ALTERNATIVE FINANCING FORMS
FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND INVESTORS

Author: Tatjana Anderer

Gründerin des FYB-Verlag
News

Dresden/ Munich — Ferro­elec­tric Memory GmbH (FMC) markets tech­no­logy for disrup­tive, non-vola­tile memory solu­ti­ons for micro­con­trol­lers. The company closed a growth finan­cing in the amount of 4.6 million euros. Lead inves­tor of this finan­cing round was eCAPI­TAL entre­pre­neu­rial Part­ners AG with parti­ci­pa­tion of the exis­ting inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds. The funds will be used to expand the team, acce­le­rate further deve­lo­p­ment of the tech­no­logy, and gain signi­fi­cant market share by repla­cing the current off-the-shelf technology.

Driven by the global trend towards digi­ta­liza­tion, auto­ma­tion and networ­king, billi­ons of devices are equip­ped with an incre­asing number of micro­con­trol­lers. These tiny single-chip compu­ter systems are at the heart of inno­va­tion in fast-growing key tech­no­lo­gies such as the Inter­net of Things and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Indus­tries such as consu­mer elec­tro­nics, health­care, secu­rity, auto­mo­tive and aero­space are expe­ri­en­cing disrup­tive chan­ges as a result.

The chall­enge of the digi­tal future for micro­con­trol­lers is not only that ever more complex data must be saved on ever smal­ler memo­ries, but the data must also remain available for a long time. Incre­asingly higher demands are being placed on the memory in terms of the number of write cycles and the dura­tion of data reten­tion, even at extreme tempe­ra­tures. The current indus­try stan­dard for non-vola­tile memory, eFlash tech­no­logy, only meets the growing requi­re­ments at the price of extre­mely complex manu­fac­tu­ring proces­ses, thus hinde­ring further progress in the minia­tu­riza­tion of micro­con­trol­lers. Compared to the latest gene­ra­tion of stan­dard CMOS logic, eFlash is now five tech­no­logy gene­ra­ti­ons behind.

FMC’s memory tech­no­logy is directly deri­ved from stan­dard CMOS logic, thus solving the minia­tu­riza­tion problem.

The market for this is huge and fast-moving. The main play­ers are inte­gra­ted manu­fac­tu­r­ers or semi­con­duc­tor fabri­ca­tors and so-called fabless semi­con­duc­tor compa­nies. FMC offers its proprie­tary Ferro­elec­tric Field Effect Tran­sis­tor (FeFET) tech­no­logy to these compa­nies. FeFETs exploit the ferro­elec­tric property of hafnium oxide, which can be used to convert CMOS tran­sis­tors into effi­ci­ent memory devices. CMOS tran­sis­tors still scale accor­ding to Moore’s Law and FeFETs deri­ved from them exhi­bit supe­rior perfor­mance, high density, extre­mely low power consump­tion and very good tempe­ra­ture stability.

The key to the new stan­dard in this indus­try is that FMC tech­no­logy thus enables the further minia­tu­riza­tion of micro­con­trol­lers. FeFETs can be inte­gra­ted into exis­ting produc­tion lines without signi­fi­cant modi­fi­ca­tion or invest­ment, as hafnium oxide is alre­ady stan­dard indus­try insu­la­tor mate­rial. Compared to eFlash, the manu­fac­tu­ring process is much simp­ler, so produc­tion costs can be drasti­cally reduced.

“Our non-vola­tile memory tech­no­logy addres­ses the current and future needs of the indus­try with 1,000x higher speed and 1,000x lower power consump­tion while signi­fi­cantly redu­cing manu­fac­tu­ring costs. With eCAPITAL’s support, we can hire the right talent — such as analo­g/­mi­xed-signal desi­gners and charac­te­riza­tion engi­neers — to acce­le­rate our product deve­lo­p­ment and drive market pene­tra­tion,” explains Dr. Stefan Müller, CEO of FMC.

“The disrup­tive poten­tial of the tech­no­logy and the custo­mers the company has alre­ady won so far are truly impres­sive. FMC has the poten­tial to set the new indus­try stan­dard and we look forward to support­ing the company in this endea­vor,” adds Willi Mann­heims, Mana­ging Part­ner at eCAPITAL.

“With FMC we have iden­ti­fied another tech­no­logy jewel in Dres­den that can change entire indus­tries and become a real game chan­ger. We welcome FMC to the eCAPI­TAL port­fo­lio and will contri­bute our expe­ri­ence and network to secure FMC’s fast successful deve­lo­p­ment”, comm­ents Dr. Paul-Josef Patt, Mana­ging Part­ner and CEO of eCAPI­TAL. Patt was alre­ady the lead inves­tor in Dres­den-based Nova­led, which eCAPI­TAL was able to sell very successfully to Samsung at the end of 2013, and is a member of the advi­sory board of Dres­den-based Helia­tek, an OPV provi­der. FMC is alre­ady the 11th invest­ment of the current eCAPI­TAL fund eCAPI­TAL IV, which was laun­ched in 2016.

“In the possi­bi­lity of conver­ting conven­tio­nal tran­sis­tors into non-vola­tile memory units, we see an enorm­ously high disrup­tion poten­tial. With the seed finan­cing by HTGF, the company has now reached the next level. We have ther­e­fore increased our invest­ment in FMC to a total of 1.6 million euros and are plea­sed to have gained a valuable part­ner in eCAPI­TAL for further growth,” adds Yann Fiebig, Senior Invest­ment Mana­ger at HTGF.

About FMC
FMC is the provi­der of highly effi­ci­ent FeFET memory solu­ti­ons for non-vola­tile memory. FeFET memo­ries are extre­mely low power, high perfor­mance, have high storage density and high tempe­ra­ture stabi­lity. By scaling our disrup­tive tech­no­logy to tran­sis­tor sizes of 28nm and below, we are solving the scaling problem faced by semi­con­duc­tor manu­fac­tu­r­ers and fabless semi­con­duc­tor compa­nies. The tech­no­logy deve­lo­p­ment was funded by the Euro­pean Regio­nal Deve­lo­p­ment Fund (ERDF) and the Free State of Saxony. The FMC team was supported by “EXIST Forschungs­trans­fer”, a program of the German Fede­ral Minis­try for Econo­mic Affairs and Energy. The company was foun­ded in 2016 and is based in Dresden.

About eCAPI­TAL AG
eCAPI­TAL entre­pre­neu­rial Part­ners AG, based in Müns­ter, is a capi­tal manage­ment company for alter­na­tive invest­ment funds (AIF) accor­ding to the EuVECA regu­la­tion. The company is one of the leading venture capi­tal inves­tors in Germany and has been actively support­ing inno­va­tive entre­pre­neurs in promi­sing indus­tries since 1999. The focus is on fast-growing compa­nies in the software/IT, Indus­try 4.0, clean­tech and new mate­ri­als segments. eCAPI­TAL curr­ently mana­ges six funds with a subscrip­tion capi­tal of over 220 million euros.

About High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF)
The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start­ups with growth poten­tial. With a total volume of 892.5 million euros distri­bu­ted across 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 shaped 500 start­ups into compa­nies since 2005. His team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and startup experts accom­pa­nies the deve­lo­p­ment of 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, health care, chemi­cals and life scien­ces. More than €1.5 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in over 1,200 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. The fund has also successfully sold shares in more than 90 companies.

Inves­tors in the public-private part­ner­ship include the German Fede­ral Minis­try for Econo­mic Affairs and Energy, KfW, the Fraun­ho­fer-Gesell­schaft and the busi­ness enter­pri­ses ALTANA, BASF, Bay- er, Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim, B.Braun, Robert Bosch, BÜFA, CEWE, Deut­sche Post DHL, Dräger, Dril­lisch AG, EVONIK, EWE AG, Haniel, Hettich, Knauf, Körber, LANXESS, media + more venture Betei­li­gungs GmbH & Co. KG, PHOENIX CONTACT, Post­bank, QIAGEN, RWE Gene­ra­tion SE, SAP, Schufa, Schwarz Gruppe, STIHL, Thüga, Vector Infor­ma­tik, WACKER and Wilh. Werhahn KG.

News

Frankfurt/Munich — Inter­na­tio­nal law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP has advi­sed London-based inves­tor GHO Capi­tal on the acqui­si­tion of Lini­med Gruppe GmbH from Vitru­vian Part­ners and the company’s foun­ders. GHO Capi­tal acqui­res the Lini­med Group, a leading provi­der of out-of-hospi­tal inten­sive care and home venti­la­tion services opera­ting at 44 loca­ti­ons in Germany, toge­ther with the company’s current manage­ment. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price.

GHO Capi­tal is a London-based finan­cial inves­tor specia­li­zing in health­care invest­ments in Europe. GHO Capi­tal was awarded the contract after the finan­cial inves­tor prevai­led over various compe­ti­tors in a bidding competition.

Advi­sors to GHO Capital:Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP
The Weil tran­sac­tion team was led by Frank­furt Corpo­rate Part­ners Prof. Dr. Gerhard Schmidt and Dr. Kamyar Abrar and supported by Part­ner Tobias Geer­ling (Tax, Munich) and Asso­cia­tes Manuel-Peter Fringer (Corpo­rate, Munich), Thomas Weise (Corpo­rate, Frank­furt), Dr. Konstan­tin Hoppe, Simone Hagen (both Health­care, Munich and Frank­furt), Aurel Hille, Julian Schwa­ne­beck (both Labor Law, Frank­furt), Ludger Kempf, Alisa Preis­sler (both Tax, Frank­furt), Dr. Barbara Sand­fuchs (Data Protec­tion, Munich), Patrik Marten (Tax, Munich) and Para­le­gal Sonja Popp (Corpo­rate, Munich).
The Weil team invol­ved in the acqui­si­tion finan­cing was led by Frank­furt Finance Part­ner Dr. Wolf­ram Distler and supported by Asso­ciate Dr. Dorian Legel (Finance, Frankfurt).

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

News

Frank­furt a. M. — HSBC Germany intends to do more busi­ness with large private equity inves­tors. To this end, they bring in the two invest­ment banker­sAlex­an­der Glawe and Jürgen Stein in HSBC expands private equity business

HSBC Germany is expan­ding its invest­ment banking acti­vi­ties. With Alex­an­der Glawe and Jürgen Stein, two new invest­ment bankers join HSBC’s Corpo­rate & Insti­tu­tio­nal Banking.

Alex­an­der Glawe is a private equity specia­list and joins in early Decem­ber from Credit Suisse, where he was most recently part of the German invest­ment banking team. As Head of Finan­cial Spon­sors, he will be respon­si­ble for the German-spea­king region and Scan­di­na­via. ER is to deepen HSBC’s cont­acts with major private equity houses.

Jürgen Stein has been on board since the begin­ning of the month and is conside­red a finan­cing expert for private equity deals. He is expec­ted to work closely with the bank’s other teams, speci­fi­cally those in M&A, Corpo­rate Finance and Lever­a­ged & Acqui­si­tion Finance. HSBC services this area from London, Düssel­dorf and Frank­furt. Stein joins from UBS, where he was respon­si­ble for lever­a­ged finance tran­sac­tions in Europe from London.

News

Frank­furt a. M. / Munich — The Frank­furt and Munich offices of the inter­na­tio­nal law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP have advi­sed the owners of MKM Mans­fel­der Kupfer und Messing GmbH on the acqui­si­tion of the company by the KME Group. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price. The closing of the tran­sac­tion is subject to anti­trust clearance by the EU compe­ti­tion autho­ri­ties and is expec­ted to take place in the fourth quar­ter of 2018.

MKM Mans­fel­der Kupfer und Messing GmbH, based in Hett­stedt, Germany, is a leading Euro­pean manu­fac­tu­rer of copper and copper alloy inter­me­dia­tes and semi-finis­hed products.

The KME Group is one of the world’s largest manu­fac­tu­r­ers of copper and copper alloy products. The company is part of the Italian Intek­Group Spa and is based in Osnabrück.

Advi­sors to MKM Mans­fel­der Kupfer und Messing GmbH:Weil, Gotshal & Manges
The Weil tran­sac­tion team was led by Frank­furt corpo­rate part­ners Prof. Dr. Gerhard Schmidt and Stephan Grauke and was supported by part­ner Dr. Kamyar Abrar (anti­trust, Frank­furt) and asso­cia­tes Dr. Ansgar Wimber, Manuel-Peter Fringer, Alex­an­der Pfef­fer­ler, Andreas Fogel (all Corpo­rate, Munich), Aurel Hille, Simone Hagen (both Anti­trust, Frank­furt), Ludger Kempf (Tax, Frank­furt), Thomas Zimmer­mann, Stef­fen Giolda (both Finance, Munich/Frankfurt) and para­le­gals Madleen Düdder, Sonja Popp (both Corpo­rate, Munich).

Advi­sers to the KME Group: Link­la­ters Munich
under the leader­ship of part­ner Dr. Florian Harder

News

Hano­ver / Munich — Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (DBAG) has acqui­red a stake in the opera­ting busi­ness of BTV braun tele­Com AG (BTV), a well-known equip­ment and service provi­der in broad­band commu­ni­ca­ti­ons. As part of a manage­ment buy-out (MBO), the DBAG ECF fund advi­sed by Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG will acquire the majo­rity of shares in four opera­ting compa­nies of the BTV group. These will be sold as part of a succes­sion plan by the company foun­der and share­hol­der of BTV Thomas Braun, who will conti­nue to be respon­si­ble for the manage­ment of the companies.

DBAG co-invests up to 4.8 million euros; in future, it will account for around 38 percent of the shares in the compa­nies. Further shares in addi­tion to the DBAG ECF (a total of 93 percent) will be held by the compa­nies’ manage­ment. The closing of the purchase agree­ment is sche­du­led for July 2018. The rele­vant anti­trust autho­ri­ties still have to approve the tran­sac­tion. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price.

Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (DBAG) has acqui­red four opera­ting compa­nies of BTV braun tele­Com AG (BTV braun). P+P advi­sed the manage­ment of BTV braun on the tran­sac­tion. The BTV braun group is a full-service provi­der in the field of broad­band commu­ni­ca­ti­ons. The compa­nies of the Group deve­lop, produce and distri­bute compon­ents for the cons­truc­tion of cable and fiber optic networks.

BTV braun, which is head­quar­te­red in Hano­ver and has bran­ches in Hamburg, Wismar, the Nether­lands and Taiwan, gene­ra­ted sales of around 30 million euros in 2017. Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG is a finan­cial inves­tor specia­li­zing in growth-orien­ted medium-sized compa­nies. DBAG is prima­rily active in Germany and has an inter­na­tio­nal network. DBAG intends to conti­nue the orga­nic growth of the BTV braun compa­nies and broa­den its range of products and services.

BTV is the fifth company in broad­band commu­ni­ca­ti­ons in which DBAG has inves­ted since 2013. In addi­tion, there were seven corpo­rate acqui­si­ti­ons of these share­hol­dings. “The market for these compa­nies is driven by incre­asing end-custo­mer demand for faster Inter­net connec­tions, which require exis­ting networks to be upgraded or newly built,” says Tors­ten Grede, spokes­man for DBAG’s Manage­ment Board, describ­ing the attrac­tive market envi­ron­ment for this invest­ment. This also includes the trend toward high-perfor­mance fiber-optic connec­tions right into the home.

Advi­sors to BTV braun tele­Com: P+P Pöllath + Partners
P+P part­ner Dr. Barbara Koch-Schulte (photo) provi­ded legal and tax advice to the manage­ment of BTV braun in connec­tion with the transaction.

News

Munich — Excel­lent start to the new issue year 2018 with 6 IPOs in Q1 with a place­ment volume of around 6.4 billion euros. Best half-year record for new issues in Germany since 2000.

While new issue acti­vity is weak­e­ning inter­na­tio­nally, with a 19% decline in numbers compared to H1 2017, Germany is putting in its best H1 since 2000 in terms of IPOs in 2018. With 12 new issues, Germany accounts for 1.82% of all IPOs world­wide, and with a place­ment volume of $7.9 billion, even 8.38%.

With an issue volume of €4.2 billion ($5.3 billion), Siemens Healt­hi­neers (photo) is the largest IPO from Germany. With a place­ment volume of around €1.3 billion ($1.6 billion), DWS is a second newco­mer to the stock market to enter the top 10 of the world’s largest IPOs in H1.

Although stock market indi­ces around the world fell signi­fi­cantly in the final weeks before the June 30 dead­line due to econo­mic and poli­ti­cal uncer­tain­ties, new issues in Germany outper­for­med the over­all market by an average of 3.1%. Siemens Healt­hi­neers was by far the best perfor­mer, with its share price rising 21.5% above the issue price. By contrast, Deut­sche Bank subsi­diary DWS disap­poin­ted with a share price loss of 20.8%. Over­all, inves­tors suffe­red price losses on 5 of the 12 new issues.

As in the previous two half-years, the speci­fic trading segment for small and medium-sized enter­pri­ses “Scale” recor­ded 2 new issues. STEMMER IMAGING was the first Scale IPO with a place­ment volume of more than € 100 million. Bank­haus Hauck & Aufhäu­ser has obviously become the top address for new issues in Scale. 4 of the 6 new issues were supported by Hauck & Aufhäuser.

For the The first compa­nies have announ­ced their IPOs in the second half of 2018. We ther­e­fore expect around 20 compa­nies to make their stock market debut this year. Nevert­hel­ess, we put a big ques­tion mark behind the new issue year 2018. There are no indi­ca­ti­ons that this trend will conti­nue in Germany in the future. This is mainly because the struc­tu­ral problems — whether in terms of share culture, costs or regu­la­tory obsta­cles — have not chan­ged. A detailed evalua­tion and analy­sis of all IPOs in Germany in the 1st half of 2018 can be found on our home­page https://www.blaettchen.de.

About Blätt­chen & Part­ner Blätt­chen & Part­ner GmbH has been one of Germany’s leading corpo­rate finance experts with inno­va­tive finan­cial stra­te­gies for over 30 years. The Munich-based company specia­li­zes in advi­sing on IPOs, bonds, promis­sory note loans as well as the rela­ted post-issu­ance capi­tal market support. Further focal points in the range of services are corpo­rate invest­ments, M&A tran­sac­tions as well as the struc­tu­ring of execu­tive compen­sa­tion and manage­ment parti­ci­pa­tion programs. More than 500 tran­sac­tions are proof of the company’s proven exper­tise. The grown inter­di­sci­pli­nary compe­tence network, the high custo­mer satis­fac­tion and the large number of publi­ca­ti­ons on important corpo­rate finance topics reflect the reco­gni­zed repu­ta­tion of Blätt­chen & Part­ner GmbH.

News

Düssel­dorf — ARQIS advi­sed Shimadzu Corpo­ra­tion on the acqui­si­tion of all shares in infra­serv Vaku­um­ser­vice GmbH, a specia­list in the main­ten­ance of turbo­mole­cu­lar pumps in Europe. infra­serv Vaku­um­ser­vice has become a wholly owned subsi­diary of Shimadzu.

With 25 employees, infra­serv Vaku­um­ser­vice gene­ra­ted net sales of 4.9 million euros in 2017. The company is based near Munich and services the vacuum systems of major semi­con­duc­tor and equip­ment manu­fac­tu­r­ers in Europe. It has high tech­ni­cal compe­tence and good rela­ti­ons with its custo­mers. Shimadzu has alre­ady outsour­ced service work for turbo­mole­cu­lar pumps to infra­serv Vakuumservice.

The acqui­si­tion is a step towards further deve­lo­ping Shimadzu’s Euro­pean turbo­mole­cu­lar pump busi­ness and streng­thening local sales acti­vi­ties and tech­ni­cal support.

Advi­sor Shimadzu: ARQIS Attor­neys at Law
ARQIS Rechts­an­wälte (Düssel­dorf): Dr. Meiko Dill­mann, Foto (Munich), Eber­hard Hafer­malz (both lead), Dr. Shigeo Yama­guchi (all Corporate/M&A), Dr. Andrea Panzer-Heemeier (Labor Law), Dr. Ulrich Lien­hard (Real Estate); Asso­cia­tes: Dr. Yohei Nagata (Corporate/M&A), Dr. Markus Schwip­per (Munich), Dr. Eva Trost, Carina Engel­hard (all Labor Law), Jenni­fer Huschauer (Real Estate)
Held Jagut­tis (Colo­gne): Public Law/Regulation

About ARQIS
ARQIS is an inde­pen­dent busi­ness law firm opera­ting in Germany and Japan. The firm was foun­ded in 2006 at its current offices in Düssel­dorf, Munich and Tokyo. Around 45 profes­sio­nals advise dome­stic and foreign compa­nies at the highest level on the core issues of German and Japa­nese busi­ness law. The focus is on M&A, corpo­rate law, private equity, venture capi­tal, employ­ment law, private clients as well as intellec­tual property and liti­ga­tion. For more infor­ma­tion, visit www.arqis.com.

News

Steinfurt/ Munich — Jones Day is advi­sing Geor­gia-Paci­fic LLC (“GP”) in connec­tion with the sale of its Euro­pean nonwo­vens busi­ness to a subsi­diary of P.H. Glat­fel­ter Company (“Glat­fel­ter”) for US$185 million. The tran­sac­tion includes GP’s nonwo­vens produc­tion in Stein­furt, North Rhine-West­pha­lia, and sales offices in France and Italy. The tran­sac­tion invol­ves the sale of shares in certain GP subsi­dia­ries to a subsi­diary of Glat­fel­ter and is expec­ted to close in the fourth quar­ter of 2018, subject to regu­la­tory approval.

Head­quar­te­red in Atlanta and employ­ing appro­xi­m­ately 35,000 people world­wide, GP is one of the leading manu­fac­tu­r­ers of nonwo­ven fabrics for the produc­tion of napkins, baby wipes, toile­tries, cosme­tics, and clea­ning and wet wipes. The company employs around 220 people in Stein­furt. Glat­fel­ter was foun­ded in Penn­syl­va­nia in 1864 and employs appro­xi­m­ately 4,200 people at 13 manu­fac­tu­ring loca­ti­ons in North America, Europe and Asia. The company produ­ces specialty papers and fiber materials.

Advi­sor Geor­gia-Paci­fic LLC: Jones Day
The team was led in Europe by Maxi­mi­lian Krause and Stefan Schnei­der (both M&A — Munich) and in the US by Troy Lewis and Bobby Cardone (both M&A — Dallas).

The Jones Day team included: Markus Ledwina and Moritz Rich­ter (both M&A — Munich), Markus Hamann (Public Law and Regu­la­tion — Frank­furt), Dr. Chris­tian Fulda (Intellec­tual Property — Munich), Dr. Markus Kappen­ha­gen (Labor Law — Düssel­dorf), Chris­tian Tren­kel (Real Estate — Munich), Dr. Klaus Herken­roth and Oliver Staatz (both Tax — Frank­furt), Michael Walra­ven (M&A — Dallas), Jean-Gabriel Griboul and Alex­andre Wibaux (both Private Equity — Paris), Fabri­zio Faina, Andrea Cesana, Mari­anna Consiglio and Patri­zia Pedretti (all M&A — Milan), Tom Briggs and Rob Latta (both Intellec­tual Property — San Diego), Jean-Michel Bobillo (Employ­ment — Paris), Andrew Eisen­berg (Tax — Washing­ton), Kelly Rubin (Tax — Dallas).

Advi­sors to P.H. Glat­fel­ter Company: Shear­man & Ster­ling LLP
Clare O’Brien, Daniel Lito­witz (both Part­ners, M&A — New York), Andreas Piepers (M&A — New York), Sven Opper­mann, Phil­ipp Jaspers (both M&A — Frank­furt), Ethan Harris, Ryan Au (both Tax — Washing­ton, DC), Anders Kraft, Astrid Mayer (both Tax — Frank­furt), Jordan Altman and Benja­min Peter­sen (both Intellec­tual Property — New York).

Stockum & Part­ner: Dr. Rainer Thum, Bene­dikt Grae­fen­stein (both Labor Law — Frankfurt).

This mandate again unders­cores Jones Day’s strength in cross-border tran­sac­tions. In the last three months alone, the Jones Day team has attrac­ted atten­tion with three other signi­fi­cant deals: advi­sing PAG Asia Capi­tal as co-inves­tor of KSS on the US$ 1.6 billion acqui­si­tion of Takata, Proc­ter & Gamble on the € 3.4 billion acqui­si­tion of Merck’s global consu­mer health divi­sion, or Plas­tic Omnium on the majo­rity acqui­si­tion of HBPO Group (enter­prise value: € 350 million).

About Jones Day
Jones Day is one of the world’s best and most diver­si­fied commer­cial law firms and has been reco­gni­zed for years as the most client-focu­sed firm. Jones Day advi­ses and repres­ents more than half of the DAX 30 compa­nies and has been the number one firm by number of M&A deals comple­ted world­wide without inter­rup­tion since 2000 (Thom­son and Bloom­berg). The firm employs more than 2,500 lawy­ers in 43 busi­ness and finan­cial centers world­wide — inclu­ding about 600 in Europe and 200 in Asia. In Germany, the firm is repre­sen­ted by more than 100 profes­sio­nals in Düssel­dorf, Frank­furt and Munich.

News

Munich, Germany — Elgato Systems is selling its gaming divi­sion to Corsair and will now focus solely on its smart home products, which will be marke­ted under the Eve brand. Elgato Systems is rena­med Eve Systems. For the realignment, the provi­der of app-control­led life­style access­ories is also parting with another company divi­sion. The strea­ming access­ories divi­sion Elgato Gaming will be sold to the US gaming access­ories specia­list Corsair and will be contin­ued there as an inde­pen­dent brand.

“Within an extre­mely dyna­mic segment, Elgato Gaming has achie­ved a momen­tum that only a larger part­ner can amplify,” said Markus Fest, Elgato foun­der and, as of now, CEO of Eve Systems. “The success of our gaming products has excee­ded all expec­ta­ti­ons, and it is now inex­tri­ca­bly linked to the Elgato brand. While saying good­bye to the brand after 20 years is anything but easy for us, Corsair is a fanta­stic company and a worthy new home for Elgato. At the same time, the Eve product line will also bene­fit from a focu­sed team within a dedi­ca­ted organization.”

Eve Systems is repre­sen­ted in the connec­ted home market with a diver­si­fied product port­fo­lio. The product family deve­lo­ped by Elgato in recent years is based on Apple’s Home­kit tech­no­logy. The compon­ents of the Eve family control and auto­mate home appli­ances, regu­late tempe­ra­ture and irri­ga­tion or moni­tor indoor and outdoor air. Each Eve product adds indi­vi­dual features to the smart home that can be acces­sed with iPhone, iPad, Home­Pod and Apple Watch. Eve devices talk to the iPhone via Apple’s secure end-to-end encryp­tion, perso­nal data is thus only visi­ble to the user. The products work wire­lessly thanks to Blue­tooth tech­no­logy, are quick to set up and do not require bridges. Eve devices can be acces­sed via the Apple Home app, the Eve app, the iPhone control center or Siri.

Advi­sor to Elgato Systems GmbH: Bird & Bird LLP
Bird & Bird LLP has advi­sed Munich-based Elgato Systems GmbH on the sale of Elgato’s gaming divi­sion to CORSAIR, the US gaming access­ories specialist.

Elgato was advi­sed by the follo­wing Bird & Bird attor­neys: Part­ner Stefan Münch and Asso­ciate Michael Gass­ner, both Corporate/M&A, Part­ner Dr. Henri­ette Picot, Tech & Comms/Commercial and Part­ner Dr. Ralph Panzer, Labor Law, all Munich.

News

Munich / Heiters­heim — PARAGON PARTNERS acqui­res majo­rity stake in inpro­tec AG to support the company’s future growth
PARAGON PARTNERS acqui­res a majo­rity stake in inpro­tec AG from the two share­hol­ders and mana­gers, Dr. Andreas Baran­yai and Pierre Schwerdt­fe­ger. The tran­sac­tion is still subject to appr­oval by the rele­vant autho­ri­ties. The two members of the Manage­ment Board will conti­nue to hold signi­fi­cant stakes in the company and will remain opera­tio­nally respon­si­ble for the manage­ment and further deve­lo­p­ment of the company. PARAGON will support the orga­nic and inor­ga­nic growth course of inpro­tec AG with addi­tio­nal resources.

inpro­tec AG, based in Heiters­heim, Germany, offers its custo­mers many years of exper­tise as the leading supplier of indus­trial contract drying and granu­la­tion based on spray drying, spray granu­la­tion, fluid bed coating as well as matrix encap­su­la­tion. As a specia­list in this field, inpro­tec is the cont­act of choice for the realiza­tion of inno­va­tive and complex produc­tion proces­ses as well as for closing inter­nal capa­city gaps. In recent years, the company has worked with more than 2,500 diffe­rent start­ing mate­ri­als and inter­me­dia­tes across indus­tries, serving custo­mers in a wide range of indus­tries (consu­mer goods, feed, cosme­tics, plas­tic additives).

inpro­tec AG opera­tes two produc­tion faci­li­ties in Heiters­heim and Genthin and curr­ently employs a total of appro­xi­m­ately 240 people. With the support of PARAGON, inpro­tec AG will consis­t­ently conti­nue the growth course of the past years and invest in the deve­lo­p­ment of addi­tio­nal produc­tion capacities.

“It is impres­sive to see how Messrs. Baran­yai and Schwerdt­fe­ger have built up and estab­lished inpro­tec AG over the past almost 20 years and deve­lo­ped it into the clear market leader in fluid bed granu­la­tion. Today, the company is excel­lently posi­tio­ned to grow both orga­ni­cally and through stra­te­gic acqui­si­ti­ons,” explains Marco Atto­lini (photo), Mana­ging Part­ner at PARAGON PARTNERS.

Shear­man & Ster­ling advi­sed a banking syndi­cate consis­ting of Commerz­bank, Bremer Kredit­bank and ODDO BHF on the finan­cing of the acqui­si­tion of a majo­rity stake in inpro­tec AG by funds advi­sed by Para­gon Part­ners. — The Shear­man & Ster­ling team included Part­ner Dr. Matthias Weis­sin­ger and Tran­sac­tion Specia­list Marina Kieweg (both Germany-Finance).

About PARAGON PARTNERS
PARAGON PARTNERS is a private equity firm specia­li­zing in invest­ments in medium-sized compa­nies in Germany, Switz­er­land and Austria with over EUR 650 million in equity under manage­ment. PARAGON invests in estab­lished, medium-sized compa­nies with signi­fi­cant opera­tio­nal value enhance­ment poten­tial in order to sustain­ably expand the market posi­tion of its port­fo­lio compa­nies as an active share­hol­der. The aim is to enhance the opera­ting perfor­mance of the port­fo­lio compa­nies and promote their sustainable growth. PARAGON PARTNERS is based in Munich.

About Shear­man & Sterling
Shear­man & Ster­ling is an inter­na­tio­nal law firm with 22 offices in 13 count­ries and appro­xi­m­ately 850 lawy­ers. In Germany, Shear­man & Ster­ling is repre­sen­ted at the Frank­furt office. The firm is one of the inter­na­tio­nal market leaders in advi­sing on complex cross-border tran­sac­tions. World­wide, Shear­man & Ster­ling prima­rily advi­ses inter­na­tio­nal corpo­ra­ti­ons and large natio­nal compa­nies, finan­cial insti­tu­ti­ons, and large mid-sized companies.

News

Frank­furt am Main — Bird & Bird LLP has advi­sed the BTV Group on the sale of a majo­rity stake in the opera­ting busi­ness of BTV braun tele­Com AG (BTV) to Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (DBAG). BTV is a group of trading and service compa­nies that deve­lop, produce and distri­bute compon­ents for the cons­truc­tion of cable and fiber optic networks.

In the course of a manage­ment buyout, DBAG ECF, a fund advi­sed by DBAG, will acquire the majo­rity of shares in four opera­ting compa­nies of the BTV Group. These will be sold as part of a succes­sion plan by the company foun­der and share­hol­der of BTV, Thomas Braun, who will conti­nue to be respon­si­ble for the manage­ment of the companies.

The closing of the purchase agree­ment is sche­du­led for July 2018. The rele­vant anti­trust autho­ri­ties still have to approve the tran­sac­tion. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price.

BTV braun tele­Com AG was advi­sed by the follo­wing Bird & Bird lawy­ers: Part­ner Dr. Hans Peter Leube, Lead (Corporate/M&A, Frank­furt), Asso­cia­tes Mari­anne Nawroth (Corporate/M&A, Frank­furt), Laura Müller (Corporate/M&A, Düssel­dorf), Chyn­gyz Timur (Corporate/M&A, Frank­furt), Part­ner Dr. Barbara Geck and Asso­ciate Daniela Gudat (both Labor Law, Frankfurt).

DBAG was advi­sed by Holger Ebers­ber­ger (Ashurst).

End

Back­ground:
Dr. Hans Peter Leube was previously on the side of DBAG in seve­ral tran­sac­tions and refi­nan­cings (most recently in the acqui­si­tion of the vitro­net Group and the Netz­kon­tor-Nord Group). The fact that he now nego­tia­ted on the seller’s side is due in parti­cu­lar to his exper­tise from his opera­tio­nal in-house time at Tele­co­lum­bus. This tran­sac­tion is another “proof-point” for Bird & Bird’s sector focus stra­tegy and our corpo­rate team’s strong exper­tise in Tech & Comms / Fiber Optics.

About Bird & Bird
Bird & Bird is an inter­na­tio­nal law firm that advi­ses in parti­cu­lar compa­nies and insti­tu­ti­ons that are shaping and being chan­ged by new tech­no­lo­gies and digi­ta­liza­tion. We combine world-class legal exper­tise with deep indus­try know­ledge and a refres­hin­gly crea­tive mind­set to help clients achieve their busi­ness goals. We have over 1,200 lawy­ers in 28 offices in Europe, the Middle East and Asia Paci­fic and main­tain close rela­ti­onships with law firms in other parts of the world.

News

Uhingen/ Frank­furt a. Main — Shear­man & Ster­ling has advi­sed Allgaier Group (“Allgaier”), a global auto­mo­tive supplier and plant engi­nee­ring company, on a funda­men­tal restruc­tu­ring of its group finan­cing. The new finan­cing enables Allgaier to realize its long-term growth plans and crea­tes relia­ble struc­tures in debt finan­cing, a stan­dar­diza­tion of treasury proces­ses and new finan­cing opti­ons for the inter­na­tio­nal subsidiaries.

Allgaier, head­quar­te­red in Uhin­gen, Baden-Würt­tem­berg, is a light­weight specia­list and inno­va­tion leader in sheet metal forming and a system supplier mainly for German premium car manu­fac­tu­r­ers. In the Process Tech­no­logy divi­sion, Allgaier deve­lops inno­va­tive solu­ti­ons as a plant manu­fac­tu­rer for a large number of indus­trial customers.

The Shear­man & Ster­ling team, led by part­ner Winfried M. Carli, included part­ner Pierre-Nico­las Ferrand (Paris Finance), of coun­sel Dan Newcomb (Compli­ance-New York), part­ner Dr. Matthias Weis­sin­ger (Germany Finance), coun­sel Phil­ippe Wolan­ski (Paris Finance) and tran­sac­tion specia­list Marina Kieweg (Germany Finance).

About Shear­man & Sterling
Shear­man & Ster­ling is an inter­na­tio­nal law firm with 22 offices in 13 count­ries and appro­xi­m­ately 850 lawy­ers. In Germany, Shear­man & Ster­ling is repre­sen­ted at the Frank­furt office. The firm is one of the inter­na­tio­nal market leaders in advi­sing on complex cross-border tran­sac­tions. World­wide, Shear­man & Ster­ling prima­rily advi­ses inter­na­tio­nal corpo­ra­ti­ons and large natio­nal compa­nies, finan­cial insti­tu­ti­ons, and large mid-sized companies.

News

Munich — Talen­tRo­cket GmbH, opera­tor of a digi­tal career plat­form for legal profes­si­ons, has gained an addi­tio­nal inves­tor in BayBG Baye­ri­sche Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft. The Munich-based IT company will use the capi­tal to set up a new divi­sion for addi­tio­nal highly quali­fied profes­sio­nal groups, as well as to expand incre­asingly into Austria and Switzerland.

Talen­tRo­cket is the leading career plat­form for lawy­ers in Germany. It is aimed at lawy­ers at all levels of educa­tion, from students to lawy­ers with profes­sio­nal expe­ri­ence. 3,000 employ­ers — law firms, entre­pre­neurs, admi­nis­tra­tion — are curr­ently listed. On the other hand, with 175,000 users per month, the company has a high reach among the target group of lawy­ers. With an intel­li­gent matching algo­rithm, which is conti­nuously being deve­lo­ped, the two sides are brought toge­ther in a targe­ted manner.

In addi­tion to well-known major compa­nies and large law firms — for exam­ple Fresh­fields, Link­la­ters, Audi and PWC — nume­rous medium-sized compa­nies and law firms also use the plat­form as an effi­ci­ent recrui­ting chan­nel to fill their legal vacan­cies. From three-person law firms to leading inter­na­tio­nal busi­ness law firms, over 170 clients trust TalentRocket.

“The busi­ness model and tech­no­logy are mature and successful. It is ther­e­fore logi­cal and consis­tent to extend the concept to other highly quali­fied and specia­li­zed profes­sio­nal groups. We are convin­ced that the imple­men­ta­tion of the plat­form for other verti­cals will be successful, as will the inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion steps,” says BayBG invest­ment mana­ger Alex­an­der Ullmann, explai­ning BayBG’s commit­ment: “The plat­form, which was laun­ched in its current form in 2014, has estab­lished itself within a few years and is impres­sing with rapid reve­nue growth.”

TalentRocket’s manage­ment is also satis­fied. Yacine Coco (photo left), foun­der and CEO of Talen­tRo­cket: “With BayBG, we have found a renow­ned and future-orien­ted venture capi­tal part­ner who, with its invest­ment, brings the finan­cial resour­ces for our product expan­sion and inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion into the company.” Talen­tRo­cket CEO Sebas­tian von Glahn (photo right) adds: “The invest­ment comes at a time when we have gained extreme momen­tum. It will be very valuable for our expan­sion plans.”

About BayBG:
BayBG Baye­ri­sche Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft mbH is one of the largest provi­ders of equity capi­tal for Bava­rian small and medium-sized enter­pri­ses. It curr­ently has commit­ments of more than 300 million euros to around 500 Bava­rian compa­nies. With its venture capi­tal and equity invest­ments, it enables small and medium-sized compa­nies to imple­ment inno­va­tion and growth projects, arrange for company succes­sion or opti­mize their capi­tal structure.

About Talen­tRo­cket:
Talen­tRo­cket is the leading career plat­form for lawy­ers. More than 175,000 users surf the company’s pages every month. Talen­tRo­cket is aimed at lawy­ers with and without profes­sio­nal expe­ri­ence as well as other law gradua­tes. Talen­tRo­cket was foun­ded by Yacine Coco and Magda­lena Oehl. The plat­form in its current form has been around since 2014.

News

Munich — Swedish private equity inves­tor EQT has acqui­red SUSE, the world’s leading open source soft­ware provi­der. P+P Pöllath + Part­ners advi­sed EQT on the transaction.

SUSE, head­quar­te­red in Nurem­berg, Germany, is a pioneer in open source soft­ware. With reve­nues of $320 million in 2017 and appro­xi­m­ately 1,400 employees world­wide, SUSE is a market leader in infra­struc­ture and appli­ca­tion deli­very solu­ti­ons. SUSE’s relia­ble products and support services help custo­mers manage comple­xity, reduce costs and ensure busi­ness-criti­cal processes.

EQT is a Swedish finan­cial inves­tor specia­li­zing in growth-orien­ted compa­nies. EQT is mainly active in Europe, Asia and North America and supports compa­nies in their sustainable expan­sion in the market. EQT aims to further expand SUSE’s long-term growth and innovation.

Advi­sors to EQT: P+P Pöllath + Partners
P+P provi­ded legal and tax advice to EQT in connec­tion with the manage­ment invest­ment in the tran­sac­tion with the follo­wing Munich team:
Dr. Bene­dikt Hohaus (Part­ner, M&A/Private Equity, Manage­ment Parti­ci­pa­ti­ons) Dr. Barbara Koch-Schulte, Photo (Part­ner, M&A/Private Equity, Tax Law, Manage­ment Parti­ci­pa­ti­ons) Lorena Joana Echarri (Asso­ciate, M&A/Private Equity, Manage- ment Invest­ments) P+P regu­larly advi­ses EQT, for exam­ple on the sale of SAG to SPIE, on the sale of BSN medi­cal to the Swedish SCA or on the sale of CBR to the British Alteri Investors.

News

Munich — Reed Smith welco­mes Part­ner Florian Hirsch­mann (photo) and Coun­sel Silvio McMi­ken with team from DLA Piper. Florian Hirsch­mann focu­ses on private equity and M&A tran­sac­tions with a parti­cu­lar empha­sis on legal advice to Chinese funds and stra­te­gic finan­cial inves­tors on their invest­ments in Germany.

Hirsch­mann and his team regu­larly advise Euro­pean funds, Ameri­can PE funds as well as German compa­nies in Germany and abroad. Silvio McMiken’s focus is on the legal support of natio­nal and cross-border tran­sac­tions, in parti­cu­lar private equity and venture capi­tal tran­sac­tions. The team also includes a para­le­gal. Further, an expe­ri­en­ced Mid-Level Asso­ciate will join the team shortly.

About Reed Smith
Reed Smith is a dyna­mic inter­na­tio­nal law firm with a maxim of advan­cing its clients’ busi­ness through dedi­ca­ted coun­sel. With our long-stan­ding rela­ti­onships, inter­na­tio­nal focus and colla­bo­ra­tive struc­ture, we are the ideal part­ner for quick solu­ti­ons to complex dispu­tes, tran­sac­tions and regu­la­tory issues.

News

Frank­furt a. M. — Accel Part­ners (“Accel”) and 83 North have jointly inves­ted $50 million in Munich-based Celo­nis in a Series B finan­cing. The company was valued at EUR 1 billion. Celo­nis has excee­ded its growth targets since Accel and 83 North’s $27.5 million Series A invest­ment in June 2016 and has been profi­ta­ble since its incep­tion. The two inves­tors were advi­sed by Henge­ler Muel­ler.

Accel is one of the major U.S. venture capi­tal firms. Foun­ded in 2011, Celo­nis is a soft­ware company based in Munich and New York. Its Intel­li­gent Busi­ness System is based on pionee­ring process mining tech­no­logy. As the market leader in process mining, Celo­nis helps orga­niza­ti­ons under­stand and improve opera­tio­nal process flows. Celo­nis was foun­ded by the three students Alex­an­der Rinke, Bastian Nomi­nacher and Martin Klenk (photo).

Accel, in parti­cu­lar, is a highly promi­nent name in the global tech scene, as the U.S.-based VC firm was an early inves­tor in compa­nies like Face­book and Spotify. The valua­tion of Celo­nis is no less remar­kable: With the new invest­ment, it is said to be one billion dollars. This would add a so-called unicorn to the German startup landscape.

Henge­ler Muel­ler advi­sed Accel and 83 North on the transaction.
Part­ner Dr. Georg A. Frowein (Frank­furt) and asso­cia­tes Clemens Höhn (Berlin) and Loretta Lang (Frank­furt) (all M&A/Venture Capi­tal) were active.

News

Düssel­dorf — ARQIS has advi­sed BWK GmbH Unter­neh­mens-Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft (BWK) on the acqui­si­tion of a majo­rity stake in H & R Indus­trie­rohr­bau GmbH.

H & R Indus­trie­rohr­bau GmbH is head­quar­te­red in Gold­bach, Bava­ria, and specia­li­zes in the main­ten­ance and new cons­truc­tion of pipe­lines in produc­tion plants. In 2017, the company gene­ra­ted sales of just under 16 million euros with 80 employees at three loca­ti­ons — inclu­ding two “on-site loca­ti­ons” within indus­trial parks in the Rhine-Main region. H & R’s custo­mer base includes well-known major corpo­ra­ti­ons in the chemi­cal and phar­maceu­ti­cal indus­tries (e.g. Akzo­No­bel, Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim, Sanofi or Clari­ant) as well as medium-sized indus­trial customers.

“H & R is an excel­lently posi­tio­ned company in the market with an excel­lent repu­ta­tion. We are convin­ced that we can cons­truc­tively accom­pany H & R’s growth course,” says Dr. Bernd Berg­schnei­der, BWK Mana­ging Direc­tor. Rainer Miller, member of BWK’s manage­ment board: “Toge­ther with H & R, we will estab­lish further loca­ti­ons and, if neces­sary, also be present in other indus­trial parks via Buy&Build.”

BWK GmbH Unter­neh­mens­be­tei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft, based in Stutt­gart, is one of the oldest German private equity compa­nies and pursues a long-term invest­ment approach. Alre­ady in the spring of this year, ARQIS advi­sed BWK GmbH on the acqui­si­tion of a mino­rity stake in Crui­se­Vi­sion GmbH, one of the leading provi­ders of photo and video products on ocean-going cruise ships.

Advi­sors to BWK GmbH: ARQIS Rechts­an­wälte (Düssel­dorf)
Dr. Chris­tof Alex­an­der Schnei­der (Lead; Corporate/M&A), Dr. Andrea Panzer-Heemeier (Labor Law), Dr. Ulrich Lien­hard (Real Estate), Dimi­trios Chris­to­pou­los (Commer­cial), Marcus Noth­hel­fer (IP; Munich); Asso­cia­tes: Nima Hanifi-Atash­gah (Corporate/M&A), Jenni­fer Huschauer (Real Estate), Walde­mar Rembold (Commer­cial), Dr. Markus Schwip­per (Labor), Dr. Phil­ipp Maier (IP; both Munich)

About ARQIS
ARQIS is an inde­pen­dent busi­ness law firm opera­ting in Germany and Japan. The firm was foun­ded in 2006 at its current offices in Düssel­dorf, Munich and Tokyo. Around 45 profes­sio­nals advise dome­stic and foreign compa­nies at the highest level on the core issues of German and Japa­nese busi­ness law. The focus is on M&A, corpo­rate law, private equity, venture capi­tal, employ­ment law, private clients as well as intellec­tual property and liti­ga­tion. For more infor­ma­tion, visit www.arqis.com.

News

Zurich (Switz­er­land) — Car dealer Amag is laun­ching the Inno­va­tion & Venture LAB on July 1, 2018. It is sche­du­led to start opera­ti­ons in the second half of the year and will work on topics such as connec­ti­vity, mobi­lity as a service, e‑mobility services and disrup­tive e‑business models. Phil­ipp Wetzel (51), photo (source: obs/Amag) will be Mana­ging Direc­tor and report to Amag Group CEO Morten Hannesbo.

The Inno­va­tion & Venture LAB works on topics such as connec­ti­vity, mobi­lity as a service, e‑mobility services, and disrup­tive e‑business models. It is also available to the entire AMAG Group for agile project processing.

The LAB’s mission includes iden­ti­fy­ing mobi­lity trends and networ­king with leading univer­si­ties and the Swiss start-up scene. It will also address initia­ti­ves of the Volks­wa­gen Group and exch­ange infor­ma­tion with tech­no­logy and inno­va­tion part­ners throug­hout Europe.

In order to ensure market proxi­mity and opti­mal exch­ange with start-ups, acce­le­ra­tors, univer­si­ties and coope­ra­tion part­ners, the LAB will proba­bly be based in the grea­ter Zurich area in a co-working envi­ron­ment. Opera­ti­ons will commence in the second half of 2018.

AMAG Inno­va­tion & Venture LAB is headed by Phil­ipp Wetzel(51) as Mana­ging Direc­tor. In this func­tion, he reports to Morten Hannesbo, CEO AMAG Group AG. A proven marke­ting profes­sio­nal, he holds a degree in engi­nee­ring from the Swiss Fede­ral Insti­tute of Tech­no­logy (ETH) and an MBA, and brings with him many years of expe­ri­ence in consul­ting and the consu­mer goods indus­try. Phil­ipp Wetzel has been with AMAG since 2012, most recently as Direc­tor Marke­ting & Busi­ness Deve­lo­p­ment / CDO Chief Digi­tal Offi­cer and member of the Manage­ment Board of AMAG Import AG. Among other things, he also played a leading role in the deve­lo­p­ment of the Group-wide digi­tal and new mobi­lity stra­tegy, which led to the crea­tion of a new
orga­niza­tio­nal unit and various ventures.

The other key posi­ti­ons in the Inno­va­tion & Venture LAB have been filled by Urs Jaschke as Head of Inno­va­tion Lab, Stefan Rüssli, Head of Venture Opera­ti­ons and Markus Abeler, Head of Finance. Jaschke headed the Digi­tal Busi­ness Deve­lo­p­ment depart­ment at AMAG Import AG, Rüssli has been respon­si­ble for New Mobi­lity at AMAG for around a year, and Abeler joined AMAG a few months ago, brin­ging with him a broad back­ground as CFO in the auto­mo­tive environment.

At AMAG Import AG, Chris­tian Hermle will take over as Head of Marke­ting & Busi­ness Deve­lo­p­ment from Phil­ipp Wetzel as of July 1. In this role, he will report to Bern­hard Solter­mann, Mana­ging Direc­tor, AMAG Import AG.

News

Frank­furt a. m. — DB Digi­tal Ventures, through which Deut­sche Bahn promo­tes new digi­tal busi­ness models, is inves­t­ing in two young U.S. compa­nies. With Ride­cell and GoKid, DB is focu­sing on inno­va­tive tech­no­lo­gies and two offe­rings that meaningfully comple­ment the core rail busi­ness and could play a decisive role in the mobi­lity market in the future.

“Deut­sche Bahn was the startup of the first indus­trial revo­lu­tion. Today, we are brin­ging start­ups on board to expand our tech­no­logy exper­tise and deve­lop connec­ted, custo­mi­zed offe­rings for our custo­mers in the Mobi­lity 4.0 era,” said Prof. Sabina Jeschke, DB Board Member for Digi­ta­liza­tion and Technology.

GoKid brings child­ren safely to school
New York-based startup GoKid makes life easier for parents. The company opera­tes a carpoo­ling plat­form that gets child­ren to school, sports, or other recrea­tio­nal acti­vi­ties with each other safely and on time. GoKid has alre­ady orga­ni­zed more than 100,000 trips, prima­rily in the USA. Parents save time and money and protect the envi­ron­ment because trips are shared and bund­led. “We want to support DB’s commit­ment to new forms of mobi­lity with our carpools for school­child­ren” explains Dr. Stefa­nie Lemcke, CEO GoKid.

Ride­cell is the world’s leading provi­der of carsha­ring and ridesha­ring plat­forms, as well as for control­ling auto­no­mous fleets
Foun­ded in 2009 and based in San Fran­cisco, Ride­cell has deve­lo­ped smart soft­ware for car sharing, carpoo­ling and auto­no­mous fleet manage­ment opera­ti­ons. Over 20 million rides have alre­ady been arran­ged via the Ride­cell plat­form. “With our end-to-end inte­gra­tion, mobi­lity compa­nies and cities can quickly launch and expand their own car and ridesha­ring services in the market and increase their utiliza­tion” says Aarjav Trivedi, CEO Ride­cell. With Ride­cell, DB sees the poten­tial to offer all forms of use for vehicle fleets united on one plat­form — car sharing, ridesha­ring and on-demand services, inclu­ding auto­no­mous vehic­les. This would allow trips to be even more targe­ted to meet custo­mer needs.

DB Digi­tal Ventures will provide around €100 million in venture capi­tal by 2019 to work with start­ups to promote inno­va­tions and disrup­tive busi­ness models in mobi­lity and logi­stics that will bene­fit DB custo­mers in the long term.

News

Frank­furt am Main — Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (DBAG) is acqui­ring a stake in the opera­ting busi­ness of BTV braun tele­Com AG (BTV), a well-known equip­ment and service provi­der in broad­band commu­ni­ca­ti­ons. As part of a manage­ment buy-out (MBO), the DBAG ECF fund advi­sed by Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG will acquire the majo­rity of shares in four opera­ting compa­nies of the BTV group. These will be sold as part of a succes­sion plan by the company foun­der and share­hol­der of BTV Thomas Braun, who will conti­nue to be respon­si­ble for the manage­ment of the compa­nies. DBAG is co-inves­t­ing up to 4.8 million euros; in future, it will account for around 38 percent of the shares in the compa­nies. Further shares in addi­tion to the DBAG ECF (a total of 93 percent) will be held by the compa­nies’ manage­ment. The closing of the purchase agree­ment is sche­du­led for July 2018. The rele­vant anti­trust autho­ri­ties still have to approve the tran­sac­tion. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price.

The BTV group is DBAG ECF’s fifth majo­rity invest­ment since it expan­ded its invest­ment spec­trum to include MBOs with equity invest­ments of ten to 30 million euros. At the same time, BTV marks the begin­ning of the second new invest­ment period of the DBAG ECF, or DBAG ECF II. The first invest­ment period of the fund (DBAG ECF I) was thus termi­na­ted prema­tu­rely after only twelve months. To date, 80 percent of the funds commit­ted to DBAG ECF I have been commit­ted. Further follow-on invest­ments are expec­ted to support the further deve­lo­p­ment of the exis­ting port­fo­lio companies.

BTV (www.brauntelecom.de) is a group of trading and service compa­nies that deve­lop, produce and distri­bute compon­ents for the cons­truc­tion of cable and fiber optic networks. It is one of the few full-service provi­ders on the market: BTV offers ever­y­thing needed to build, upgrade and operate such infra­struc­tures. This includes, for exam­ple, antenna sockets that are indi­vi­du­ally deve­lo­ped and produ­ced. The Group stocks a wide range of such and other compon­ents used by network opera­tors and service compa­nies. A growing service busi­ness comple­ments and supports the product busi­ness: Certain compon­ents in cable networks are beco­ming incre­asingly complex and require tech­ni­cal support in plan­ning, sales, confi­gu­ra­tion and installation.

BTV was foun­ded in Hano­ver in 1986. Around 40 people are employed there, inclu­ding in a rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment depart­ment: the company deve­lops and tests products in close coope­ra­tion with its custo­mers. There are further service and sales loca­ti­ons in Hamburg and in Wismar (35 employees), and subsi­dia­ries are also main­tai­ned in the Nether­lands and in Taiwan. BTV has grown stron­gly; in the last three years, reve­nue almost doubled to around 30 million euros (2017).

BTV is the fifth company in broad­band commu­ni­ca­ti­ons in which DBAG has inves­ted since 2013. In addi­tion, there were seven corpo­rate acqui­si­ti­ons of these share­hol­dings. “The market for these compa­nies is driven by incre­asing end-custo­mer demand for faster Inter­net connec­tions, which require exis­ting networks to be upgraded or newly built,” says Tors­ten Grede, spokes­man for DBAG’s Manage­ment Board, describ­ing the attrac­tive market envi­ron­ment for this invest­ment. This also includes the trend toward high-perfor­mance fiber-optic connec­tions right into the home. “Comple­xity is incre­asing — this will conti­nue to drive demand for BTV products and for rela­ted services.” BTV’s further deve­lo­p­ment steps are to include not only orga­nic growth but also the broa­de­ning of the product and service range through further company acquisitions.

“DBAG has a good repu­ta­tion and is a very expe­ri­en­ced inves­tor in our indus­try — making it the ideal part­ner to accom­pany our company in its further deve­lo­p­ment,” said Thomas Braun, a member of the company’s Manage­ment Board and share­hol­der, explai­ning the sale to DBAG ECF.

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.

News

Hamburg — Asto­rius Capi­tal GmbH successfully closes its third private equity fund of funds Asto­rius Capi­tal PE Fonds III with Euro 49m. As with the other fund programs, the focus is on buyout and growth stra­te­gies in the Euro­pean SME sector.

“With Asto­rius Capi­tal PE Fund III, we have again placed one of the most successful private equity products for semi-profes­sio­nal inves­tors in Germany in recent years,” said Julien Zornig (photo), Part­ner at Asto­rius Capi­tal. In addi­tion to a very successful approach to direct custo­mers, a number of private bank custo­mers and family offices were won as inves­tors. ACF III will be closed with a total volume of EUR 49 million. This repres­ents the most successful fund­rai­sing in the company’s history to date. “The signi­fi­cant increase in volume and the high propor­tion of repeat subscri­bers, inclu­ding in the alre­ady laun­ched ACF IV, demons­tra­tes the growing confi­dence of our custo­mers in our offe­ring,” Zornig added.

Attrac­tive portfolio
“With the target funds Deut­sche Private Equity III, Nazca IV, Cata­Cap II, Ergon IV and Stir­ling Square IV, we have once again put toge­ther a very attrac­tive port­fo­lio in ACF III,” explai­ned part­ner Thomas Wein­mann. In addi­tion to three coun­try funds, two Pan-Euro­pean funds were linked. This gives custo­mers access to high-quality Euro­pean medium-sized compa­nies. “The market envi­ron­ment with low inte­rest rates, vola­tile stock markets and high real estate prices is helping. Howe­ver, valua­tions in our market remain at attrac­tive levels, not only rela­tively but objec­tively,” Wein­mann adds.

Advan­ced invest­ment activity
“Over­all, we are very satis­fied with the invest­ment progress for our inves­tors,” states part­ner Georg Rems­ha­gen. Seve­ral compa­nies have alre­ady been included in ACF III, brin­ging the total number of invest­ments in the various Asto­rius fund programs to 50. “In ACF III, there were write-ups on tran­sac­tions after a short time,” which Rems­ha­gen sees as confir­ma­tion of the quality of the mana­gers identified.

Chal­len­ging inves­tor environment
“During the place­ment period of ACF III, many inves­tors such as banks and family offices once again had to make chan­ges due to new regu­la­ti­ons such as MiFID II,” notes Frank Rohwed­der, the part­ner respon­si­ble for struc­tu­ring. “We have contin­ued to be attu­ned to the needs of our direct custo­mers and part­ners, and are constantly opera­ting in line with the latest regu­la­tory requi­re­ments.” In addi­tion to private indi­vi­du­als, smal­ler insti­tu­tio­nal custo­mers and foun­da­ti­ons were again attrac­ted as inves­tors. “The trans­pa­rency crea­ted by Asto­rius and the insti­tu­tio­nal selec­tion process, which we are conti­nuously impro­ving, remains a crucial factor in this,” Rohwed­der emphasizes.

News

Düssel­dorf — For outstan­ding invest­ments and their clear commit­ment to North Rhine-West­pha­lia as a busi­ness loca­tion, Econo­mics and Digi­tal Minis­ter Prof. Dr. Andreas Pink­wart (photo) and Petra Wass­ner, Mana­ging Direc­tor of the state-owned busi­ness deve­lo­p­ment company NRW.INVEST, have hono­red four foreign compa­nies. This year’s NRW.INVEST Award went to the US online retailer Amazon, the British systems house Comput­a­cen­ter, the Japa­nese high-tech company Shimadzuand the Chinese auto­mo­tive supplier Yanfeng Auto­mo­tive Inte­ri­ors.

“Inter­na­tio­nal inves­tors are of great importance for our coun­try. They are at the same time important employ­ers, drivers of inno­va­tion and econo­mic engi­nes. We honor these important contri­bu­ti­ons with the presen­ta­tion of the NRW.INVEST Award”, explai­ned Minis­ter Pink­wart. “This year’s award winners make a special contri­bu­tion to raising the profile of North Rhine-West­pha­lia as a busi­ness loca­tion in logi­stics, the auto­mo­tive sector and digitization.”

“Our award winners come from many diffe­rent count­ries and regi­ons of the world. They show that NRW can hold its own in the incre­asing compe­ti­tion for inter­na­tio­nal inves­tors, also thanks to an active sett­le­ment policy,” summed up Petra Wass­ner, Mana­ging Direc­tor of NRW.INVEST. “Parti­cu­larly in the area of future tech­no­logy such as digi­ta­liza­tion and elec­tro­mo­bi­lity, we want to convince inves­tors of North Rhine-Westphalia’s loca­tio­nal advantages.”

Last year, the number of new sett­le­ments and expan­sion invest­ments by foreign compa­nies in North Rhine-West­pha­lia rose to 421, crea­ting around 9,750 jobs, parti­cu­larly in the Metro­pole Ruhr and the Aachen and Düssel­dorf regions.

The winners of the NRW.INVEST AWARD 2018 at a glance:

Amazon: The US online retailer has massi­vely expan­ded its presence in North Rhine-West­pha­lia in recent years. Follo­wing the start of logi­stics acti­vi­ties eight years ago in Rhein­berg and Werne, further loca­ti­ons with diffe­rent func­tions were added in Bochum, Dort­mund and Krefeld in 2017. Amazon also opera­tes a rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment center in Aachen. Pionee­ring tech­no­lo­gies are being worked on there. Further loca­ti­ons, e.g. Mönchen­glad­bach, are being plan­ned. Amazon employs around 6,500 full-time staff in NRW.

Comput­a­cen­ter: The British IT service provi­der supplies complete compu­ter networks, inclu­ding soft­ware and hard­ware, to compa­nies and public-sector clients and is one of the top-selling systems houses in Germany. Comput­a­cen­ter has been loca­ted in Kerpen for 25 years, where cons­truc­tion of a new German head­quar­ters began last year with an invest­ment of 40 million euros. The company is also leasing an addi­tio­nal 29,000 square meters in a logi­stics center to expand its confi­gu­ra­tion and logi­stics capacities.

Shimadzu: The Japa­nese company is the world’s leading deve­lo­per and supplier of analy­ti­cal instru­ments, labo­ra­tory tech­no­logy and medi­cal devices. Foun­ded in 1875, it moved to Düssel­dorf in 1968 and has had its Euro­pean head­quar­ters in Duis­burg since 1987. The Shimadzu Euro­pean Inno­va­tion Center was opened there last year: an inno­va­tive think tank that combi­nes acade­mic-scien­ti­fic and tech­ni­cal know-how and deve­lops inno­va­tive solu­ti­ons speci­fi­cally for custo­mers. Shimadzu employs around 230 people in NRW.

Yanfeng Auto­mo­tive Inte­ri­ors: The Chinese auto­mo­tive supplier specia­li­zes in vehicle inte­ri­ors and is a global leader in this segment. The product spec­trum ranges from center conso­les to door panels and instru­ment panels to intel­li­gent surfaces. Since the foun­ding of Yanfeng Auto­mo­tive Inte­ri­ors in 2015, it has had its Euro­pean head­quar­ters with around 600 employees in Neuss, from where 15 other loca­ti­ons in Europe are mana­ged. In Febru­ary 2018, the company opened a new inno­va­tion center. Here, various disci­pli­nes are working on the car inte­rior of the future.

News

Milan / Green­wich, Conn. — L Catter­ton, the world’s largest consu­mer products-focu­sed private equity firm, and Ambi­enta, the largest sustaina­bi­lity-focu­sed Euro­pean private equity fund, have part­ne­red to acquire Pibi­plast, a leader in the design and manu­fac­ture of cosme­tics and perso­nal care plas­tic pack­a­ging based in Correg­gio, Italy. — The Bosi family, foun­der and current owner of the company, will retain a mino­rity stake. No infor­ma­tion was provi­ded on the terms of the transaction.

Foun­ded in 1954 as a manu­fac­tu­rer of plas­tic pack­a­ging for the phar­maceu­ti­cal indus­try, Pibi­plast was a pioneer in the intro­duc­tion of envi­ron­men­tally friendly pack­a­ging solu­ti­ons. The company has contin­ued its specia­liza­tion in skin care and make-up through stra­te­gic acqui­si­ti­ons and invest­ments in state-of-the-art tech­no­lo­gies. Today, Pibi­plast opera­tes four plants in nort­hern Italy and supplies more than 500 custo­mers in 35 count­ries. The company offers a wide range of products and custo­mi­zed solu­ti­ons for the cosme­tics indus­try, from well-known global brands to emer­ging inde­pen­dent companies.

The company is excel­lently posi­tio­ned to conti­nue its histo­ric growth in the future. Sales last year amoun­ted to over 60 million euros. While nume­rous eco-friendly, natu­ral and orga­nic products are emer­ging in response to consu­mer demand, the cosme­tics indus­try has been slow to embrace envi­ron­men­tally friendly pack­a­ging solutions.

Pibi­plast was a pioneer in the first wave of compa­nies to move away from highly pollu­ting mate­ri­als in the 1990s, repla­cing non-recy­clable plas­tics with recy­clable ones with better envi­ron­men­tal perfor­mance. The company has also taken steps to use more sustainable mate­ri­als such as biopla­s­tics and recy­cled plas­tics. Pibi­plast has a clear lead over the compe­ti­tion in terms of the use of highly recy­clable raw mate­ri­als (63% at Pibi­plast vs. 28% market average).

Toge­ther with L Catter­ton and Ambi­enta, Pibi­plast aims to acce­le­rate its sustaina­bi­lity stra­tegy by deve­lo­ping and promo­ting inno­va­tive pack­a­ging solu­ti­ons based on envi­ron­men­tally friendly mate­ri­als to meet incre­asing custo­mer demand for redu­ced envi­ron­men­tal impact. Andrea Otta­viano, Mana­ging Part­ner of L Catter­ton Europe, says: “Sustaina­bi­lity has incre­asingly become a driving force for change in the cosme­tics indus­try, and we have chosen Pibi­plast as a leader in envi­ron­men­tally friendly pack­a­ging solu­ti­ons. We look forward to working with Ambi­enta to support the company’s growth through heavy invest­ment in R&D and capi­tal invest­ment. We further believe that the highly frag­men­ted market pres­ents meaningful oppor­tu­ni­ties to expand Pibiplast’s product offe­ring through bolt-on acqui­si­ti­ons and streng­then its inter­na­tio­nal presence.”

Mauro Roversi, Chief Invest­ment Offi­cer at Ambi­enta, comm­ents: “It is a great oppor­tu­nity for Ambi­enta to help Pibi­plast tap into the growing demand for more sustainable pack­a­ging and posi­tion it for the excep­tio­nal future pros­pects of the cosme­tics and perso­nal care indus­try. Our goal is to estab­lish Pibi­plast as the undis­pu­ted leader in sustainable cosme­tic pack­a­ging. We are confi­dent that by working with L Catter­ton and Pibiplast’s outstan­ding manage­ment team, we can achieve our goals.”

Gior­gio Bosi, CEO of Pibi­plast, adds: “We are exci­ted to work with our new part­ners to take Pibi­plast into a new phase of growth and deve­lo­p­ment by expan­ding our product port­fo­lio and going inter­na­tio­nal. Both L Catter­ton and Ambi­enta have exem­plary track records in buil­ding leading brands and busi­nesses. Toge­ther, we will realize Pibiplast’s stra­te­gic goals while stay­ing true to our mission and core values.”

About L Catterton
With more than $15 billion in equity across six fund stra­te­gies and 17 offices world­wide, L Catter­ton is the largest end-user product-focu­sed private equity firm in the world. L Catterton’s team of more than 160 invest­ment and busi­ness profes­sio­nals works with manage­ment teams around the world to execute stra­te­gic plans to drive growth, lever­aging deep product and market cate­gory insights, opera­tio­nal excel­lence and a broad network of “thought part­ner­ships.” Since 1989, the company has reali­zed over 200 invest­ments in leading consu­mer brands. — L Catter­ton was crea­ted through the part­ner­ship of Catter­ton, LVMH and Groupe Arnault. www.lcatterton.com.

About Ambi­enta
Ambi­enta is a leading Euro­pean private equity firm with offices in Milan, Düssel­dorf and London. Focu­ses on growth invest­ments in indus­trial compa­nies that focus on trends in envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­logy. Ambi­enta mana­ges the world’s largest capi­tal fund in this sector, with more than €1 billion, and has alre­ady comple­ted 27 resource effi­ci­ency and envi­ron­men­tal invest­ments across Europe. With indus­trial and manage­ment exper­tise as well as global indus­try cont­acts, Ambi­enta actively contri­bu­tes to the deve­lo­p­ment of its port­fo­lio compa­nies. For more info, visit www.ambientasgr.com.

News

Essen — The Grün­der­fonds Ruhr, initia­ted jointly by NRW.BANK and Initia­tiv­kreis Ruhr, has made its first invest­ment. As part of a Series A finan­cing, he has inves­ted around 2.6 million euros in Fascio­tens GmbH toge­ther with the VC inves­tor copa­rion. The Essen-based medi­cal tech­no­logy company has deve­lo­ped an inno­va­tive therapy for open abdomens.

“Fascio­tens is Grün­der­fonds Ruhr’s first invest­ment and a perfect exam­ple of young and inno­va­tive medi­cal tech­no­logy busi­ness ideas that can thrive in the Ruhr region,” says Dr. Aris­to­te­lis Nastos, one of the two mana­ging direc­tors of Grün­der­fonds Ruhr.

Dr. Sebas­tian Pünze­ler, Invest­ment Mana­ger at copa­rion, added: “Fascio­tens was deve­lo­ped by prac­ti­cing surge­ons for surge­ons and will signi­fi­cantly improve medi­cal care for high-risk open abdo­men pati­ents, simul­ta­neously redu­cing the length of stay of pati­ents in the inten­sive care unit.”

The new therapy “Fascio­tens Abdo­men” was deve­lo­ped by the foun­ders and mana­ging direc­tors of Fascio­tens GmbH, the surge­ons Dr. Gereon Lill and Dr. Frank Beyer. They have deve­lo­ped a device that atta­ches extern­ally to the abdo­mi­nal wall and keeps the abdo­mi­nal wall fasciae in a state of tension. Thus, they provide a solu­tion to the surgi­cal problem of abdo­mi­nal closure after an open abdo­men. Pati­ents with life-threa­tening illnesses can thus be trea­ted with good success. In addi­tion to impro­ved pati­ent care, the use of this novel therapy results in a signi­fi­cant reduc­tion in treat­ment costs.
In the future, the proce­dure will also be used in infants with a conge­ni­tal abdo­mi­nal wall defect.

For the two mana­ging direc­tors, the invest­ment is a stroke of luck.
“The parti­ci­pa­tion of Grün­der­fonds Ruhr and copa­rion in the amount of appro­xi­m­ately 2.6 million euros enables us to rapidly advance CE appr­oval and the first clini­cal appli­ca­tion study, and to prepare the market entry of the first product,” says Dr. Frank Beyer. “In addi­tion, funding will also be made available for the deve­lo­p­ment of other products.”

“Toge­ther with the inves­tors, we have estab­lished concrete mile­sto­nes and are bene­fiting from the expe­ri­ence and network of our inves­tors in the still young phase of our company,” adds Dr. Gereon Lill.

The new therapy is also well recei­ved in practice.
Prof. Dr. Kriegl­stein, Chief Physi­cian of the Surgi­cal Clinic at St. Elisa­beth Hospi­tal Colo­gne-Hohen­lind, explains: “The idea origi­na­ted in surgi­cal prac­tice and is convin­cing in its simpli­city. Due to the seve­rity of the dise­ase, the treat­ment form meets an immense medi­cal need.”

Photo (from left): Dr. Sebas­tian Pünze­ler (copa­rion), Dr. Gereon Lill and Dr. Frank Beyer (both Fascio­tens), Dr. Aris­to­te­lis Nastos (Grün­der­fonds Ruhr).
Source: Initia­tiv­kreis Ruhr/reprint free of charge

About the Grün­der­fonds Ruhr
The Grün­der­fonds was initia­ted jointly by Initia­tiv­kreis Ruhr and NRW.BANK and is the first private-sector early-stage fund in the Ruhr region finan­ced by regio­nal indus­trial and finan­cial compa­nies. The fund invests in inno­va­tive and tech­no­logy-orien­ted compa­nies from the life science & health, digi­tal economy, chemi­cals & new mate­ri­als, energy & indus­try, and logi­stics & trade sectors. Prere­qui­si­tes are good growth and exit pros­pects as well as compe­tent manage­ment. As a multi-corpo­rate early-stage fund, it also opens up important indus­try access points for the respec­tive port­fo­lio compa­nies. www.gruenderfonds-ruhr.com

About copa­rion
copa­rion is a venture capi­tal inves­tor for young, German tech­no­logy compa­nies. With a fund volume of 225 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 brings the subs­tance, perse­ver­ance and crea­ti­vity to successfully master even diffi­cult situa­tions toge­ther. copa­rion finan­ces exclu­si­vely toge­ther with co-inves­tors. The focus is on the start-up and young growth phase. The fund invests up to €10 million per company, usually in seve­ral finan­cing rounds of €0.5–5 million each. Copa­rion has offices in Colo­gne and Berlin.

About Fascio­tens
Fascio­tens GmbH, based in Essen, Germany, was foun­ded in 2016 by Dr. Gereon Lill and Dr. Frank Beyer. It deve­lops inno­va­tive products for surgery. The foun­ders place parti­cu­lar empha­sis on direct cont­act with users in the clinics, which takes place on an equal footing due to their many years of medi­cal practice.

News

Munich, June 2018. The Munich-based soft­ware company Test­birds GmbH is conti­nuously on a growth course and recei­ves further invest­ments in the amount of seven million euros in a fourth round of finan­cing. The test­ing specia­list was able to win BayBG Baye­ri­sche Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft and Wachs­tums­fonds Bayern, which is mana­ged by Bayern Kapi­tal, as new inves­tors. Exis­ting inves­tors Seven­ture Part­ners, Extorel and b‑to‑v have also parti­ci­pa­ted in the current round. The million-dollar sum will be inves­ted in the inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion of the Test­birds team and in the deve­lo­p­ment of new technologies.

With 100 employees, offices in seve­ral Euro­pean count­ries and an inter­na­tio­nal crowd of over 300,000 regis­tered testers, as well as an inno­va­tive tech­no­logy, the Munich-based start-up, foun­ded in 2011, tests websites or apps for their clients for free­dom from errors, usabi­lity and accep­tance. “We are very plea­sed that we were able to gain the trust of two new inves­tors and convince them of our busi­ness model. With the invest­ment sum we want to further expand our team and further streng­then our posi­tion as one of the leading provi­ders in the field of soft­ware test­ing “, empha­si­zes Phil­ipp Benkler, foun­der and CEO of Testbirds.

The IT service provi­der counts nume­rous renow­ned compa­nies among its custo­mers, for exam­ple Deut­sche Tele­kom, Audi, Deut­sche Post, Henkel, Payback, n‑tv and Western Union. In addi­tion to crowd­test­ing, the company also offers cloud-based services for test­ing soft­ware applications.

“Test­birds has estab­lished itself as an expert in soft­ware test­ing in recent years and has conti­nuously expan­ded its busi­ness model. With our commit­ment, we are enab­ling the Munich-based test­ing specia­list to drive its inno­va­tions and operate even more stron­gly in the market,” says BayBG invest­ment mana­ger Andreas Heubl.

Roman Huber, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Bayern Kapi­tal adds: “Test­birds has deve­lo­ped impres­si­vely in recent years and can now count itself among the leading crowd test­ing provi­ders. The parti­ci­pa­tion of Wachs­tums­fonds Bayern in the current finan­cing round is inten­ded to help the company stay on the road to success and conti­nue its growth trajectory.”

About Test­birds
Test­birds was foun­ded in 2011 by Phil­ipp Benkler, Georg Hans­bauer and Markus Stein­hau­ser (photo from left to right) . In addi­tion to its head­quar­ters in Munich, the company has further offices in Amster­dam, London and Stock­holm, fran­chi­sees in Hungary, Russia and Slova­kia, and sales part­ners in Italy. The company offers its custo­mers diffe­rent types of tests for the opti­miza­tion of usabi­lity and func­tion­a­lity. With over 300,000 regis­tered testers in 193 count­ries, Test­birds is one of the world’s leading crowd­test­ing provi­ders. In addi­tion, the IT service provi­der relies on cloud-based tech­no­lo­gies to help custo­mers opti­mize digi­tal products.

About BayBG
BayBG Baye­ri­sche Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft mbH is one of the largest provi­ders of equity capi­tal for Bava­rian small and medium-sized enter­pri­ses. It curr­ently has a commit­ment of 315 million euros to around 500 Bava­rian compa­nies. With its venture capi­tal and equity invest­ments, it enables small and medium-sized compa­nies to imple­ment inno­va­tion and growth projects, arrange for company succes­sion or opti­mize their capi­tal structure.

News

Stock­holm (Sweden) / Tokyo (Japan) — Funds advi­sed by Triton (“Triton”) have successfully comple­ted the sale of Ovako AB (“Ovako”), a leading Euro­pean produ­cer of struc­tu­ral steel, to Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corpo­ra­tion (“NSSMC”), one of the world’s largest steel produ­cers by volume (as of 2017).

Triton acqui­red Ovako in the wake of the finan­cial crisis in 2010. During the seven years under Triton, Ovako’s manage­ment and board have worked toge­ther on a number of impro­ve­ment initia­ti­ves to streng­then Ovako’s posi­tion as one of Europe’s leading struc­tu­ral steel produ­cers. Key impro­ve­ment initia­ti­ves include clear segment stra­te­gies, manu­fac­tu­ring effi­ci­en­cies, employee safety programs, invest­ments in product deve­lo­p­ment, buil­ding a new global sales orga­niza­tion and intro­du­cing digi­tal tools to improve the sales process.

About Ovako
Ovako deve­lops high-tech steel solu­ti­ons for and in colla­bo­ra­tion with its custo­mers in the storage, trans­port and manu­fac­tu­ring indus­tries. Ovako Steel makes its custo­mers’ end products more dura­ble and extends their service life, ulti­m­ately resul­ting in smar­ter, more energy-effi­ci­ent and envi­ron­men­tally friendly products.

Ovako produc­tion is based on recy­cled scrap and includes steel in the form of bars, tubes, rings and pre-compon­ents. Ovako is repre­sen­ted in more than 30 count­ries and has sales offices in Europe, North America and Asia. Ovako gene­ra­ted sales of 921 million euros in 2017 and employed 3,040 people at the end of the year. For more infor­ma­tion, please visit www.ovako.com

About Triton
The Triton funds invest in and support the posi­tive deve­lo­p­ment of medium-sized compa­nies based in Europe and focus on compa­nies in the indus­trial, busi­ness services and consumer/health sectors.

Triton is commit­ted to helping build better compa­nies for the long term. Triton and its leaders are commit­ted to helping shape posi­tive change toward sustainable opera­tio­nal impro­ve­ments and growth. The 36 compa­nies curr­ently in Triton’s port­fo­lio have combi­ned sales of around €13.2 billion and employ around 89,000 people.

The Triton funds are advi­sed by specia­li­zed teams of profes­sio­nals in Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Italy, the UK, the US, China, Luxem­bourg and Jersey.

News

Bremen/ Beesten/ Düssel­dorf — Kloska Group sells the service busi­ness for CHP plants to consor­tium led by Ener­gie 360°. King & Wood Malle­sons (KWM) advi­sed Kloska Group on the sale of its service busi­ness for CHP plants — by dive­s­t­ing the Thom­sen & Co. GmbH (Thom­sen & Co.) — to a group of inves­tors under the majo­rity leader­ship of the Swiss energy utility Ener­gie 360 Grad AG (Ener­gie 360°).

The Kloska Group, service part­ner and system supplier for ship­ping, shipy­ards, onshore/offshore, indus­try, cons­truc­tion and trade, was foun­ded in 1981. The group of compa­nies is head­quar­te­red in Bremen and includes nume­rous compa­nies that have comple­men­ted the service profile of the Kloska Group over the past years. The compa­nies’ busi­ness areas range from tech­ni­cal equip­ment supplier to engine spare parts service, combi­ned with their own repair work­shops, mate­ri­als hand­ling and hydrau­lics, to cate­ring, provi­sio­ning, tech­ni­cal and store deli­veries for ferries, merchant ships, cruise ships, rese­arch vessels and rese­arch stations.

The branch of Thom­sen & Co. in Bees­ten, foun­ded in 2007, bund­les the service busi­ness for CHP plants of the Kloska Group under the market-known name EPS (Engine Power Systems) and, in addi­tion to the sale of new and used CHP modu­les in various perfor­mance clas­ses, offers compre­hen­sive instal­la­tion and service services for gas engi­nes, CHP modu­les and combi­ned heat and power plants. In addi­tion to the usual main­ten­ance work, trou­ble­shoo­ting and repair work, the company carries out complete over­hauls of engi­nes and CHP modu­les in the company’s own work­shop or directly on site. The complete range of services is offe­red for gas engi­nes from 40 to 3,000 kW (elec­tric).

Ener­gie 360°, head­quar­te­red in Zurich, is a Swiss public limi­ted company that acts as an energy supplier for the city of Zurich, among others, and has a strong focus on rene­wa­ble ener­gies. In addi­tion to natu­ral gas and biogas, the company’s port­fo­lio also includes solar energy and wood pellets, as well as energy and grid services. Ener­gie 360° was alre­ady repre­sen­ted in Germany by a 50% stake in Ener­gas GmbH, which offers a simi­lar range of services to Thom­sen & Co, espe­ci­ally in southern Germany. The acqui­si­tion of Thom­sen & Co. comple­ments Ener­gie 360°’s port­fo­lio of holdings and expands its acti­vi­ties to nort­hern and eastern Germany.

After comple­tion of the tran­sac­tion, Thom­sen & Co. will conti­nue to operate as an inde­pen­dent company. The tran­sac­tion is subject to appr­oval by the rele­vant authorities.

Advi­sors to Kloska Group: King & Wood Malle­sons, Germany
Rüdi­ger Knopf (Part­ner, Tax, Lead), Rudolf Haas (Part­ner, Lead), Dr. Tilmann Becker (Coun­sel), Laura Wimmer (Asso­ciate, all Corporate/M&A)

News

Milan — Ambi­enta, Europe’s largest sustaina­bi­lity-focu­sed equity fund, has announ­ced a number of high-level promo­ti­ons, inclu­ding the posi­tion of Chief Finan­cial Offi­cer (CFO) and two addi­tio­nal part­ners. Daniele Gatti (photo) is now Chief Finan­cial Offi­cer (CFO) and Gian­carlo Beraudo and Fran­cesco Lodrini, previously both prin­ci­pals at Ambi­enta, have been appoin­ted with imme­diate effect to Part­ners appointed.

Daniele Gatti, who joined Ambi­enta in 2012, has been instru­men­tal in insti­tu­tio­na­li­zing the company over the past six years. He played a signi­fi­cant role in two successful fund raisings as well as the deve­lo­p­ment of Ambienta’s best prac­tice guide­lines for report­ing to regu­la­tors, inves­tors, as well as ESG issues. In addi­tion, Daniele Gatti has been invol­ved in the closing of six successful secon­dary tran­sac­tions and two co-invest­ment tran­sac­tions since joining Ambi­enta from the ‘Corpo­rate Finance and Tran­sac­tion Services’ prac­tice of the inter­na­tio­nal audit firm EY.

Gian­carlo Beraudo has been invol­ved in seve­ral Ambi­enta invest­ments since joining the company (2010). These include machine vision solu­ti­ons provi­der Lake­sight Tech­no­lo­gies, offshore services provi­der Foun­dO­cean Group, and indus­trial cooling systems company SPIG. Before his time at
Ambi­enta, Gian­carlo Beraudo spent three years at Rhône Capi­tal, an invest­ment firm focu­sed on mid-sized compa­nies in London, and two years at Bain & Company’s Milan office.

Fran­cesco Lodrini has been with Ambi­enta for seven years and has been instru­men­tal in seve­ral successful invest­ments. These include the manu­fac­tu­rer of profes­sio­nal clea­ning equip­ment IP Clea­ning, the specialty chemi­cals company
Calucem and the produ­cer of hydrau­lic compon­ents Safim. Prior to Ambi­enta, Fran­cesco Lodrini worked for three years at Barclays PE (now Equis­tone) and four years in London at Gold­man Sachs and Moni­tor Group.

The promo­ti­ons follow Ambienta’s successful start to 2018; for exam­ple, this year saw the sale of Oskar Nolte, a German manu­fac­tu­rer of envi­ron­men­tally friendly wood varnish systems, and the closing of the third fund at its maxi­mum limit of €635 million after less than three months of active marke­ting. The origi­nal goal
was 500 million euros.

Nino Tron­chetti Provera, Mana­ging Part­ner at Ambi­enta, adds: “We are plea­sed to announce the appoint­ment of Daniele Gatti as CFO and welcome Gian­carlo Beraudo and Fran­cesco Lodrini as part­ners at Ambi­enta. These well-deser­ved promo­ti­ons are the result of your valued contri­bu­ti­ons to the success of our company and the
Evidence of their hard work and profes­sio­nal exper­tise. At Ambi­enta, we view syste­ma­tic employee coaching and deve­lo­p­ment as inte­gral compon­ents of our company’s growth trajectory.”

Ambi­enta
Ambi­enta is a leading Euro­pean private equity firm with offices in Milan, Düssel­dorf and London. Focu­ses on growth invest­ments in indus­trial compa­nies that focus on trends in envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­logy. Ambi­enta mana­ges the world’s largest capi­tal fund in this sector, with more than €1 billion
sector and has alre­ady comple­ted 26 invest­ments in resource effi­ci­ency and envi­ron­men­tal protec­tion across Europe. With indus­trial and manage­ment exper­tise as well as global indus­try cont­acts, Ambi­enta actively contri­bu­tes to the deve­lo­p­ment of its port­fo­lio compa­nies. www.ambientasgr.com.

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