Paris/Frankfurt am Main, Janu­ary 2020 — Idin­vest Part­ners, the Euro­pean invest­ment company specia­li­zing in the SME segment, has finan­ced the acqui­si­tion of the two German IT specia­lists ComNet and MEHRWERK by the Borken-based Netgo Group of Compa­nies (Netgo) in the form of a unitran­che. Back in Octo­ber 2019, Idin­vest Part­ners had provi­ded unitran­che finan­cing for its invest­ment in Netgo through inde­pen­dent Dutch private equity invest­ment firm Water­land. Thus, shortly after Waterland’s entry, Netgo is alre­ady successfully imple­men­ting the jointly defi­ned buy-and-build stra­tegy, bene­fiting from the acqui­si­tion line provi­ded by Idin­vest Part­ners, which will also support further exter­nal growth. The closing of the tran­sac­tions to acquire the two compa­nies has now taken place.

ComNet, based in Würse­len (North Rhine-West­pha­lia), has been support­ing smal­ler compa­nies in parti­cu­lar in setting up IT infra­struc­ture since 1990. With 21 employees, the company serves around 200 custo­mers nati­on­wide and offers a wide range of services. — ComNet takes over the entire IT infra­struc­ture and the opera­tion of its custo­mers’ busi­ness-criti­cal appli­ca­ti­ons, inclu­ding all admi­nis­tra­tor acti­vi­ties, by means of its own, self-desi­gned high-perfor­mance data center (private cloud). A special feature are indus­try solu­tion packa­ges for tax consul­tants, audi­tors, lawy­ers, compa­nies, care faci­li­ties and medi­cal supply stores. The service and product port­fo­lio and the custo­mer struc­ture of Netgo and ComNet comple­ment each other. The aim of the part­ner­ship between Netgo and ComNet is to offer custo­mers of both compa­nies a broa­der range of IT solu­ti­ons and services.

Karls­ruhe-based MEHRWERK was foun­ded in 2008 and specia­li­zes in opti­mi­zing busi­ness proces­ses with the help of agile enter­prise soft­ware. With around 30 employees, the company advi­ses around 250 custo­mers of all sizes from the indus­trial, retail and service sectors on opti­mi­zing busi­ness proces­ses. These include, for exam­ple, IT-based supply chain manage­ment, SAP cloud and busi­ness analy­tics solu­ti­ons. MEHRWERK is an SAP Cloud Gold Part­ner and leading solu­tion provi­der in the DACH region for the Qlik data analy­sis plat­form. By inte­gra­ting MEHRWERK, the Netgo Group intends to further acce­le­rate its growth by pooling resources.

The Netgo group of compa­nies now has around 370 employees at 18 loca­ti­ons. The company advi­ses and supports custo­mers in the areas of server and storage systems, secu­rity solu­ti­ons, networks, IP tele­phony, virtua­liza­tion, data center and cloud services and deve­lops custo­mi­zed stra­te­gies and solu­ti­ons. With Waterland’s support, Netgo will conti­nue its ambi­tious stra­tegy of orga­nic and exter­nal growth, focu­sing not only on products in IT service manage­ment but also on Indus­try 4.0 and digitization.

Dr. Cars­ten Rahlfs, Mana­ging Part­ner at Water­land, comm­ents on the group’s growth: “The two acqui­si­ti­ons are an excel­lent start to Netgo’s buy-and-build stra­tegy. We want to conso­li­date the frag­men­ted market for IT system houses, which is growing at around 10 percent per year, and imple­ment further part­ner­ships. As a growth inves­tor, it is essen­tial for us to have finan­cing part­ners like Idin­vest Part­ners on board when imple­men­ting such stra­te­gies, who can struc­ture and quickly imple­ment indi­vi­dual solutions.”

Five German private debt tran­sac­tions by Idin­vest Part­ners in 2019
In 2019, Idin­vest Part­ners was invol­ved in five tran­sac­tions in Germany:
In Febru­ary, the company finan­ced the acqui­si­tion of hotel opera­ting company GS Star by Auctus Capi­tal Partners.
Subse­quently, Idin­vest Part­ners provi­ded unitran­che finan­cing for two add-ons to the GS Star Group: the acqui­si­tion of the Rilano Group with seven four- and three-star hotels in Germany and Austria in March and Turicum Hotel Manage­ment GmbH with two hotels in Zurich and Bern in October.
Also in Octo­ber, the unitran­che finan­cing for Waterland’s invest­ment in Netgo .
In addi­tion, Idin­vest Part­ners parti­ci­pa­ted in the acqui­si­tion finan­cing for the purchase of LAP Laser Appli­ca­ti­ons by IK Invest­ment Part­ners in June.
Florian Zimmer­mann, Mana­ging Direc­tor and Head of Idin­vest Part­ners’ Frank­furt office, says: “The tran­sac­tions of this and last year show very well what Idin­vest Part­ners stands for. Growth is in our DNA as an inves­tor that finan­ces and supports inno­va­tion, invest­ment and expan­sion with a wide variety of instru­ments and funds in the areas of private debt, venture and growth capital.”

About Idin­vest Partners
Idin­vest Part­ners is a leading Euro­pean invest­ment firm focu­sed on the mid market. Curr­ently, Idin­vest Part­ners mana­ges assets of around €8 billion with more than 90 employees and has offices in Paris, Frank­furt, Madrid, Shang­hai and Seoul.

The company has three busi­ness units: Venture & Growth Capi­tal, Private Debt and Private Funds Group. The company was foun­ded in 1997 as part of the Alli­anz Group and has been inde­pen­dent since 2010. In Janu­ary 2018, Idin­vest Part­ners became part of the Eura­zeo Group. The merger crea­ted a leading global invest­ment company with €17.7 billion in assets under manage­ment (inclu­ding nearly €11.6 billion from invest­ment part­ners) inves­ted in a diver­si­fied port­fo­lio consis­ting of nearly 400 corpo­rate holdings.