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KKR acquires TV production of Günther Jauch i&u TV

Cate­gory: Private Equity
2. April 2019

Frank­furt a. M. — Funds advi­sed by KKR have announ­ced the purchase of i&u TV. i&u is a German tele­vi­sion produc­tion company foun­ded by Günther Jauch for both infor­ma­tion and enter­tain­ment formats. The company produ­ces TV shows such as “stern TV,” “Klein gegen Groß,” “Die Ulti­ma­tive Chart­show” and “Menschen, Bilder, Emotio­nen” for Germany’s highest-reach TV stati­ons. In addi­tion to Günther Jauch (photo), i&u works with show hosts such as Barbara Schö­ne­ber­ger, Thomas Gott­schalk, Kai Pflaume, Jörg Pilawa and Oliver Pocher.

i&u is to comple­ment the inde­pen­dent group of compa­nies for film and TV content that KKR is buil­ding around Tele München Gruppe and Univer­sum Film, which it alre­ady bought in Febru­ary 2019.

“After almost 20 years of successful work at i&u, my thanks go to all employees. Andreas Zaik will conti­nue to provide conti­nuity as Mana­ging Direc­tor and Editor-in-Chief. I, too, will be available to the company for seve­ral more years, both in front of and behind the camera. I am deligh­ted that i&u will now be part of a large media network. I have known and appre­cia­ted Fred Kogel for almost 40 years. With him at the helm of a powerful plat­form and the strong share­hol­der KKR, new oppor­tu­ni­ties will open up for i&u in the TV market and beyond,” said Günther Jauch.

Next stage of deve­lo­p­ment reached
Phil­ipp Freise, Part­ner and Head of the Euro­pean Invest­ment Team for Tech­no­logy, Media and Tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons at KKR, added: “With i&u, a top-class produc­tion company with a great team is joining our media company. We are consis­t­ently imple­men­ting our ambi­tious plans and making great stri­des in our plan to build a powerful content house in the German film and TV industry.”

Follo­wing the comple­tion of this tran­sac­tion, the inde­pen­dent audio­vi­sual content plat­form will comprise Tele München Gruppe, Univer­sum Film and i&u. Toge­ther, the compa­nies repre­sent the value chain of the TV and film indus­try: They buy and produce feature films, series and TV shows and handle the rights explo­ita­tion of this content in cine­mas, TV stati­ons, digi­tal services and home enter­tain­ment. In doing so, the compa­nies also draw on market-leading license libra­ries. Their inde­pen­dence means they can serve all custo­mers with high-quality content — from digi­tal strea­ming provi­ders such as Netflix or Amazon Prime to public and private TV stati­ons. The manage­ment team around CEO Fred Kogel is curr­ently prepa­ring the opera­tio­nal launch and further expan­sion of the media company.

Advi­sor KKR: Henge­ler Mueller
Active part­ners are Dr. Sebas­tian Schnei­der (M&A/Corporate Law, Berlin), Dr. Maxi­mi­lian Schiessl (M&A, Düssel­dorf), Dr. Stefan Rich­ter (M&A/Corporate Law), Dr. Albrecht Conrad (M&A/TMT) (both Berlin), Dr. Chris­tian Schwandt­ner (M&A/Corporate), Dr. Carl-Phil­ipp Eber­lein (Capi­tal Markets) (both Düssel­dorf), Dr. Jan D. Bonhage (Public Commer­cial Law, Berlin), Dr. Thors­ten Mäger (Anti­trust, Düssel­dorf), Dr. Martin Klein (Tax) and Hendrik Bocken­hei­mer (Labor Law) (both Frank­furt), Coun­sel Fabian Seip (TMT, Berlin) and Eckbert Müller (Labor Law, Frank­furt) and Asso­cia­tes Alex­an­der Bekier, Dr. Hermann Dahlitz, Jonas Brost, Marvin Vesper-Gräske, Dr. Tobias Bege­mann (all M&A, Berlin), Marius Marx, Maxi­mi­lian Reischl (both Tax, Frank­furt), Dr. Anja Balitzki (Anti­trust), Dr. Deniz Tschamm­ler (both Düssel­dorf) and Dr. Char­lotte Riemann (Berlin) (both Public Commer­cial Law).

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