profes­sio­nal compe­tence and prag­ma­tic perso­na­lity, Mr. Fenck fits very well with the culture of our firm.”

Dr. Yorick Ruland, Head of the Corpo­rate Service Line, adds: “With his joining GÖRG, the firm’s M&A/Private Equity/Corporate prac­tice grows to more than 70 lawy­ers. With the three new colle­agues, we are sustain­ably expan­ding our exper­tise and our capa­ci­ties for M&A and private equity tran­sac­tions, both at the Frank­furt office and across the firm.” Follo­wing Dr. Matthias Menke and Florian Wolff (Frank­furt, 2014), Dr. Marcus Herr­mann (Frank­furt, 2016) and Dr. Oliver von Rosen­berg (Colo­gne, 2016), Dr. Tobias Fenck is the fifth part­ner addi­tion in this area within the last four years.

Dr. Matthias Menke, head of the Frank­furt office, added: “Mr. Fenck and his team, to which we will imme­dia­tely add further asso­cia­tes, fit perfectly into our stra­tegy of expan­ding the tran­sac­tion-driven advi­sory busi­ness for the entire firm in Frankfurt.”

Dr. Fenck says: “I am very plea­sed that I will be able to contri­bute my exper­tise to a cross-loca­tion team at GÖRG in the future and that I will be able to accom­pany the expan­sion of the prac­tice. With the broad range of advice and GÖRG’s ancho­ring in the German Mittel­stand, I will now be able to advise my clients even more compre­hen­si­vely. The compe­ten­cies alre­ady available in Frank­furt, parti­cu­larly in the areas of M&A/corporate law, finan­cing, labor law and IP/IT, are a good fit.”

About GÖRG
GÖRG is one of the leading inde­pen­dent commer­cial law firms in Germany. With 290 lawy­ers and tax advi­sors at our five offices in Berlin, Frank­furt am Main, Hamburg, Colo­gne and Munich, we advise well-known dome­stic and foreign compa­nies from all areas of indus­try, trade, real estate, media and services in all core areas of commer­cial law in natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal projects.

News

Munich — Bayern Kapi­tal invests in the start-up eKidz.eu, which has deve­lo­ped a program for mobile devices to faci­li­tate the acqui­si­tion of language and reading skills for child­ren and pupils. The young Munich-based company has now successfully comple­ted its seed finan­cing round with the support of the BayStartUP inves­tor network, recei­ving a high six-figure sum. In addi­tion to Bayern Kapi­tal, six busi­ness angels parti­ci­pa­ted in the round. With the capi­tal, eKidz.eu wants to finance the deve­lo­p­ment of new features of the app, expand the offer to other opera­ting systems and inte­grate addi­tio­nal content.

The start-up was foun­ded in Janu­ary 2017 by a team of three led by Nata­liya Tetruyeva (photo). eKidz.eu plans to use the funds from the seed round to drive the deve­lo­p­ment of the program and finance the roll­out in various Euro­pean count­ries. An English language version is also to be included in the app.

eKidz.eu has deve­lo­ped the first e‑learning program in Germany for so-called immersive language lear­ning speci­fi­cally for child­ren aged 5–10, where they are immer­sed in the virtual world in a natu­ral way when using the program. The app is also suita­ble for child­ren lear­ning German as a second language. The goal is to improve children’s language and reading skills in a natu­ral way. Speci­fi­cally, digi­tal children’s books can be acces­sed via app on mobile devices such as tablets. The appro­xi­m­ately 50 children’s books curr­ently available are syste­ma­ti­cally divi­ded into nine reading levels. Child­ren can have the texts read aloud at the appro­priate level, read for them­sel­ves, and answer compre­hen­sion ques­ti­ons. After­wards, teachers or parents can view the results of the exer­ci­ses. The app is available on iPad; Windows and Android versi­ons are under deve­lo­p­ment. In the future, the app will be supple­men­ted with audio recor­dings and other func­tions. eKidz.eu’s target groups are schools and families.

Dr. Georg Ried, Mana­ging Direc­tor at Bayern Kapi­tal, says: “So far, there has been no e‑learning appli­ca­tion for children’s language lear­ning in Germany. Howe­ver, the market promi­ses great poten­tial, as it is an excel­lent supple­ment to school educa­tion and is ther­e­fore likely to become incre­asingly popu­lar as society beco­mes more digi­ti­zed. Ther­e­fore, we see eKidz.eu with its sophisti­ca­ted app as an exci­ting invest­ment with excel­lent prospects.”

About eKidz.eu
eKidz.eu is the first digi­tal program in Germany for language lear­ning through reading and writing for child­ren. The app for lear­ning German is suita­ble for child­ren aged 5–10. The digi­tal children’s books are syste­ma­ti­cally struc­tu­red into 9 reading levels, intro­du­cing child­ren to fluent reading. Reading using new exci­ting media on iPad and tablet increa­ses children’s curio­sity and moti­va­tion. eKidz.eu uses new tech­no­lo­gies to make access to language lear­ning easier for child­ren and young adults as well. With eKidz.eu, every child recei­ves a mobile language labo­ra­tory in which indi­vi­dual language skills can be strengthened.

About BayStartUP
BayStartUP’s offe­rings give foun­ders, inves­tors and compa­nies orien­ta­tion in Bavaria’s startup scene. With the Bava­rian Busi­ness Plan Compe­ti­ti­ons, an exten­sive coaching offer and Germany’s largest inves­tor network, BayStartUP supports foun­ders and young compa­nies in opti­mi­zing their stra­tegy, buil­ding their busi­ness and finding start-up or growth capi­tal. Through BayStartUP, start­ups have cont­act oppor­tu­ni­ties with more than 280 listed busi­ness angels, over 100 insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors, and finan­cing from 50,000 euros to 5 million euros. Each year, BayStartUP’s inves­tor network brokers around 50 million euros to start­ups. So far, more than 1,600 compa­nies have emer­ged from the Bava­rian Busi­ness Plan Compe­ti­ti­ons. Today, they are active on the market with appro­xi­m­ately 11,400 employees and gene­rate sales of around 1 billion euros. They have about 400 parti­ci­pant teams each year. www.baystartup.de

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 eleven invest­ment funds with an invest­ment volume of around 325 million euros. To date, Bayern Kapi­tal has inves­ted around 273 million euros of equity capi­tal in around 260 inno­va­tive tech­no­logy-orien­ted compa­nies from a wide range of sectors, inclu­ding life scien­ces, soft­ware & IT, mate­ri­als & new mate­ri­als, nano­tech­no­logy and envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­logy. As a result, more than 5,000 jobs have been perma­nently crea­ted in Bava­ria in sustainable compa­nies. www.bayernkapital.de

News

Munich — Alpega acqui­res wtrans­net to signi­fi­cantly expand its freight exch­ange foot­print in Southern and Western Europe. wtrans­net is the leading freight exch­ange in Spain and Portu­gal with a growing foot­print in count­ries such as Italy, France and Germany.

wtrans­net is owned by Wotrant SL, foun­ded in 1996 and head­quar­te­red in Terrassa, Spain. Wotrant has shown attrac­tive growth in the past and crea­ted an appe­al­ing product that is used by more than 11,500 custo­mers. wtrans­net diffe­ren­tia­tes itself from its compe­ti­tors with a strong focus on ensu­ring trust between users of the plat­form, for exam­ple by thoroughly scree­ning any new carrier.

Alpega’s freight exch­an­ges Tele­route, Bursa and 123cargo focus on other geogra­phic areas such as France, Bene­lux and Roma­nia. The combi­na­tion with wtrans­net promi­ses an increase of the liqui­dity in terms of ship­ments and trucks for all freight exch­an­ges in the Group. This will improve the value propo­si­tion to custo­mers who will be able to access a wider market in the future. It is envi­sa­ged that all freight exch­ange brands in the Group, inclu­ding wtrans­net, conti­nue to operate in the market with diffe­rent geogra­phi­cal focus areas.

Alpega intends to conti­nue its invest­ments in inno­vat­ing freight exch­ange products to further improve their attrac­ti­ve­ness to custo­mers by adding func­tion­a­li­ties allo­wing for more conve­ni­ence and higher effi­ci­ency in the daily use of the products.

The manage­ment of Alpega, as well as its majo­rity share­hol­der Castik Capi­tal, Photo: Michael Phil­lips, Invest­ment Part­ner Castik Capi­tal, are grateful to the foun­ders of Wotrant SL, Jaume Esteve, Anna Esteve, Salva­dor Ejar­que, Carmen Grau and Josép Maria Sallés about the oppor­tu­nity to part­ner with Wotrant as this is an exci­ting stra­te­gic addi­tion to the Group.

With the addi­tion of wtrans­net, Alpega is growing its carrier network to signi­fi­cantly more than 70,000 members across Europe, which provi­des for a strong value-add to its custo­mers. Alpega was formed in 2017 as a leading global logi­stics soft­ware company that offers end-to-end solu­ti­ons cove­ring all trans­por­ta­tion needs, inclu­ding trans­por­ta­tion manage­ment solu­ti­ons (“TMS”) and freight exchanges.

About Castik Capital
Castik Capi­tal S.à r.l. (“Castik Capi­tal”) mana­ges invest­ments in private equity. Castik Capi­tal is a Euro­pean multi-stra­tegy invest­ment mana­ger, acqui­ring signi­fi­cant owner­ship posi­ti­ons in Euro­pean private and public compa­nies, where long-term value can be gene­ra­ted through active part­ner­ships with manage­ment teams. — Castik Capi­tal has an invest­ment hori­zon of up to ten years — longer than most other private equity funds. This enables Castik Capi­tal to focus resour­ces on its port­fo­lio compa­nies and ensure sustainable, long-term value creation.

Foun­ded in 2014, Castik Capi­tal is based in Luxem­bourg and focu­ses on iden­ti­fy­ing and deve­lo­ping invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties across Europe. Invest­ments are made by the Luxem­bourg-based fund, EPIC I SLP, the first fund mana­ged by Castik Capi­tal, which had its final close at EUR 1bn in July 2015.

Advi­sor Alpega Group: Will­kie Farr & Gallag­her LLP
Part­ner Dr. Axel Wahl (Lead, Corporate/M&A, Frank­furt) and included Part­ner Luca Leonardi(Corporate/M&A, Milan), Natio­nal Part­ner Didier Willer­main (Corporate/M&A, Brussels), Coun­sel Leonardo Fedrini (Tax, Milan) and Asso­cia­tes, Kars­ten Silber­na­gel, Manuel Köchel, Ilie Manole (all Corporate/M&A, Frank­furt), Virgi­nie Sayag, Marie Aubard (both Corporate/M&A, Paris), Fede­rica Peco­rini (Corporate/M&A, Milan) and Zoé Jans­sen (Corporate/M&A, Brussels).

News

Landshut/Munich — The Bava­rian Growth Fund, mana­ged by Bayern Kapi­tal, is inves­t­ing in VEACT GmbH from Munich as part of a Series B finan­cing round. The start-up has deve­lo­ped a soft­ware-based plat­form that can signi­fi­cantly increase the effi­ci­ency of marke­ting proces­ses in the auto­mo­tive indus­try. The mid-seven-figure finan­cing round is led by new lead inves­tor FIDURA Private Equity Fund. The previous inves­tors Seven­ture, Senovo, Unter­neh­mer­TUM and KfW also parti­ci­pa­ted in the capi­tal increase. The cont­act between inves­tors and VEACT came about at one of the BayStartUP Venture Confe­ren­ces, where outstan­ding young growth compa­nies meet renow­ned venture capi­tal repre­sen­ta­ti­ves, public capi­ta­lists and busi­ness angels from all over Germany.

Through consis­tent use of data, VEACT signi­fi­cantly increa­ses the effi­ci­ency of marke­ting and sales proces­ses in the auto­mo­tive indus­try. VEACT uses all rele­vant invoice, vehicle and service data from the manu­fac­tu­rer or dealer­ship and iden­ti­fies the opti­mal target group for each marke­ting campaign with its self-deve­lo­ped custo­mer vita­lity analy­sis. Using the VEACT Campaign Mana­ger, employees can then launch a suita­ble custo­mer commu­ni­ca­tion with a tail­o­red offer. As a result of this data-driven marke­ting, campaign sales can be increased by up to 200 percent — while simul­ta­neously redu­cing marke­ting costs.

VEACT was foun­ded in Munich in 2011, has around 70 employees and plans to grow to over 100 employees. The start-up aims to deve­lop new digi­tal products and services for targe­ting custo­mers and to drive inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion. To this end, VEACT recently opened foreign offices in Vienna and Madrid. VEACT is thus active in the DACH region, the Iberian Penin­sula, France, Great Britain, Italy, and nume­rous count­ries in Southe­as­tern Europe.

Bavaria’s Minis­ter of Econo­mic Affairs Franz-Josef Pschie­rer says: “VEACT has deve­lo­ped extra­or­di­na­rily well. I ther­e­fore expressly welcome the fact that the Bava­rian Growth Fund is support­ing the further deve­lo­p­ment of VEACT’s promi­sing tech­no­logy and helping to conti­nue the start-up’s success story. VEACT’s clever combi­na­tion of data analy­sis and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence has the poten­tial to rede­fine the rela­ti­onship between custo­mers and compa­nies in the auto­mo­tive sector. And that’s what the Bava­rian Growth Fund is all about: accom­pany­ing compa­nies with inno­va­tive ideas into the next phase.”

About VEACT
VEACT GmbH deve­lops and distri­bu­tes a soft­ware-based plat­form for the digi­ta­liza­tion of marke­ting proces­ses in the auto­mo­tive indus­try. With self-lear­ning tech­no­logy and a broad auto­mo­tive know-how, VEACT supports its custo­mers in making marke­ting and sales proces­ses more effi­ci­ent through data. To do this, VEACT uses all available data sources — e.g. invoices, service histo­ries, satis­fac­tion queries, and campaign data — and conden­ses them into a custo­mer profile. The aim is to process this infor­ma­tion quali­ta­tively in such a way that it can be used to create indi­vi­dual custo­mer profiles and recom­men­da­ti­ons for action (predic­tive custo­mer intel­li­gence). Car dealer­ships and manu­fac­tu­r­ers bene­fit from lower process costs, impro­ved custo­mer loyalty and thus higher sales. VEACT curr­ently employs around 70 people.

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 eleven invest­ment funds with an invest­ment volume of around 325 million euros. To date, Bayern Kapi­tal has inves­ted around 273 million euros of equity capi­tal in around 260 inno­va­tive tech­no­logy-orien­ted compa­nies from a wide range of sectors, inclu­ding life scien­ces, soft­ware & IT, mate­ri­als & new mate­ri­als, nano­tech­no­logy and envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­logy. As a result, more than 5,000 jobs have been perma­nently crea­ted in Bava­ria in sustainable compa­nies. www.bayernkapital.de

News

Munich — Munich-based indus­trial holding ADCURAM Group AG has acqui­red all shares in MEA AG of Aich­ach, Germany, follo­wing appr­oval by the rele­vant compe­ti­tion autho­ri­ties. The aim is to further acce­le­rate the growth course of the tradi­tion-stee­ped cons­truc­tion supplier and drive forward its expansion.

MEA AG, foun­ded in 1886, is one of the leading suppli­ers to the cons­truc­tion indus­try. The products and solu­ti­ons of the inter­na­tio­nal group of compa­nies span three busi­ness areas: Buil­ding Systems (with light wells, windows and other base­ment-rela­ted products), Water Manage­ment (drai­nage systems for buil­dings, roads and street­car lines) and Metal Appli­ca­ti­ons (prima­rily special gratings for indus­try and plant construction).

MEA employs around 700 people and has been growing conti­nuously for years. The annual turno­ver is around 120 million euros. In addi­tion to its head­quar­ters in Aich­ach near Augs­burg, the Group has produc­tion sites in France, the Czech Repu­blic, Roma­nia and China; it also has sales offices in nume­rous other important markets.

“All of MEA’s busi­ness areas have an excel­lent market posi­tion and repre­sent an ideal basis for further growth. In addi­tion to exten­sive invest­ments in the sites and inno­va­tive strength, our long-term stra­tegy also includes the deve­lo­p­ment of new busi­ness areas,” explains Dr. Phil­ipp Gusinde (photo), CEO of ADCURAM Group AG. “Given the still frag­men­ted envi­ron­ment, acqui­si­ti­ons of compa­nies in Germany and abroad that stra­te­gi­cally comple­ment MEA’s product and service port­fo­lio are also possible.”

With exten­sive indus­try know-how from current and previous invest­ments in indus­try and cons­truc­tion, ADCURAM will support the manage­ment team of MEA AG. In addi­tion, colle­agues from ADCURAM’s opera­tio­nal team of experts will assist in opti­mi­zing opera­tio­nal proces­ses and market presence. “In view of the ongo­ing cons­truc­tion boom and the high inter­na­tio­nal demand for quality products, the MEA Group with its strong brand has the best prere­qui­si­tes to conti­nue its success story,” said Henry Bricken­kamp, desi­gna­ted Chair­man of the Super­vi­sory Board of MEA AG and CEO of ADCURAM. MEA CEO Dr. Manfred Hübe­ner adds: “We are plea­sed to become part of an indus­trial group that stands for the successful and sustainable further deve­lo­p­ment of nume­rous well-known compa­nies. Toge­ther we will set the course to initiate the next growth step of MEA.”

About ADCURAM
ADCURAM is a priva­tely owned indus­trial group. ADCURAM acqui­res compa­nies with poten­tial and deve­lops them actively and sustain­ably. For the future growth of the Group, the capi­tal-strong indus­trial holding company has a total of 300 million euros available for acqui­si­ti­ons. With the help of its own 40-strong team of experts, the indus­trial holding company conti­nues to deve­lop the port­fo­lio compa­nies stra­te­gi­cally and opera­tio­nally. Toge­ther, the group gene­ra­tes nearly 500 million euros in sales world­wide (2017) with six holdings and over 2,500 employees. — ADCURAM sees itself as an entre­pre­neu­rial inves­tor and invests in succes­sion plans and corpo­rate spin-offs. www.adcuram.com

About MEA
The MEA Group is an inter­na­tio­nal group of compa­nies with over 130 years of expe­ri­ence in the market, world­wide acti­vi­ties and produc­tion sites in France, the Czech Repu­blic, Roma­nia and China. Inno­va­tive products and solu­ti­ons make the MEA Group one of the leading suppli­ers to the cons­truc­tion indus­try. MEA offers its custo­mers a wide range of products for base­ment cons­truc­tion and drai­nage appli­ca­ti­ons as well as a compre­hen­sive range of gratings. The motto: “Buil­ding Succes”. MEA solu­ti­ons make cons­truc­tion profes­sio­nals’ jobs easier, faster and safer, helping them achieve real produc­ti­vity gains.

News

Berlin — Herter & Co. advi­ses the private equity firm Lind­say Gold­berg LLC on the finan­cing of the acqui­si­tion of the 
Cove­ris Rigid Group
 (“Cove­ris Rigid”), a leading produ­cer of pack­a­ging solu­ti­ons espe­ci­ally for the food industry.

Under the coor­di­na­tion of Herter & Co., a senior second lien finan­cing package of € 437 million was achie­ved, which was provi­ded and syndi­ca­ted through under­wri­ting by book­run­ners and MLA Barclays, HSBC, Morgan Stan­ley and UniCre­dit.

Herter & Co. acted as sole debt advi­sor to Lind­say Gold­berg in this transaction.

Cove­ris Rigid is a leading Euro­pean produ­cer of rigid pack­a­ging solu­ti­ons for the food and perso­nal & home care sectors. The company has 15 produc­tion sites in Europe and one in the USA and counts almost all major food manu­fac­tu­r­ers among its customers.

About Lind­say Goldberg
Lind­say Gold­berg LLC mana­ges equity of more than US-$ 13 billion and is repre­sen­ted in Europe by Lind­say Gold­berg Vogel GmbH, Düssel­dorf. The company supports high-growth medium-sized compa­nies with expert advice and substan­tial finan­cial resour­ces, parti­cu­larly in imple­men­ting an inter­na­tio­nal growth strategy.

About Herter & Co.
Herter & Co. accom­pa­nies compa­nies in the bank-inde­pen­dent selec­tion of the opti­mal finan­cing instru­ments, in the orga­niza­tion of the process, the selec­tion of the finan­ciers and the nego­tia­tion of the commer­cial loan condi­ti­ons up to the disbur­se­ment. In this respect, Herter & Co.’s clients bene­fit from the team’s many years of expe­ri­ence, close networ­king with the finan­cing market, good know­ledge of all finan­cing banks and rele­vant decis­ion-makers, and up-to-date under­stan­ding of the constantly chan­ging market situa­tion and opportunities.

News

Hamburg — DLA Piper advi­sed private equity inves­tor KCK Group on its invest­ment in German tech­no­logy start-up Wunder Mobi­lity. The invest­ment took place as part of a Series B Finan­cing Round that raised $30 million for Wunder Mobility.

KCK Group is an invest­ment fund that invests in a variety of indus­tries, parti­cu­larly medi­cal tech­no­logy, life scien­ces — BioPharma /BioTech & MedTech, energy and other tech­no­logy-rich sectors.

Wunder Mobi­lity is an inter­na­tio­nal provi­der of tech­no­logy for inno­va­tive and future-orien­ted mobi­lity concepts. Foun­ded in 2014 in Hamburg, the company offers the entire spec­trum of new mobi­lity services from a single source. The port­fo­lio includes soft­ware, hard­ware and opera­tio­nal services for smart shut­tles, fleet manage­ment (car, bike and scoo­ter sharing) and carpoo­ling. Exam­ple: The Wunder app media­tes within large, densely popu­la­ted cities with high
Traf­fic volume Carpoo­ling with private indi­vi­du­als. Carpoo­lers help cover the cost of
The driver has to bear the costs of the jour­ney by compen­sa­ting him mone­ta­rily. The prices are fixed and allow
so the driver to cover the main­ten­ance costs, but do not allow profit. -

Advi­sor KCK Group: DLA Piper
Dr. Nils Krause, Part­ner, Dr. Phil­ipp Clemens, Senior Asso­ciate (both Corporate/ M&A, Hamburg)

About DLA Piper
DLA Piper is a global law firm. DLA Piper offers a compre­hen­sive range of legal services in more than 40 count­ries in Europe, Africa, Asia, Austra­lia, the Middle East and North and South America. In Germany, DLA Piper has four offices — Frank­furt am Main, Hamburg, Colo­gne and Munich — and is led by German Mana­ging Part­ners Dr. Benja­min Para­mes­wa­ran and Dr. Konrad Rohde.

News

Frank­furt a. M. - Argos Wityu acqui­res stake in aktiv­op­tik Group. The majo­rity stake in aktiv­op­tik Group (aktiv­op­tik) was acqui­red as part of a succes­sion plan by Argos Wityu through its Fund VII. King & Wood Malle­sons (KWM) advi­sed Argos Wityu on the acqui­si­tion of a majo­rity stake in aktiv­op­tik Group, the fifth largest chain of opti­ci­ans and acou­sti­ci­ans in Germany.

Rolf Schnei­der, foun­der and previous majo­rity share­hol­der of aktiv­op­tik, will conti­nue to hold a mino­rity stake and will conti­nue in his role as CEO to ensure conti­nuity. The tran­sac­tion is still subject to anti­trust clearance.

Foun­ded in 1989 asArgos Sodi­tic, ArgosWityu is an inde­pen­dent, pan-Euro­pean invest­ment firm focu­sed on manage­ment buy-outs, buy-ins and spin-offs of small and medium-sized compa­nies with an enter­prise value between €20 and €200 million. The German office is loca­ted in Frank­furt a. Main. With its invest­ment in aktiv­op­tik, Argos Wityu is now conti­nuing the invest­ment approach of sustainable value enhance­ment through stra­te­gic and opera­tio­nal impro­ve­ments as well as growth, which it has pursued since its foun­da­tion, in Germany as well. https://argos.wityu.fund/

About aktiv­op­tik
aktiv­op­tik, based in Bad Kreuz­nach, Germany, was foun­ded in 1989. The group, which has grown at an above-average rate compared to the opti­ci­ans’ indus­try as a whole since the foun­ding of its first store, is now one of the five largest opti­ci­ans’ and acou­sti­ci­ans’ chains in Germany, with 76 loca­ti­ons, around 560 employees and most recently repor­ted annual sales of around 50 million euros. The proven busi­ness model of aktiv­op­tik forms the basis for conti­nuing the successful growth course of the past 30 years with the new majo­rity share­hol­der Argos Wityu.

Advi­sor to Argos Wityu: King & Wood Mallesons
Dr. Michael Roos (Part­ner), Markus Herz (Part­ner), Floris Schil­ling (Asso­ciate), Dr. Laura Schu­mann (Asso­ciate), Dr. Katrin Thoma (Asso­ciate) (all M&A, Corpo­rate), Dr. Johan­nes Reit­zel (Coun­sel, Labor Law)

Markus Hill (Part­ner, Tax and Structuring)

News

Munich, London, Paris — Silver­fleet Capi­tal, the Euro­pean private equity firm specia­li­zing in “buy to build”, is further expan­ding its invest­ment acti­vi­ties. Alex Breb­bia joins the team as Co-Head for smal­ler mid-market invest­ments and Erik Fuchs comes on board as Co-Head for the Bene­lux region based in Amsterdam.

Alex Breb­bia will support the team from London as a part­ner. Toge­ther with David MacKen­zie, he leads Silver­fleet Capital’s invest­ment acti­vi­ties in the lower and middle market segments. Silver­fleet concen­tra­tes here on compa­nies with an enter­prise value of between 25 and 75 million euros.

He has a long and successful track record inves­t­ing in smal­ler buyouts and most recently served as Mana­ging Part­ner at Spring Ventures. Prior to that, he was co-head of Barclays Ventures. Breb­bia star­ted his private equity career in 1997 at 3i, first in Edin­burgh and later in Dublin. He holds a mecha­ni­cal engi­nee­ring degree from Durham Univer­sity and earned his char­te­red accoun­tant creden­tial with PwC.

Erik Fuchs joins the team from Amster­dam, support­ing Adrian Yurk­wich as co-head of the Bene­lux region. Most recently, he worked at Alpha Private Equity and in corpo­rate finance at Rabo­bank, Lazard and ABN AMRO. Fuchs holds a master’s degree in busi­ness admi­nis­tra­tion from Eras­mus Univer­sity in Rotterdam.

Neil MacDou­gall, Mana­ging Part­ner at Silver­fleet Capi­tal, commen­ted, “We are deligh­ted to have Alex Breb­bia and Erik Fuchs newly on board at Silver­fleet. Both have many years of expe­ri­ence that they will bring to their new roles at Silver­fleet. Toge­ther, we will conti­nue to deve­lop our track record in both the lower and mid-market segments as well as in the Benelux.”

Silver­fleet Capi­tal has a long track record of inves­t­ing in the low to mid-market and Bene­lux. The team has comple­ted 21 smal­ler buyout deals that gene­ra­ted an invest­ment multi­ple of 2.8. This includes the acqui­si­tion of TMF, a services company based in Amster­dam, which Silver­fleet acqui­red along with SNS Reaal’s manage­ment — an exam­ple of a very successful buy-to-build invest­ment. During Silverfleet’s holding period, TMF has made more than 50 add-on acqui­si­ti­ons world­wide. The sale gene­ra­ted a 6.2x invest­ment multi­ple and an inter­nal rate of return (IRR) of 57%.

About Silver­fleet Capital
Silver­fleet Capi­tal has been active as a private equity inves­tor in the Euro­pean mid-market for more than 30 years and curr­ently mana­ges around €1.2 billion with its 30-strong invest­ment team in Munich, London, Paris, Stock­holm and Amsterdam.

Eight invest­ments have alre­ady been made from the second inde­pen­dent fund closed in 2015 with a volume of 870 million euros: The Masai Clot­hing Company, a women’s fashion whole­sa­ler and retailer head­quar­te­red in Denmark; Coven­tya, a French deve­lo­per of specialty chemi­cals; Sigma Compon­ents, a British manu­fac­tu­rer of precis­ion compon­ents for civil avia­tion; Life­time Trai­ning, a British provi­der of trai­ning programs; Pumpen­fa­brik Wangen, a manu­fac­tu­rer of specialty pumps based in Germany; Riviera Travel, a British opera­tor of escor­ted group tours and crui­ses; 7days, a West­pha­lian supplier of medi­cal work­wear; and Prefere Resins, a leading phen­o­lic and amino resin manu­fac­tu­rer in Europe.

Silver­fleet achie­ves value growth through its “buy to build” invest­ment stra­tegy. As part of this stra­tegy, Silver­fleet is acce­le­ra­ting the growth of its subsi­dia­ries by inves­t­ing in new products, produc­tion capa­city and employees, instal­ling successful retail formats or making follow-up acqui­si­ti­ons. Since 2004, Silver­fleet Capi­tal has inves­ted €1.9 billion in 28 companies.

Silver­fleet specia­li­zes in four key indus­tries: Busi­ness and Finan­cial Services, Health­care, Manu­fac­tu­ring, and Retail and Consu­mer Goods. Since 2004, the private equity inves­tor has inves­ted 33 percent of its assets in compa­nies head­quar­te­red in the DACH region, 31 percent in the UK and Ireland, 19 percent in Scan­di­na­via and 17 percent mainly in France and the Bene­lux count­ries (1).

Silver­fleet Capi­tal has a solid invest­ment track record. Most recently, Silver­fleet sold Ipes, a leading provi­der of outsour­cing services to Euro­pean private equity firms (invest­ment multi­ple 3.7x); CCC, one of the leading BPO services provi­ders in Europe, as well as Cimbria, a Danish manu­fac­tu­rer of agri­cul­tu­ral equip­ment (2); Kalle, a German manu­fac­tu­rer of arti­fi­cial sausage pellets (invest­ment multi­ple 3.5x); OFFICE, a UK foot­wear retailer (invest­ment multi­ple 3.4x); and Aesica, a leading phar­maceu­ti­cal CDMO company (invest­ment multi­ple 3.3x).

News

Munich/ London — CANCOM SE has acqui­red The Orga­nised Group Ltd, parent company of UK IT solu­ti­ons provi­der OCSL. The total volume of the tran­sac­tion is appro­xi­m­ately €32 million, of which appro­xi­m­ately €29 million will be paid in cash. The remai­ning part will be sett­led by issuing 12.5 percent of the shares of the acqui­ring British subsi­diary of CANCOM SE to OCSL execu­ti­ves who conti­nue to work for the company. Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek provi­ded legal support for the tran­sac­tion toge­ther with the British law firm Stevens & Bolton LLP.

OCSL is a UK provi­der of cloud and on-premise IT solu­ti­ons. With more than 200 employees, the group of compa­nies gene­ra­ted sales of over 78 million euros in the last fiscal year.

In the future, OCSL will act as a base for the CANCOM Group’s acti­vi­ties in the United King­dom. Syner­gies can be lever­a­ged through the combi­ned use of OCSL’s and CANCOM’s product port­fo­lios, capa­bi­li­ties and part­ner rela­ti­onships. The acqui­si­tion makes CANCOM Group a major player in the country’s IT market.

CANCOM SE is a global, listed provi­der of IT infra­struc­ture and IT services with conso­li­da­ted reve­nues of well over €1 billion and nearly 3,000 employees. The company, head­quar­te­red in Munich, accom­pa­nies compa­nies into the digi­tal future as a “Digi­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Part­ner”. The range of solu­ti­ons includes consul­ting, imple­men­ta­tion and services.

Most recently, Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek advi­sed CANCOM SE in spring 2018 on the acqui­si­tion of UCC and mana­ged services provi­der Ocean Intel­li­gent Commu­ni­ca­ti­ons, which now opera­tes under the name CANCOM Colla­bo­ra­tion and Communication.

Advi­sors to CANCOM SE: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek, Munich
Boris Dürr, photo (lead, M&A),
Marcel Greu­bel (Corporate/M&A),
Chris­tian Schild, LL.M. (M&A),
Astrid Well­hö­ner, LL.M. (labor law)
Dr. Rein­hard Siegert (Antitrust/Distribution Law)
Dr. Ruth Schnei­der (Antitrust/Distribution Law), all Munich

News

Katlen­burg-Lindau/ Hamburg — Taylor Wessing, led by Frank­furt-based part­ners Hassan Sohbi (photo ) and Michael Sinhart, advi­sed Omni­Guide Holdings Inc, a leading US medi­cal tech­no­logy company, on the acqui­si­tion of LISA Laser Products OHG, a tech­no­logy leader in surgi­cal lasers based in Katlen­burg-Lindau. The acqui­si­tion was also accom­pa­nied for Omni­Guide by the US commer­cial law firm Wilson Sonsini Good­rich & Rosati. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose details of the acquisition.

Omni­Guide specia­li­zes in the deve­lo­p­ment of medi­cal devices that use advan­ced laser tech­no­lo­gies to help remove tumors from pati­ents through precise surgi­cal proce­du­res while preser­ving healthy tissue. For its part, Omni­Guide is part of the port­fo­lio of Orbi­Med, a leading global invest­ment firm focu­sed on the health­care sector and head­quar­te­red in New York.

LISA Laser Products OHG, based in Katlen­burg-Lindau, Germany, has in turn been regarded as a bench­mark for surgi­cal laser systems since its foun­da­tion in 1989, parti­cu­larly in the deve­lo­p­ment of holmium and thulium lasers. Espe­ci­ally in the field of urology, products deve­lo­ped by LISA-Laser and comple­men­tary products such as laser fibers, endo­sco­pes and access­ories have become an important form of therapy.

The acqui­si­tion enables the compa­nies to combine LISA Laser’s Thulium and Holmium laser tech­no­lo­gies with OmniGuide’s CO2 lasers in the inte­rest of successfully trea­ting patients.

News

Hamburg — With the support of Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek ’s M&A team, Hamburg-based ATH Alto­naer-Tech­no­lo­gie-Holding GmbH — owner of KROENERT GmbH & Co KG — acqui­red all shares in Coatema Coating Machi­nery GmbH, based in Dorma­gen. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price.

KROENERT and Coatema are machine and plant manu­fac­tu­r­ers in the coating and conver­ting indus­try and global leaders in their respec­tive market segments. The merger of the compa­nies under ATH crea­tes an alli­ance with a broad product port­fo­lio for coating appli­ca­ti­ons and high inno­va­tive strength.

Both compa­nies and brands will remain inde­pen­dent and conti­nue to operate from their respec­tive loca­ti­ons. Thus, the previous mana­ging part­ners Dr. Andreas Giess­mann and Detlef Dieke will also conti­nue to act as mana­ging direc­tors of Coatema.

Dr. Tarik Vardag, Mana­ging Direc­tor of ATH and KROENERT, empha­si­zes: “As a leading manu­fac­tu­rer of custo­mi­zed coating and lami­na­ting systems, the merger will enable us to further expand our inter­na­tio­nal market posi­tion and, above all, set new tech­no­lo­gi­cal stan­dards. We are convin­ced by Coatema’s product range and inno­va­tive strength, which are supported in parti­cu­lar by the close networ­king with rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment faci­li­ties. KROENERT and Coatema comple­ment each other ideally and I am very plea­sed about the future cooperation.”

Under the umbrella of ATH Alto­naer-Tech­no­lo­gie-Holding GmbH, the compa­nies KROENERT, DRYTEC and ZAE provide inno­va­tive tech­no­lo­gies, effi­ci­ent machi­nes and drive systems for custo­mers world­wide. ATH is head­quar­te­red in Hamburg and employs a total of around 390 people.

The consul­tancy was carried out in coope­ra­tion with ECOVIS Hansea­ti­sche Mittel­stands Treu­hand GmbH (WP/StB Dr. Hans-Werner Kort­mann and WP/StB Astrid Busch).

Advi­sor ATH: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek
Dr. Stefan Duhn­krack, Photo (Lead Part­ner / M&A),
Dr. Hans Henning Hoff (Corpo­rate, Real Estate),
Dr. Stefan Brett­hauer (Commer­cial),
Dr. Chris­tina Etzel (Public Law),
Dr. Johan-Michel Menke, LL.M. (labor law), all Hamburg
Dr. Anton Horn (IP), Düsseldorf

News

Berlin — Samuel Aebi of the law firm Vogel Heerma Waitz advi­sed mitte­mitte on a USD 10.6 million seed finan­cing round. The finan­cing round is led by Danone Mani­festo Ventures, the New York venture arm of Danone, VisVi­res New Protein Capi­tal and Kärcher New Venture. Mitte­mitte is using the capi­tal for a new type of water system that combi­nes puri­fi­ca­tion and mine­ra­liza­tion of tap water in one device for home use.

Advi­sor to mitt­te­mitte: Vogel Heerma Waitz
Samuel Aebi (Corpo­rate)

About Vogel Heerma Waitz
Vogel Heerma Waitz has been opera­ting since May 2014 as a law firm specia­li­zing in growth capi­tal, tech­no­logy and media, based in Berlin, which can draw on a total of over 50 years of expe­ri­ence of its now five part­ners in connec­tion with growth capi­tal financings.

News

Hamburg/ Lipp­stadt — The new FinTech company troy is chan­ging the tradi­tio­nal debt coll­ec­tion indus­try with methods from marke­ting and CRM, it revo­lu­tio­ni­zes the debt coll­ec­tion process and combi­nes machine lear­ning with friend­li­ness. The goal of the start-up with loca­ti­ons in Lipp­stadt (NRW) and Hamburg is to main­tain the rela­ti­onship between company and custo­mer in addi­tion to the realiza­tion of receiv­a­bles. To achieve this, troy’s foun­ders, Philip Rürup and Till Völzke (photo), rely on multich­an­nel commu­ni­ca­tion, as well as indi­vi­dua­li­zed and data-driven approa­ches combi­ned with deca­des of debt coll­ec­tion expertise.

The two foun­ders and mana­ging direc­tors of troy, Philip Rürup and Till Völzke, foun­ded their FinTech in 2017. The first clients from the energy supply, publi­shing and multich­an­nel retail sectors are alre­ady using troy’s new debt coll­ec­tion service. In May 2018, troy was able to close a seven-figure finan­cing round and win over seve­ral inves­tors, inclu­ding High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF), 3E Capi­tal Group and seve­ral busi­ness angels from the FinTech world. The company is going public with the launch in August 2018.

The inves­tors
Lead inves­tors in troy include HTGF, expe­ri­en­ced serial foun­der Hans-Jürgen Even with his Foun­der Cata­lyst 3E Capi­tal Group, as well as busi­ness angels from the FinTech world, inclu­ding Tamaz Geor­gadze, Frank Freund and Michael Stephan (all Raisin / Welt­spa­ren), Gamal Mouka­bary and Andreas Bermig (both Bonify).

“About half of consu­mers fall behind on payments due to forgetful­ness or short-term shorta­ges. Nevert­hel­ess, these custo­mers have so far been trea­ted in the coll­ec­tion process as if they had deli­bera­tely not paid. The process is imper­so­nal, bureau­cra­tic and unplea­sant. It is obvious that compa­nies usually lose their custo­mers as a result. We change that! We conti­nue to treat the custo­mer as a custo­mer, using tried-and-tested methods of multich­an­nel CRM, targe­ting approa­ches and machine lear­ning. In this way, we reach custo­mers via the commu­ni­ca­tion chan­nel that is most conve­ni­ent for them and main­tain the custo­mer rela­ti­onship for our clients,” says Philip Rürup, foun­der and CEO of troy.

“It is parti­cu­larly plea­sing that the indi­vi­dua­li­zed, friendly commu­ni­ca­tion as well as flexi­ble proces­ses also have a posi­tive effect on the reco­very rate. This rein­forces our mission to become the most custo­mer-friendly debt coll­ec­tion company in Europe,” adds Till Völzke.

About troy
troy is a FinTech that specia­li­zes in custo­mer-friendly, digi­tal debt coll­ec­tion. The startup opti­mi­zes the custo­mer expe­ri­ence in debt coll­ec­tion and thus preser­ves the custo­mer rela­ti­onship. To do this, troy uses tools and methods from marke­ting and CRM and combi­nes them with data and machine lear­ning. troy was foun­ded in 2017 by Philip Rürup and Till Völzke in Lipp­stadt and curr­ently has loca­ti­ons in Lipp­stadt and Hamburg. The first clients come from the energy supply, publi­shing and multich­an­nel retail sectors. Lead inves­tors include the public-private part­ner­ship HTGF, High-Tech Grün­der­fonds, in which the German Fede­ral Minis­try for Econo­mic Affairs and Energy is also invol­ved, 3E Capi­tal Group and busi­ness angels from the FinTech world inclu­ding Tamaz Geor­gadze, Frank Freund and Michael Stephan (all Raisin / Welt­spa­ren), Gamal Mouka­bary and Andreas Bermig (both Bonify).

News

Düssel­dorf — For better air in North Rhine-West­pha­lian cities, NRW.BANK is opti­mi­zing its promo­tion offer: Compa­nies can curr­ently save up to one percent inte­rest on the purchase of elec­tric cars and muni­ci­pa­li­ties can invest inte­rest-free in cons­truc­tion measu­res that bene­fit air pollu­tion control.

“By adap­ting our deve­lo­p­ment programs, we are crea­ting an addi­tio­nal incen­tive to invest in air pollu­tion control in North Rhine-West­pha­lia, thus support­ing the state in achie­ving its envi­ron­men­tal goals,” says Eckhard Forst, Chair­man of the Mana­ging Board of NRW.BANK.

Thanks to an addi­tio­nal inte­rest subs­idy from NRW.BANK, the inte­rest rate in the NRW.BANK.Electromobility program for compa­nies now starts at zero percent. This makes the loan up to one percent chea­per than other econo­mic deve­lo­p­ment programs. With the product adjus­t­ment, the mini­mum loan amount was also redu­ced to 10,000 euros and the group of appli­cants was expan­ded: from now on, non-profit compa­nies can also take advan­tage of the loan in addi­tion to free­lan­cers, medium-sized and muni­ci­pal companies.

“We want to make North Rhine-West­pha­lia the leading fede­ral state in the field of elec­tro­mo­bi­lity and make it easier for people to opt for clean vehic­les,” says NRW Econo­mics and Inno­va­tion Minis­ter Andreas Pink­wart. “With the program adjus­t­ments, we are proac­tively promo­ting new regis­tra­ti­ons of elec­tric cars. That’s how we’re getting elec­tro­mo­bi­lity on the road.”

In addi­tion, NRW.BANK also has an offer for muni­ci­pa­li­ties to avoid driving bans in North Rhine-West­pha­lian cities: A special funding option for muni­ci­pal air pollu­tion control measu­res has been embedded in the NRW.BANK.Kommunal Invest program. Muni­ci­pa­li­ties can use it, for exam­ple, to invest in vehic­les without combus­tion engi­nes and to finance urban deve­lo­p­ment measu­res that bene­fit air pollu­tion control. The inte­rest rate is curr­ently also zero percent. www.nrwbank.de/elektromobilität

About NRW.BANK
NRW.BANK is the deve­lo­p­ment bank for North Rhine-West­pha­lia. It supports its owner, the state of NRW, in its struc­tu­ral and econo­mic policy tasks. In its three promo­tion fields “Economy”, “Housing” and “Infrastructure/Municipalities”, NRW.BANK uses a broad range of promo­tion instru­ments: from low-inte­rest deve­lo­p­ment loans to equity finan­cing and advi­sory services. It works toge­ther with all banks and savings banks in NRW on a compe­ti­tion-neutral basis. In its promo­tion acti­vi­ties, NRW.BANK also takes into account exis­ting offers from the fede­ral govern­ment, the state and the Euro­pean Union.

News

London, Munich — Oakley Capi­tal Private Equity (“Oakley”), a leading Euro­pean private equity firm focu­sed on the mid-market segment, today announ­ced the opening of its Munich office. With this step, the invest­ment company under­lines the importance of the DACH region for its invest­ment activities.

The new office will be led by Dr. Ralf Schrem­per, Part­ner at Oakley Capi­tal. He joined Oakley in 2017 and has more than 15 years of M&A and corpo­rate invest­ment expe­ri­ence. Ralf Schrem­per is supported by a German-spea­king invest­ment team with exten­sive expe­ri­ence in the sectors in which Oakley specia­li­zes — consu­mer, educa­tion and TMT (tech­no­logy, media and telecommunications).

The office opening unders­cores Oakley’s successful invest­ment history in the German-spea­king region. Oakley’s current German invest­ments include Schü­ler­hilfe, a leading provi­der of profes­sio­nal tuto­ring services, and Career Part­ner Group, one of the leading full-service provi­ders of work­force deve­lo­p­ment and private higher education.

In the past, Oakley held stakes in the online dating plat­form Parship Elite and the online consu­mer portal Veri­vox, among others. These invest­ments were sold in 2018.

The Munich office will support Oakley’s stra­tegy to conti­nue to invest in mid-sized compa­nies in Western Europe and deli­ver conti­nuous value crea­tion through an exten­sive network of inter­na­tio­nal entre­pre­neurs and indus­try experts.

Ralf Schrem­per, Part­ner at Oakley Capi­tal: “We are deligh­ted to open Oakley’s first office outside the UK in Munich. As a growth inves­tor, there are a number of attrac­tive invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties for us in Germany in our prefer­red sectors of Consu­mer, Educa­tion and TMT. With our new office in Munich, we are now ideally posi­tio­ned to realize further attrac­tive invest­ments in the DACH region.”

Peter Dubens, Mana­ging Part­ner and Co-Foun­der of Oakley Capi­tal, added: “Opening an office in Germany is a logi­cal step for Oakley, which will further streng­then our ability to create value through targe­ted invest­ments. We have alre­ady achie­ved signi­fi­cant success in the DACH region. With the opening of the new office, we intend to conti­nue on this path of success.”

About Oakley Capi­tal Private Equity L.P..
Oakley Capi­tal Private Equity L.P. and its succes­sor funds, Oakley Capi­tal Private Equity II and Oakley Capi­tal Private Equity III, are non-traded, mid-market focu­sed private equity funds whose objec­tive is to realize signi­fi­cant long-term capi­tal appre­cia­tion for their inves­tors. Oakley Capi­tal has 1.5 billion euros under manage­ment. The funds’ invest­ment stra­tegy focu­ses on corpo­rate invest­ments in indus­tries that offer the poten­tial for growth, conso­li­da­tion and perfor­mance improvement.

News

Munich — Munich-based startup BLICKFELD is deve­lo­ping sensors for self-driving cars — and has recei­ved milli­ons in new funding. Sensors are the basis for auto­no­mous cars. They make the vehic­les “see” by scan­ning the envi­ron­ment and provi­ding 3D images. The Munich-based startup Blick­feld promi­ses to offer a parti­cu­larly afforda­ble vari­ant. To do this, the startup relies on sili­con structures.

Recently, the company foun­ded in 2017 by Mathias Müller, Florian Petit and Rolf Wojtech (photo from left to right) recei­ved new money. The exis­ting inves­tors, Flix­bus inves­tor Unter­neh­mer­Tum Venture Capi­tal Part­ners, Fluxu­nit, the invest­ment arm of light­ing manu­fac­tu­rer Osram, High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) and Tengel­mann Ventures have increased their invest­ment to 8.5 million euros. In a first round they had given 3.6 million euros.

The fresh capi­tal is to be used, among other things, for series produc­tion, which will start next year. The plan is to deli­ver “seve­ral hundred” sensors to custo­mers in the first half of 2019 as part of the initial pilot series, he said. The startup explains that it is curr­ently nego­tia­ting with major auto­mo­tive suppli­ers, among others. How much the first sensors produ­ced by Euro­pean manu­fac­tu­r­ers will cost has not yet been deter­mi­ned, they say. In the long term, the price should drop to a few hundred euros.
www.blickfeld.com

News

Wupper­tal — GESCO AG, listed in the Prime Stan­dard, has taken over Sommer & Strass­bur­ger GmbH & Co KG, Bretten. Foun­ded in 1973, the company designs and manu­fac­tures process plants, espe­ci­ally for the phar­maceu­ti­cal, food, water tech­no­logy and chemi­cal industries.

As a high-end stain­less steel proces­sor, Sommer & Strass­bur­ger has posi­tio­ned itself as a tech­no­lo­gi­cally leading supplier in the rele­vant custo­mer indus­tries with its own brands Asep­tra­Line, Filtra­Line and Membra­Line for process vessels, filter and membrane housings. At the ACHEMA trade fair in June 2018, the company also presen­ted the Resi­Line product line, a new type of corro­sion-resistant membrane housing made of poly­mer-coated stain­less steel for the passage of subs­tances with a high salt or chlo­rine content, for example.

GESCO AG takes over 100 % of the shares, the owner Michael Hilpp remains active in the company as mana­ging direc­tor. With around 125 employees, Sommer & Strass­bur­ger gene­ra­tes sales of just under €20 million. Within GESCO Group, the company is allo­ca­ted to the Produc­tion Process Tech­no­logy segment. The acqui­si­tion is subject to appr­oval by the anti­trust authorities.

Sommer & Strass­bur­ger has deca­des of expe­ri­ence, inten­sive mate­ri­als know-how and its own system deve­lo­p­ment. The company has the process engi­nee­ring exper­tise to under­stand its custo­mers’ proces­ses and deve­lop func­tion­ally relia­ble solu­ti­ons. A high level of verti­cal inte­gra­tion, inclu­ding in-house surface treat­ment, offers high-end quality for the respec­tive custo­mer industries.

Michael Hilpp: “In order to ensure the success and contin­ued exis­tence of my company, I have trans­fer­red it to an indus­trial group. In doing so, GESCO, as a long-term orien­ted owner, secu­res my succes­sion and actively supports me with its indus­trial exper­tise in the next growth steps. My company reta­ins its inde­pen­dence and at the same time bene­fits from the support of GESCO AG as well as from the exch­ange with its sister compa­nies — an ideal constel­la­tion in my opinion.”

Ralph Rumberg, Spokes­man of the Execu­tive Board of GESCO AG: “Sommer & Strass­bur­ger has consis­t­ently deve­lo­ped from a contract manu­fac­tu­rer to a focu­sed supplier with its own product range over the past 20 years. The company serves deman­ding custo­mers in attrac­tive markets with high-quality tech­no­logy — all in all, a true hidden cham­pion that is an excel­lent fit for GESCO Group. We look forward to inte­gra­ting Sommer & Strass­bur­ger quickly and actively deve­lo­ping it further toge­ther with Mr. Hilpp.”

About GESCO
GESCO AG is an indus­trial group with market and tech­no­logy leading compa­nies in the capi­tal goods indus­try with a focus on produc­tion process tech­no­logy, resource tech­no­logy, health and infra­struc­ture tech­no­logy and mobi­lity tech­no­logy. As a company listed in the Prime Stan­dard, GESCO AG gives private and insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors access to a port­fo­lio of hidden cham­pi­ons in the German indus­trial SME sector.

News

Munich — With Buil­ding Radar, ASTUTIA Ventures welco­mes a new company to its port­fo­lio. The Munich-based start-up offers a B2B plat­form for cons­truc­tion projects that allows suppli­ers and service provi­ders to search projects world­wide and iden­tify them at an early stage. In real time, Buil­ding Radar provi­des multi-laye­red data and infor­ma­tion across all design and cons­truc­tion phases, inclu­ding satel­lite imagery, analy­tics and indus­try trends. “We are looking forward to working with the foun­ders Paul Indin­ger and Leopold Neuerbur,” said Bene­dict Roden­stock (photo), foun­der and mana­ging direc­tor of ASTUTIA Ventures.

The Buil­ding Radar data analy­tics plat­form allows compa­nies to find out about all cons­truc­tion projects near them or around the world, track your compe­ti­tors’ next moves, or evaluate new stra­te­gic part­ner­ships. The satel­lite-assis­ted search algo­rithm makes it possi­ble to disco­ver new cons­truc­tion projects months earlier than compe­ti­tors, to verify data on projects (e.g. cons­truc­tion phase or buil­ding size) and to perform intel­li­gent real-time analy­ses, for exam­ple on indus­try trends.

About ASTUTIA Ventures
As an owner-mana­ged, inde­pen­dent invest­ment company, ASTUTIA Ventures has been inves­t­ing in inno­va­tive compa­nies with outstan­ding growth poten­tial for 10 years now. Our focus is on the Inter­net and digi­tal media. We offer foun­ders and compa­nies in the early growth phase venture capi­tal, a top-class inter­na­tio­nal network and cross-indus­try know-how for successful development.

News

Leip­zig — c‑LEcta, a leading global biotech­no­logy company focu­sed on enzyme engi­nee­ring and appli­ca­ti­ons in regu­la­ted markets such as the food and phar­maceu­ti­cal indus­tries, has closed a finan­cing round with Capri­corn Venture Part­ners and the invest­ment company bm|t. The capi­tal increase provi­des the company with growth capi­tal as well as valuable access to an inter­na­tio­nal network.

c‑LEcta alre­ady has a diver­si­fied share­hol­der struc­ture. In addi­tion to the foun­der Dr. Marc Stru­halla, private inves­tors from the indus­try and German insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors, the company has now been able to expand its circle of share­hol­ders with two new inter­na­tio­nal inves­tors. The lead inves­tor Capri­corn Venture Part­ners is an inde­pen­dent, inter­na­tio­nally orien­ted invest­ment company based in Leuven (Belgium). Capri­corn invests in inno­va­tive, tech­no­logy-driven compa­nies and has a multi­di­sci­pli­nary team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers. As part of the finan­cing round, Capri­corn parti­ci­pa­ted through two funds, Capri­corn Sustainable Chemis­try Fund NV and Quest for Growth NV.

The German invest­ment company bm|t invests in high-growth tech­no­logy compa­nies led by teams of entre­pre­neurs. bm|t inves­ted via MFT Mittel­stands-Fonds Thürin­gen GmbH & Co. KG. The new capi­tal will be used in parti­cu­lar to finance the appr­oval, market launch and scaling of products from the project pipe­line on a commer­cial scale, the further deve­lo­p­ment of the pipe­line and the expan­sion of inter­na­tio­nal sales.

Ludwig Goris, Invest­ment Mana­ger of Capri­corn, explains the invest­ment in c‑LEcta: “We see that global mega­trends and chal­lenges in human nutri­tion are paving the way for indus­trial biotech compa­nies like c‑LEcta. Since its incep­tion, c‑LEcta has built a remar­kable track record in tech­no­logy and product deve­lo­p­ment and has been able to vali­date this with a growing custo­mer base of leading phar­maceu­ti­cal, chemi­cal and food ingre­di­ent compa­nies. In addi­tion, the highly quali­fied team in Leip­zig convin­ced us.

Foun­der and CEO Dr. Marc Stru­halla and his moti­va­ted team have crea­ted a great company that is at an attrac­tive inflec­tion point where the current product pipe­line provi­des the foun­da­tion for an acce­le­ra­ted growth trajec­tory. We are proud to be instru­men­tal in this funding round and to contri­bute to c‑LEcta’s success.”

Kevin Reeder, CEO of bm|t (Photo), adds: “bm|t, which has an exten­sive life scien­ces port­fo­lio, is very opti­mi­stic about the invest­ment in c‑LEcta. We were very impres­sed by the strong team, the successful deve­lo­p­ment and the compel­ling product pipe­line. We believe c‑LEcta is well posi­tio­ned to tran­si­tion into a large biotech­no­logy company.” The two new inves­tors expand the group of share­hol­ders, which previously included the follo­wing inves­tors: SHS Gesell­schaft für Betei­li­gungs­ma­nage­ment mbH, High-Tech Grün­der­fonds Manage­ment GmbH, KfW Banken­gruppe, Dr. Marc Stru­halla, Warning Betei­li­gungs GmbH, Dr. Bader Betei­li­gungs GmbH and Arthur Stein­metzBetei­li­gungs GmbH.

In order to streng­then the manage­ment as well as the execu­tive board and to support the targe­ted growth, Thomas Pfaadt (45) has recently been appoin­ted CFO at c‑LEcta. He enri­ches the company with his expe­ri­ence in corpo­rate finance and M&A. Previously, Thomas Pfaadt worked for a private, owner-opera­ted opera­tor of reha­bi­li­ta­tion clinics and for a family-owned inte­gra­ted health­care group. He also gained expe­ri­ence as an invest­ment banker and consul­tant focu­sed on the health­care indus­try. Thomas Pfaadt comm­ents on what attracts him to c‑LEcta: “c‑LEcta is a young, lean and dyna­mic company and at the same time a global player. We are addres­sing the major chal­lenges of modern human nutri­tion. A growing popu­la­tion and an incre­asing demand for healthy, natu­ral foods require solu­ti­ons through enzyme tech­no­lo­gies that the chemi­cal indus­try cannot provide. We are plea­sed to have attrac­ted the two new inves­tors to further deve­lop our company and seize the oppor­tu­ni­ties that present themselves.”

c‑LEcta is a fully inte­gra­ted biotech­no­logy company focu­sed on enzyme engi­nee­ring and biopro­cess deve­lo­p­ment for regu­la­ted markets such as the food and phar­maceu­ti­cal indus­tries. c‑LEcta is based in Leip­zig and curr­ently employs around 60 people. The company is broadly posi­tio­ned and covers a large part of the value chain: the rese­arch and engi­nee­ring of enzy­mes through to commer­cial produc­tion as well as the manu­fac­ture of other high-quality biotech­no­lo­gi­cal products are part of c‑LEcta’s service reper­toire — either as in-house deve­lo­p­ments or in close coope­ra­tion with indus­trial part­ners. c‑LEcta has comple­ted more than 30 enzyme engi­nee­ring projects in the last 5 years with a success rate of >90%. Just a few weeks ago, c‑LEcta became the first company to announce a major breakth­rough in a process to mass produce a plant-based sweete­ner with a sugar-like flavor. In addi­tion, two other products with high market poten­tial are at an advan­ced stage of deve­lo­p­ment and the project pipe­line includes seve­ral promi­sing candi­da­tes for the multi-billion euro food ingre­di­ent market. The finan­cing is inten­ded to enable c‑LEcta to grow stron­gly and to

About c‑LEcta
c‑LEcta is a fully inte­gra­ted biotech­no­logy company focu­sed on enzyme engi­nee­ring and biopro­cess deve­lo­p­ment for regu­la­ted markets such as the food and phar­maceu­ti­cal indus­tries. c‑LEcta is based in Leip­zig and curr­ently employs around 60 people. The company is broadly posi­tio­ned and covers a large part of the value chain: the rese­arch and engi­nee­ring of enzy­mes through to commer­cial produc­tion as well as the manu­fac­ture of other high-quality biotech­no­lo­gi­cal products are part of c‑LEcta’s service reper­toire — either as in-house deve­lo­p­ments or in close coope­ra­tion with indus­trial part­ners. c‑LEcta has comple­ted more than 30 enzyme engi­nee­ring projects in the last 5 years with a success rate of >90%. Just a few weeks ago, c‑LEcta became the first company to announce a major breakth­rough in a process to mass produce a plant-based sweete­ner with a sugar-like flavor. In addi­tion, two other products with high market poten­tial are at an advan­ced stage of deve­lo­p­ment and the project pipe­line includes seve­ral promi­sing candi­da­tes for the multi-billion euro food ingre­di­ent market. The funding is expec­ted to enable c‑LEcta to grow stron­gly and lift food ingre­di­ents out of the project pipe­line and into commer­cial produc­tion scale.

CEO Dr. Marc Stru­halla explains the core tech­no­logy of c‑LEcta and the capi­tal increase: “The perfor­mance requi­re­ments for enzy­mes used in indus­trial proces­ses are in most cases very speci­fic and diffe­rent from natu­rally occur­ring vari­ants. Enzy­mes ther­e­fore need to be adapted to indus­trial condi­ti­ons by enzyme engi­nee­ring and c‑LEcta has one of the most effi­ci­ent tech­no­logy plat­forms in this field. For enzyme opti­miza­tion as well as for the deve­lo­p­ment of arti­fi­cial enzyme acti­vi­ties, we use proprie­tary methods inspi­red by nature. The indus­trial appli­ca­tion of these tech­no­lo­gies holds great market poten­tial. The strong finan­cial base and valuable inter­na­tio­nal network we have gained through this finan­cing round now gives us the oppor­tu­nity to exploit the full poten­tial of our tech­no­lo­gies and our people. With Capri­corn Venture Part­ners and bm|t, we were able to bring on board two active inves­tors who can contri­bute signi­fi­cantly to our inter­na­tio­nal growth ambi­ti­ons. I am all the more plea­sed that Thomas Pfaadt will support us as our new CFO. Our goal is for c‑LEcta’s tech­no­lo­gies to be used in many things in ever­y­day life in the future.”

About Capri­corn Venture Partners
Capri­corn Venture Part­ners is an inde­pen­dent Euro­pean mana­ger of venture capi­tal and equity funds inves­t­ing in inno­va­tive Euro­pean compa­nies with a compe­ti­tive tech­no­lo­gi­cal advan­tage. It is based in Leuven (Belgium) and is licen­sed by the FSMA (Finan­cial Services and Markets Autho­rity in Belgium).

About bm|t
Erfurt-based bm|t betei­li­gungs­ma­nage­ment thürin­gen gmbh (bm|t) is the largest growth inves­tor in Thurin­gia. bm|t invests in inno­va­tive compa­nies with high growth poten­tial in all indus­tries and phases of the company life cycle.

About c‑LEcta
c‑LEcta is a fully inte­gra­ted, world-leading biotech­no­logy company focu­sed on enzyme engi­nee­ring and biopro­cess deve­lo­p­ment for regu­la­ted markets such as the food and phar­maceu­ti­cal indus­tries. The Leip­zig-based company has estab­lished itself as a leading provi­der in the realiza­tion of high-quality biotech­no­lo­gi­cal products, whether in in-house deve­lo­p­ments or in close coope­ra­tion with indus­try. c‑LEcta curr­ently employs around 60 people.

c‑LEcta deli­vers cost-effi­ci­ent and sustainable produc­tion proces­ses that open up new markets and enable better pene­tra­tion of exis­ting markets. The company excels in the rapid and effi­ci­ent deve­lo­p­ment of best-in-class biotech solu­ti­ons and the successful launch and commer­cia­liza­tion of the resul­ting products. This allows c‑LEcta to unleash the unique poten­tial of its core tech­no­lo­gies. c‑LEcta alre­ady has more than 10 successfully marke­ted, high-quality, indus­trial biotech products.

About High-Tech Gründerfonds
The seed inves­tor High-Tech Gründerfonds(HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start­ups with growth poten­tial. With a total volume of 892.5 million euros distri­bu­ted over three funds (272 million euros Fund I, 304 million euros Fund II, 316.5 million euros Fund III) and an inter­na­tio­nal part­ner network, HTGF has alre­ady supported 506 start-ups since 2005. His team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and startup experts supports the young compa­nies with know-how, entre­pre­neu­rial spirit and passion. The focus is on high-tech start-ups in the soft­ware, media and Inter­net sectors, as well as hard­ware, auto­ma­tion, health­care, chemi­cals and life scien­ces. More than €1.8 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in over 1,300 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. The fund has also successfully sold shares in more than 90 companies.

News

Frank­furt am Main — ALANTRA advi­sed United Digi­tal Group (UDG), a leading German digi­tal marke­ting agency, on the sale of its perfor­mance marke­ting divi­sion (M&PM) to Omni­com Media Group Germany GmbH. ALANTRA’s Frank­furt team supported UDG toge­ther with ALANTRA’s US TMT (Tech­no­logy, Media and Tele­coms) specia­lists in the imple­men­ta­tion of this stra­te­gic decis­ion. The tran­sac­tion is still subject to appr­oval by the rele­vant compe­ti­tion authorities.

As part of a struc­tu­red sales process, the ALANTRA team presen­ted the M&PM divi­sion to the world’s leading agency networks and consul­tancies as well as finan­cial inves­tors. The successful dive­st­ment unders­cores ALANTRA’s exten­sive expe­ri­ence and exper­tise in the digi­tal agency, digi­tal consul­ting and digi­tal marke­ting market, which is worth around $300 billion world­wide. This is ALANTRA’s third tran­sac­tion in this sector in Germany and the fifte­enth world­wide in the past five years. After the dives­ti­ture, M&PM will conti­nue to provide perfor­mance marke­ting services to UDG through a stra­te­gic part­ner­ship with Omni­com Media Group.

Marcus H. Starke, CEO of UDG United Digi­tal Group, said: “We are deligh­ted to have found the ideal new owner for M&PM in Omni­com Media Group. ALANTRA’s inte­gra­ted global team has been a valued part­ner in this process and has deli­vered on each of the objec­ti­ves we defi­ned for this mandate. ALANTRA’s deep indus­try exper­tise, successful posi­tio­ning of M&PM, and estab­lished rela­ti­onships with poten­tial acqui­rers clearly set them apart from the compe­ti­tion. UDG and M&PM’s manage­ment are extre­mely plea­sed with the outcome of the transaction.”

UDG’s M&PM divi­sion is one of the last remai­ning large and focu­sed perfor­mance marke­ting provi­ders and a premium part­ner of Google in Germany. It takes an inte­gra­ted approach to compre­hen­sive perfor­mance marke­ting solu­ti­ons with a focus on SEO, SEA, affi­liate, social media adver­ti­sing and digi­tal analy­tics. M&PM employs more than 150 people at three loca­ti­ons in Germany.

About Alan­tra
Alan­tra is a global invest­ment banking and asset manage­ment firm focu­sed on the mid-market segment with offices in Europe, the US, Asia and Latin America.
With over 300 experts, the Invest­ment Banking unit provi­des inde­pen­dent advice on M&A, corpo­rate finance, loan port­fo­lios and capi­tal market transactions.
The Asset Manage­ment unit mana­ges assets of around four billion euros in the asset clas­ses private equity, active funds, private debt, real estate and wealth management.

The successful dive­st­ment unders­cores ALANTRA’s exten­sive expe­ri­ence in the digi­tal agency, digi­tal consul­ting and digi­tal marke­ting market, which is worth around $300 billion world­wide. This is ALANTRA’s third tran­sac­tion in this sector in Germany and the fifte­enth world­wide in the past five years.

News

Frank­furt am Main — Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (DBAG) successfully comple­tes its invest­ment in Clean­part Group GmbH (Clean­part). It is selling its shares to Mitsu­bi­shi Chemi­cals Corpo­ra­tion (MCC), a Japa­nese conglo­me­rate that includes Shin­ryo, a compe­ti­tor of Clean­part. DBAG Fund VI, which is advi­sed by DBAG, and Clean­part Manage­ment are also selling their shares. Corre­spon­ding agree­ments were signed in August; their execu­tion is still subject to the appr­oval of the anti­trust autho­ri­ties. The tran­sac­tion is expec­ted to close within the next three months. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price.

Clean­part (www.cleanpart.com) is a service company for the semi­con­duc­tor indus­try. The company services process-criti­cal compon­ents of machi­nes used predo­mi­nantly in the produc­tion of logic chips, memory chips and simi­lar compon­ents. These compon­ents must be regu­larly decon­ta­mi­na­ted, clea­ned and recoa­ted to meet the extreme clean­li­ness and perfor­mance requi­re­ments in the chip manu­fac­tu­r­ers’ produc­tion process. Compon­ents are serviced at the company’s own sites, which are loca­ted close to major custo­mers in Germany, France and the USA. The company employs 420 people; in 2017 Clean­part turned over just under 50 million euros.

DBAG and DBAG Fund VI had inves­ted in Clean­part in April 2015 as part of a succes­sion solu­tion for the family-owned company. In addi­tion to the regu­la­tion of the succes­sion, the tech­no­lo­gi­cal further deve­lo­p­ment as well as the focus on the busi­ness with the semi­con­duc­tor indus­try were objec­ti­ves of the invest­ment. For this reason, the company’s second busi­ness area, Health­care, was sold to a stra­te­gic buyer last year after a very successful deve­lo­p­ment. Despite the sale of the health care busi­ness, sales and the number of employees are signi­fi­cantly higher today than at the begin­ning of the investment.

“Clean­part is in a better posi­tion today than it was in 2015, for exam­ple due to the invest­ments that have been made in new tech­no­lo­gies in recent years in order to be able to serve parti­cu­larly deman­ding custo­mers,” said Tors­ten Grede, spokes­man for the DBAG Manage­ment Board; “the company has the best prere­qui­si­tes for deve­lo­ping well under its new owner.”

Commen­ting on the change of owner­ship,Dr. Udo Nothel­fer, Chair­man of Cleanpart’s Manage­ment Board, said, “MCC is the ideal part­ner for us and a good port of call, as both compa­nies comple­ment each other tech­no­lo­gi­cally and geogra­phi­cally.” Like Clean­part, MCC subsi­diary Shin­ryo is a service provi­der for the semi­con­duc­tor indus­try with a simi­lar port­fo­lio. Howe­ver, Shin­ryo mainly provi­des its services for other process steps in the semi­con­duc­tor indus­try. In addi­tion, the company is only active in Japan, Taiwan and China — precis­ely those regi­ons that Clean­part does not serve. Clean­part, in turn, will contri­bute its Ameri­can sites to the colla­bo­ra­tion in addi­tion to its Euro­pean busi­ness and will be able to leverage Shinryo’s strong market presence in Asia in the future. Toge­ther, Clean­part and Shin­ryo will be able to bene­fit from an expan­ded service port­fo­lio, such as Cleanpart’s mate­ri­als-speci­fic engi­nee­ring services and its offe­ring of indi­vi­dual compon­ents for its custo­mers’ machines.

The closing of the invest­ment in Clean­part is the second sale of a company from the DBAG Fund VI port­fo­lio. The fund had struc­tu­red eleven manage­ment buyouts between 2013 and 2016.

The portion of the proceeds from the sale now agreed upon attri­bu­ta­ble to DBAG exceeds the carry­ing amount of the invest­ment in the IFRS inte­rim finan­cial state­ments as of June 30, 2018. Although the dispo­sal will ther­e­fore result in a further contri­bu­tion to conso­li­da­ted earnings in the fourth quar­ter of 2017/2018, which ends on Septem­ber 30, 2018, the contri­bu­tion was predo­mi­nantly included in the fore­cast for the 2017/2018 conso­li­da­ted earnings of Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG, which ther­e­fore remains unch­an­ged in view of the conti­nuing uncer­tain­ties regar­ding other factors influen­cing conso­li­da­ted earnings.

About DBAG
Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG, a listed company, initia­tes closed-end private equity funds and invests along­side DBAG funds in well-posi­tio­ned medium-sized compa­nies with deve­lo­p­ment poten­tial. DBAG focu­ses on indus­trial sectors in which German SMEs are parti­cu­larly strong by inter­na­tio­nal stan­dards. With this expe­ri­ence, know-how and equity, it streng­thens the port­fo­lio compa­nies in imple­men­ting a long-term, value-enhan­cing corpo­rate stra­tegy. The 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 1.8 billion euros.

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