News-Kategorie: Private Equity

Berlin — The private equity company capi­ton AG sells its shares in Prefere Resins, one of the Euro­pean market leaders for the produc­tion and distri­bu­tion of phen­o­lic resins, to Silver­fleet Capi­tal. In 2017, the appro­xi­m­ately 320 employees of Prefere Resins gene­ra­ted sales of 222 million euros.

Prefere Resins is one of the Euro­pean market leaders for the deve­lo­p­ment, produc­tion and distri­bu­tion of phen­o­lic resins. The areas of appli­ca­tion are many and varied; phen­o­lic resins are used in the wood proces­sing indus­try, in the insu­la­tion indus­try, in mecha­ni­cal engi­nee­ring and in the auto­mo­tive indus­try, among others. In addi­tion to its head­quar­ters in Erkner near Berlin, Prefere Resins has subsi­dia­ries in Austria, France, Great Britain, Poland and Roma­nia, as well as two sites in Finland.

About the tran­sac­tion In Janu­ary 2014, capi­ton acqui­red the majo­rity of shares in the Prefere Resins Group as part of a carve-out of the Euro­pean phen­o­lic resin acti­vi­ties from the Scan­di­na­vian chemi­cal group Dynea. In 2016, capi­ton was alre­ady able to successfully imple­ment a refi­nan­cing of the company. As part of this tran­sac­tion, Inter­me­diate Capi­tal Group (“ICG”) acqui­red a mino­rity inte­rest in Prefere Resins and the manage­ment team increased its stake in the Company. Under the tran­sac­tion now signed, capi­ton and ICG will sell all shares in Prefere Resins. The tran­sac­tion is still subject to custo­mary market condi­ti­ons. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the detailed terms of the transaction.

Consul­tant capi­ton AG:
Alan­tra (M&A, Debt Advisory)
Sidley Austin
BMH Bräu­ti­gam & Part­ner (Legal)
Deloitte (Commer­cial & Financial)
EY (Tax)
ERM (Envi­ron­men­tal)

About capi­ton AG
capi­ton is an inde­pen­dent, owner-mana­ged private equity company mana­ging a total fund volume of € 1.0 billion. Curr­ently, 11 medium-sized compa­nies are in capi­ton AG’s invest­ment port­fo­lio. capi­ton accom­pa­nies manage­ment buy-outs and growth finan­cing for estab­lished medium-sized compa­nies as an equity partner.

Pfäf­fi­kon (Switzerland)/ Krailing/ Stutt­gart — A private equity fund advi­sed by CGS Manage­ment AG has acqui­red a majo­rity stake in Inno­Las Solu­ti­ons GmbH. Toge­ther with the previous owner Richard Grund­mül­ler, who will retain a stake in the company, CGS intends to deve­lop Inno­Las Solu­ti­ons GmbH into a global laser machine buil­der for micro­ma­te­rial proces­sing as part of a buy and build stra­tegy. CGS Managent AG was advi­sed by a team led by Stutt­gart-based part­ner Dr. Hermann Ali Hinde­rer of Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek.

Inno­Las Solu­ti­ons GmbH is a deve­lo­per and produ­cer of custo­mi­zed machi­nes and process solu­ti­ons for high-precis­ion laser appli­ca­ti­ons in the photo­vol­taic, elec­tri­cal and semi­con­duc­tor indus­tries as well as in precis­ion engi­nee­ring. With 80 employees, the company supplies custo­mers in the core markets of Europe, the USA and Asia. Inno­Las Solu­ti­ons GmbH has its head­quar­ters in Krailling, Germany.

CGS Manage­ment AG has its regis­tered office in Pfäf­fi­kon SZ, Switz­er­land. CGS deve­lops medium-sized compa­nies into inter­na­tio­nal groups. CGS funds have been inves­t­ing in plat­form compa­nies in the German-spea­king count­ries of Europe and in comple­men­tary acqui­si­ti­ons world­wide since 1999.

Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek provi­ded compre­hen­sive legal advice to CGS on the tran­sac­tion. The advice also included the super­vi­sion and coor­di­na­tion of the acqui­si­tion of assets in the USA. Follo­wing the acqui­si­tion of the Stürtz Group, the take­over of Inno­Las Solu­ti­ons GmbH is alre­ady the second tran­sac­tion that Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek has advi­sed CGS on within the last six months.

Advi­sors to CGS Manage­ment AG: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek
Dr. Hermann Ali Hinde­rer, LL.M. (USD) (Lead, Corporate/M&A),
Lena Zieg­ler (Corporate/M&A),
Antje Münch, LL.M. (IP/IT),
Dr. Markus Klin­ger (IP/IT),
Dr. Frank Baßler (Real Estate Law), all Stuttgart
Astrid Well­hö­ner, LL.M. Eur. (Labor Law), Munich
Dr. Frede­rik Wiemer (Anti­trust Law), Hamburg
Frank Holl­stein (Commer­cial), Frankfurt
Dr. Anton Horn
Peter Horst­mann (both IP/IT), both Düsseldorf
Ute Klemm, LL.M. (Public Law), Frankfurt
Dr. Stefan Jöster, LL.M. (insu­rance law), Cologne

Weßling/ Munich — Gimv acqui­res majo­rity stake in Laser 2000 GmbH, a market leader for the distri­bu­tion of photo­nics solu­ti­ons in Europe. Toge­ther with the previous owners of the company, the Euro­pean invest­ment company Gimv has reached an agree­ment on the acqui­si­tion of 75% of the shares in Laser 2000 GmbH. As part of the tran­sac­tion, it was agreed that the foun­der and mana­ging direc­tor Armin Luft will conti­nue to hold a mino­rity stake in the company.

Laser 2000 (www.laser2000.de) was foun­ded in 1986 and has since deve­lo­ped into an inde­pen­dent Euro­pean market leader for inno­va­tive laser and photo­nics solu­ti­ons. The company’s compre­hen­sive product port­fo­lio ranges from lasers and light sources for mate­rial proces­sing to metro­logy and fiber optics, as well as 3D image proces­sing, opti­cal measu­ring instru­ments and came­ras. With over 30 years of expe­ri­ence in the market, Laser 2000 is a pioneer in the photo­nics indus­try and ther­e­fore alre­ady has long-stan­ding custo­mer and supplier rela­ti­onships. Custo­mers include renow­ned compa­nies and rese­arch insti­tu­ti­ons from the fields of auto­ma­tion and sensor tech­no­logy, opti­cal commu­ni­ca­ti­ons and network tech­no­logy, biotech­no­logy and medi­cine, the auto­mo­tive indus­try, and aero­space technology.

In recent years, the company, which is head­quar­te­red in Weßling and employs a total of 65 people, has grown conti­nuously and has steadily expan­ded its busi­ness by estab­li­shing seve­ral foreign subsi­dia­ries in Europe (France, Spain, Sweden). Laser 2000 bene­fi­ted from conti­nuous market growth in the photo­nics sector.

Laser 2000 is very well posi­tio­ned for the future: In the coming years, the company will conti­nue to expand its natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal busi­ness as a proven compe­tent part­ner and consul­tant for its custo­mers and suppli­ers. With its compre­hen­sive product port­fo­lio and comple­men­tary custo­mer-speci­fic system solu­ti­ons, Laser 2000 can opti­mally serve all custo­mer needs in this field with its products and services. In addi­tion, the photo­nics market conti­nues to expect strong market growth in the future, also based on new fields of appli­ca­tion for laser technology.

Armin Luft, foun­der and CEO of Laser 2000, explains: “Opti­cal tech­no­lo­gies are pene­t­ra­ting more and more appli­ca­tion areas in indus­try. For more than 30 years we have stood for inno­va­tion, crea­ti­vity, quality and highest custo­mer satis­fac­tion in the photo­nics market and we want to grow further. I am very plea­sed to have found in Gimv a part­ner for the succes­sion who stands for successful, long-term coope­ra­tion and sustainable value crea­tion in medium-sized compa­nies. We share the enthu­si­asm for future tech­no­lo­gies and will conti­nue the success story of Laser 2000 together.”

Ronald Bartel, Part­ner in the Munich office and active in the Smart Indus­tries divi­sion of Gimv, adds: “Photo­nics is a cross-sectional tech­no­logy in all important indus­tries and will decisi­vely shape this century tech­no­lo­gi­cally and econo­mic­ally — whether in Indus­try 4.0, auto­no­mous driving, diagno­stics or broad­band trans­mis­sion. In this context, Laser 2000 is excel­lently posi­tio­ned as an inde­pen­dent inter­me­diary between custo­mers and a variety of suppli­ers and products. The company has the best prere­qui­si­tes to further expand its market leader­ship — and we want to actively support it in this endeavor.”

The tran­sac­tion is still subject to appr­oval by the anti­trust autho­ri­ties. Further details of the tran­sac­tion will not be disclosed.

About Gimv
Gimv is a Euro­pean invest­ment firm with nearly 40 years of expe­ri­ence in private equity and venture capi­tal. The company is listed on Euron­ext Brussels, curr­ently mana­ges around EUR 1.6 billion and has invest­ments in 50 port­fo­lio compa­nies. As a reco­gni­zed leader in exclu­sive invest­ment plat­forms, Gimv iden­ti­fies inno­va­tive, leading compa­nies with high growth poten­tial and supports them on their way to market leader­ship. Each of the four invest­ment plat­forms Connec­ted Consu­mer, Health & Care, Smart Indus­tries and Sustainable Cities is mana­ged by a dedi­ca­ted and compe­tent team, each based in Gimv’s home markets — Bene­lux, France and DACH — and supported by an exten­sive inter­na­tio­nal network of experts.

Luhden/ Munich — The share­hol­ders have sold their shares in Bahr Modul­tech­nik GmbH to IK Invest­ment Part­ners. The tran­sac­tion is still subject to anti­trust clearance.

The family-owned company Bahr Modul­tech­nik GmbH, based in Luhden, Lower Saxony, is a manu­fac­tu­rer of custo­mi­zed, modu­lar posi­tio­ning systems. The systems are used in a wide range of indus­tries from mecha­ni­cal engi­nee­ring to medi­cal tech­no­logy. The company sells its products in more than 20 count­ries worldwide.

P+P Pöllath + Part­ners provi­ded compre­hen­sive legal advice to the sellers and the manage­ment of Bahr Modul­tech­nik GmbH with the follo­wing team:

* Jens Hörmann (Part­ner, Lead Part­ner, M&A/Private Equity, Munich)
* Dr. Bene­dikt Hohaus (Part­ner, Private Equity/Management Parti­ci­pa­tion, Munich)
* Dr. Matthias Bruse, LL.M. (Part­ner, M&A/Private Equity, Munich)
* Dr. Nico Fischer (Part­ner, Tax Law, Munich)
* Dr. Phil­ipp Kopp (Asso­ciate, M&A/Private Equity, Munich)
* Thies Jacob, LL.M. (Asso­ciate, M&A/Private Equity, Munich)
* Dr. Jens Linde (Asso­cia­ted Part­ner, Finan­cing, Frank­furt am Main)
* Daniel Wied­mann, LL.M. (Coun­sel, Anti­trust Law, Frank­furt am Main)

Paris/ Rieth­berg — Ardian, one of the world’s leading inde­pen­dent invest­ment firms, is selling its mino­rity stake in Piz’­Wich, a French manu­fac­tu­rer of frozen snacks for on-the-go consump­tion, to frost­krone, one of Europe’s leading produ­cers of frozen conve­ni­ence foods and snacks, based in Riet­berg, North Rhine-Westphalia.

Ardian Growth acqui­red the stake in Piz’­Wich in Decem­ber 2016 with the aim of support­ing the company’s orga­nic growth and acce­le­ra­ting its inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion, in parti­cu­lar by buil­ding stra­te­gic indus­try part­ner­ships world­wide. Thanks to a further deve­lo­ped product range and frame­work agree­ments with indus­trial part­ners, this goal was quickly achie­ved. Discus­sions were also held with frost­krone about a distri­bu­tion part­ner­ship in Germany, which ulti­m­ately led to the tran­sac­tion announ­ced today. As a result, Piz’­Wich is now 100 percent owned by frost­krone, a company that was a port­fo­lio company of Ardian Expan­sion in Germany until its acqui­si­tion by Emeram Capi­tal Part­ners in Febru­ary 2017.

Piz’­Wich was foun­ded in 2001 and since then has contin­ued to grow in a dyna­mi­cally evol­ving and expan­ding market. Under the leader­ship of Stéphane Dela­haye, the company quickly shifted its busi­ness model to frozen snacks for on-the-go consump­tion, a fast-growing niche market. For the latter, Piz’­Wich deve­lo­ped the “Pizza Pocket”, which proved to be as inno­va­tive as it was successful. Piz’­Wich places great empha­sis on quality and the tracea­bi­lity of the origin of ingre­di­ents, respon­ding equally to an incre­asing demand for these products, the needs of its consu­mers, as well as the stric­test requi­re­ments in terms of certi­fi­ca­tion and food inspection.

Stéphane Dela­hayeCEO of Piz’­Wich, said: “The part­ner­ship with Ardian has been a very intense and produc­tive period for us. During it we have further deve­lo­ped our product offe­ring and, with the help of Ardian’s exten­sive network world­wide, found a number of indus­try part­ners and defi­ned exter­nal growth oppor­tu­ni­ties. We thank the Ardian Growth team for their support and now look forward to tack­ling further growth plans thanks to the syner­gies with frostkrone.”

Frédé­ric Quéru, Direc­tor at Ardian Growth, added: “Piz’­Wich has deve­lo­ped very quickly in the 16 months since our invest­ment. Toge­ther with Stéphane Dela­haye, we have successfully imple­men­ted Piz’Wich’s stra­tegy. The company met with great inte­rest from a whole range of poten­tial acqui­rers. We are convin­ced that frost­krone, as one of the reco­gni­zed indus­try leaders, is the best part­ner to lead Piz’­Wich into the next stage of growth.”

Through its invest­ment arm Ardian Growth, Ardian supports profi­ta­ble compa­nies with annual reve­nues between €10 million and €100 million in imple­men­ting their growth plans. The recent €230 million fund­rai­sing for Ardian Growth Fund II unders­cores the success of the Ardian Growth team.

About Ardian
Ardian is one of the world’s leading inde­pen­dent invest­ment compa­nies, mana­ging appro­xi­m­ately US$67 billion in assets on behalf of its inves­tors from Europe, North America and Asia. The company is majo­rity-owned by its employees and gene­ra­tes sustainable, attrac­tive returns for its investors.

With the objec­tive of achie­ving posi­tive results for all stake­hol­ders, Ardian’s acti­vi­ties promote indi­vi­du­als, compa­nies and econo­mies world­wide. Ardian’s invest­ment philo­so­phy is aligned with the three guiding prin­ci­ples of excel­lence, loyalty and entrepreneurship.

The company has a global network of more than 490 employees and 13 offices in Europe (Frank­furt, Jersey, London, Luxem­bourg, Madrid, Milan, Paris and Zurich), North America (New York and San Fran­cisco) and Asia (Beijing, Singa­pore and Tokyo). Ardian mana­ges the assets of its appro­xi­m­ately 700 inves­tors in five invest­ment areas: Direct Funds, Funds of Funds, Infra­struc­ture, Private Debt and Real Estate.

About Piz’­Wich
Piz’­Wich was foun­ded in 2001 and acqui­red by the current CEO of the company in 2011. The company manu­fac­tures white-label frozen snack products for super­mar­kets, airline cate­rers and fast food compa­nies. Piz’­Wich has a strong network of distri­bu­tion part­ner­ships world­wide. Last year, Piz’­Wich repor­ted sales reve­nue of around 14 million euros. — The company is based in Bulgné­ville, France, near Nancy, and is headed by Stéphane Delahaye.

About frost crown
frost­krone and its subsi­diary Born­hol­ter specia­lize in the produc­tion and distri­bu­tion of frozen finger food and snack products. Since its foun­ding in 1997, the company has estab­lished itself as an inno­va­tive first mover in the conve­ni­ence frozen food sector. frost­krone is charac­te­ri­zed by a wide range of products based on cheese, fish, vege­ta­bles and meat and sells its products in the food retail and food service sectors.

Parties invol­ved in the transaction

Piz’­Wich: Stéphane Delahaye

Ardian: Frédé­ric Quéru, Alexis Saada

Legal coun­sel: McDer­mott, Will & Emery (Diana Hund, Louis Leroy)
Tax advice: Arsene Taxand (Franck Chami­nade, Charles Dalarun)
M&A Advi­sor: Invest Corpo­rate Finance (Marc O’Neill, Maxime Bazin)
frost crown: Frédé­ric Dervieux

Emeram Capi­tal Part­ners: Matthias Ober­meyr, Kaili Shen

Law
GLNS: Ludger Schult and Andreas Scheidle
Aramis: Raphaël Melle­rio and Alié­nor Harel
Finance, taxes and structure
PWC finan­cial: Richard Siedek, Phil­ippe Chavane and Olivier Lorang
PWC tax: Fabien Radisic
Struc­ture
Flick Gocke Schaum­burg: Chris­tian Pitzal and Martin Oltmanns
Acqui­si­tion Finance
Shear­man & Ster­ling: Winfried Carli

Süd Betei­li­gun­gen and VR Equi­typ­art­ner sell their shares in Piller Entgrattechnik
Stuttgart/Frankfurt am Main/Ditzingen — Süd Betei­li­gun­genGmbH (SüdBG) and VR Equi­typ­art­ner GmbH (VR Equi­typ­art­ner) are jointly selling their shares in Piller Entgratt­ech­nik GmbH (Piller). The buyer is the private invest­ment group Rifle­bird Capi­tal from Belgium.

Piller is an inno­va­tive machine buil­der specia­li­zing in debur­ring and clea­ning of metal­lic compon­ents using high pres­sure water. With around 100 employees and sites in Ditzin­gen and Kecs­ke­mét (Hungary), Piller prima­rily serves the auto­mo­tive indus­try, gene­ra­ting annual sales of around 30 million euros.

Follo­wing the acqui­si­tion of Piller in 2014, SüdBG and VR Equi­typ­art­ner have stra­te­gi­cally deve­lo­ped the company further and pushed ahead with the inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion course, espe­ci­ally to Asia and North America. “With SüdBG and VR Equi­typ­art­ner we had an entre­pre­neu­rial equity part­ner at our side, who always accom­pa­nied the imple­men­ta­tion of our invest­ment projects and the entry into new markets in a spirit of part­ner­ship. With our new share­hol­der, we want to conti­nue this successful course,” said Mana­ging Direc­tors Thomas Piller, Jörg Nubert and Tobias Schwarz, who will remain asso­cia­ted with the company as mana­ging partners.

Rifle­bird is a closed group of private inves­tors with exten­sive expe­ri­ence in the invest­ment busi­ness and takes a long-term invest­ment approach. “We are impres­sed by the tech­ni­cal know-how of the company and the entire team. Based on an inno­va­tive product range and a deep under­stan­ding of its custo­mers’ needs, Piller has achie­ved a strong market posi­tion. We look forward to part­ne­ring with the company in the future as it conti­nues its inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion stra­tegy,” explains Sylvia Gilis, Mana­ging Part­ner of Rifle­bird. “I am plea­sed that with Rifle­bird we have found a part­ner for the company that is orien­ted towards medium-sized compa­nies and the long term. Piller has achie­ved extra­or­di­nary growth in recent years and, based on its leading tech­no­logy and deve­lo­p­ment exper­tise, will conti­nue to actively support its custo­mers in the future with the chal­lenges that arise in debur­ring and clea­ning tech­no­logy,” says Gunter Max, Mana­ging Direc­tor of SüdBG.

Chris­tian Futter­lieb, Mana­ging Direc­tor of VR Equi­typ­art­ner, adds: “Toge­ther with the manage­ment, we have successfully deve­lo­ped the company in recent years. This also included new sales coope­ra­ti­ons. Piller is thus excel­lently posi­tio­ned today.” With a view to the company’s promi­sing pros­pects, Futter­lieb empha­si­zes: “With the comple­tion of the new produc­tion hall and office buil­ding in 2017, the capa­ci­tive prere­qui­si­tes for further dyna­mic growth have been laid”. All parties have agreed not to disc­lose details of the purchase agreement.

Süd Betei­li­gun­gen GmbH at a glance
SüdBG is a wholly owned subsi­diary of Landes­bank Baden-Würt­tem­berg (LBBW) and has been support­ing medium-sized compa­nies for more than 40 years with custo­mi­zed equity and equity-rela­ted solu­ti­ons in the context of succes­sion plan­ning, growth finan­cing and share­hol­der chan­ges. As one of the leading invest­ment compa­nies in the German-spea­king region and a long-term inves­tor, SüdBG has supported over 70 compa­nies in the past 10 years with around 600 million euros and a broad network in sustainable corpo­rate deve­lo­p­ment. www.suedbg.de.

VR Equi­typ­art­ner GmbH at a glance
VR Equi­typ­art­ner is one of the leading equity finan­ciers in Germany, Austria and Switz­er­land. The company supports medium-sized family busi­nesses in a goal-orien­ted manner and with almost 50 years of expe­ri­ence in the stra­te­gic solu­tion of complex finan­cing issues. Invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties include growth and expan­sion finan­cing, entre­pre­neu­rial succes­sion or share­hol­der chan­ges. VR Equi­typ­art­ner offers majo­rity and mino­rity invest­ments as well as mezza­nine finan­cing. As a subsi­diary of DZ BANK, the central insti­tu­tion of the coope­ra­tive banks in Germany, VR Equi­typ­art­ner consis­t­ently puts the sustaina­bi­lity of corpo­rate deve­lo­p­ment ahead of short-term exit thin­king. VR Equitypartner’s port­fo­lio curr­ently compri­ses around 100 commit­ments with an invest­ment volume of EUR 500 million. www.vrep.de.

Paris/Frankfurt — Idin­vest Part­ners finan­ces add-on acqui­si­tion for frozen food produ­cer frostkrone
The private debt team of Idin­vest Part­ners, a Euro­pean invest­ment firm specia­li­zing in the SME segment, today announ­ced finan­cing for the acqui­si­tion by frost­krone Tief­kühl­kost GmbH (“frost­krone”) of Piz’­Wich, a French specialty manu­fac­tu­rer of frozen snack products. frost­krone, one of the leading manu­fac­tu­r­ers of frozen ready-to-eat products in Europe, has been a port­fo­lio company of EMERAM Capi­tal Part­ners since 2017. — This is Idin­vest Part­ners’ third German private debt deal in 2018.

frost­krone is based in Riet­berg, North Rhine-West­pha­lia, and specia­li­zes in the deve­lo­p­ment and produc­tion of frozen finger food and snack products. Piz’­Wich was foun­ded in 2001 and since then has expe­ri­en­ced contin­ued growth in a rapidly deve­lo­ping and expan­ding market. As a subsi­diary of frost­krone, Piz’­Wich will conti­nue its inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion along­side frost­krone and focus on further expan­ding its current market posi­tion in the fast-growing niche segment.

Eric Gallerne, Part­ner for Private Debt at Idin­vest Part­ners, said: “In our invest­ments, we pay very close atten­tion to the quality and deve­lo­p­ment pros­pects of the compa­nies we support. In Germany, espe­ci­ally in the lower mid market segment, there are many compa­nies that are extre­mely successful — also inter­na­tio­nally — in their market niche. frost­krone and Piz’­Wich both meet these crite­ria, so this tran­sac­tion fits perfectly into our profile.”

Frédé­ric Dervieux, Mana­ging Part­ner of frost­krone, added: “With the acqui­si­tion of Piz’­Wich, frost­krone is posi­tio­ning itself even better for a successful future. Toge­ther with Piz’­Wich, we will iden­tify trends even faster and imple­ment them in a way that is suita­ble for snacks, thus further expan­ding our posi­tion as an inno­va­tive pioneer.”

Dr. Chris­tian Näther, Mana­ging Direc­tor of EMERAM Capi­tal Part­ners, added: “Piz’Wich’s unique and highly inno­va­tive products comple­ment frostkrone’s compre­hen­sive snack port­fo­lio and enable it to jointly address new custo­mer needs. In addi­tion, frostkrone’s large custo­mer network will help Piz’­Wich to pene­trate inter­na­tio­nal markets even faster.”

Idin­vest Part­ners streng­thens private debt invest­ment acti­vity in Germany and Europe
With this finan­cing, Idin­vest Part­ners conti­nues its active private debt invest­ment acti­vity in the German market. Most recently, the company, toge­ther with other debt inves­tors, had supported the acqui­si­tion of Halex Holding, a North Rhine-West­pha­lia-based manu­fac­tu­rer of extru­sion dies and service provi­der for heat treat­ment, by Bencis Capi­tal Part­ners. In Febru­ary, Auctus Capi­tal Part­ners acqui­red GS Star Hotel Group with the help of a unitran­che finan­cing from Idin­vest Part­ners. The Group opera­tes hotels throug­hout Germany and in Austria and the Nether­lands under the Hamp­ton by Hilton, Holi­day Inn, Holi­day Inn Express and Super 8 brands, as well as under its own ANA Art Hotels brand.

Across Europe, Idin­vest Part­ners’ private debt invest­ment acti­vity in the first quar­ter was around twice as high as in the same period last year (three tran­sac­tions, €69 million), with seven tran­sac­tions and an invest­ment volume of €120 million. In 2017, the company had carried out a total of 45 tran­sac­tions in Europe with a volume of 900 million euros. Germany accoun­ted for around 20 percent of this invest­ment volume, making it the second-largest market after France (65 percent).

About Idin­vest Partners
Idin­vest Part­ners is a leading Euro­pean invest­ment firm focu­sed on the mid market. The company was foun­ded in 1997 as part of the Alli­anz Group under the name AGF Private Equity and has been inde­pen­dent since 2010. Curr­ently, Idin­vest Part­ners mana­ges assets of around €9 billion with more than 90 employees and has offices in Paris, Frank­furt, Madrid, Shang­hai and Dubai. Idin­vest Part­ners has three busi­ness units: Private Funds Group, Private Debt and Venture & Growth Capital.

For Private Debt, Idin­vest Part­ners opened an office in Frank­furt in 2017 as part of its inter­na­tio­nal growth stra­tegy to support port­fo­lio compa­nies and clients in the German market. Idin­vest Part­ners’ debt solu­ti­ons include direct loans, acqui­si­tion loans, and asset finance. www.idinvest.com

About frost­krone Tief­kühl­kost GmbH
frost­krone and its subsi­diary Born­hol­ter specia­lize in the produc­tion and distri­bu­tion of frozen finger food and snack products. Since its foun­ding in 1997, the company has estab­lished itself as an inno­va­tive first mover in the conve­ni­ence frozen food sector. frost­krone is charac­te­ri­zed by a wide range of products based on cheese, fish, vege­ta­bles and meat and sells its products in the food retail and food service sectors. www.frostkrone.de

About EMERAM Capi­tal Partners
EMERAM Capi­tal Part­ners is an inde­pen­dent invest­ment company for medium-sized compa­nies in German-spea­king count­ries. With a fund volume of €350 million, the funds advi­sed by EMERAM Capi­tal Part­ners provide capi­tal for the deve­lo­p­ment of compa­nies and curr­ently manage nine port­fo­lio compa­nies: Boards & More, BENCH Inter­na­tio­nal, Hussel, Matrix42, diva‑e Digi­tal Value Enter­prise, Xovis, Draht­zug Stein Gruppe, frost­krone Tief­kühl­kost and the Meona Group. www.emeram.com

Düssel­dorf — Luxem­bourg-based steel group Aperam S.A. has acqui­red VDM Metals Group, a produ­cer of specialty steel alloys. The enter­prise value of the target group amounts to around EUR 596 million. The tran­sac­tion is still subject to appr­oval by the rele­vant anti­trust autho­ri­ties. Aperam was advi­sed by the inter­na­tio­nal commer­cial law firm Simmons & Simmons led by Corporate/M&A Part­ner Dr. Chris­tian Bornhorst.

Listed on the Luxem­bourg, Paris, Amster­dam and Brussels stock exch­an­ges, Aperam S.A. is a global produ­cer of corro­sion-resistant and soft magne­tic steel and high-alloy special stain­less steels with custo­mer rela­ti­onships in over 40 count­ries and six produc­tion sites in France, Brazil and Belgium. The three busi­ness areas comprise the segments ‘Stain­less & Elec­tri­cal Steel’, ‘Services & Solu­ti­ons’ and ‘Alloys & Special­ties’. The VDM Metals Group, head­quar­te­red in Werdohl, North Rhine-West­pha­lia, employs around 2,000 people world­wide and gene­ra­tes annual sales of over 1 billion euros. VDM Metals is a global manu­fac­tu­rer of high-perfor­mance nickel alloys, special corro­sion-resistant and soft magne­tic steel, zirco­nium, cobalt, and semi-finis­hed alumi­num and copper. The products of the VDM Metals Group are sold to custo­mers in a wide range of indus­tries. VDM Metals is curr­ently still held by Lind­say Gold­berg, a US private equity investor.

Advi­sor to Aperam S.A.: Simmons & Simmons
The Simmons & Simmons team consis­ted of Dr. Chris­tian Born­horst, photo (lead, M&A Düssel­dorf), Dr. Michael Bormann, Marc Urlichs, Matthias von Holten, Dr. Anja Schlicht­ing, Sören Schei­bel (all M&A, Düssel­dorf), Yannick Stern­otte (M&A, Brussels), Koen Plat­teau, Dr. Robert Hardy, Mathieu Vancail­lie (all Anti­trust, Brussels), Dr. Martin Gramsch (Anti­trust, Düssel­dorf), Alex­an­der Greth, Patrick Komi­niak (both Labor Law, Düssel­dorf), Dr. Stefan Schramm, Leonie Müller (both Finan­cing, Frank­furt), Lenn­art Dahmen (Regu­la­tory, Frank­furt), Dr. Phil­ipp Schrö­ler (Liti­ga­tion, Düssel­dorf), Julian Hier­eth (Real Estate, Munich) and Clau­dia Feller and Janine Manke (both IP, Munich). In addi­tion, Claire le Touzé and Jenni­fer Heng (both employ­ment law, Paris) as well as Louis-Maël Cogis, Cath­rine Fold­berg Møller and Leonor Rijpma (M&A and capi­tal markets law, Luxem­bourg) were involved.

Advi­sor Lind­say Gold­berg: Gleiss Lutz
Dr. Fred Wendt, Dr. Urszula Nartowska (both Lead, Part­ner, Corporate/M&A, Hamburg), Dr. Stefan Linge­mann (Part­ner, Labor Law, Berlin/Hamburg), Dr. Jacob von Andreae (Part­ner, Public Law, Düssel­dorf), Dr. Johann Wagner (Part­ner, Tax Law, Hamburg) Iris Bene­dikt-Bucken­leib (Coun­sel, Anti­trust Law, Munich), Dr. Marc Ruttl­off (Coun­sel, Public Law, Stutt­gart), Chris­tian Zimmer­mann, Mari­anne Milo­va­nov (both Corpo­rate Law/M&A, both Hamburg), Dr. Jonas Rybarz (Corporate/M&A, Berlin), Dr. Jan-Alex­an­der Lange (Finance, Frank­furt), Jose­fine Chakrab­arti (Labor Law), Dr. Daniel Görlich, Dr. Lars Kind­ler (both Public Law, all Berlin), Kath­rin Haag (Anti­trust, Munich), Kevin Grimm­eiß (Public Law, Düssel­dorf), Dr. Matthias Schilde (Intellec­tual Property, Berlin).

Esch­born — DRS Invest­ment acqui­res stake in ASCORA GmbH. Rödl & Part­ner compre­hen­si­vely advi­sed the mana­ging part­ner of the soft­ware specia­list Ascora GmbH, Dr. Sven Abels, on the sale of his company shares to the private invest­ment company DRS Invest­ment GmbH. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price.

Ascora GmbH, based in Gander­ke­see (Lower Saxony), was foun­ded in 1994 and is a medium-sized, owner-mana­ged soft­ware house. The company deve­lops consu­mer soft­ware for Windows and Mac as well as smart­phone apps and parti­ci­pa­tes in various rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment projects in Germany and Europe. Ascora has deve­lo­ped into an estab­lished part­ner around the digi­ta­liza­tion of busi­ness proces­ses and today employs over 30 soft­ware deve­lo­pers. With over 12 million users, Ascora GmbH is one of the largest provi­ders of consu­mer soft­ware solu­ti­ons in Germany. Ascora has recei­ved the Deloitte Tech­no­logy Fast 50 Award and the 2018 Growth Cham­pion award from Focus and Statista, among others. Ascora GmbH was also included in the list of “Top Employ­ers for Medium-Sized Busi­nesses 2018” by Focus Business.

DRS Invest­ment GmbH is a private invest­ment company for medium-sized compa­nies and is based in Munich. The invest­ment focus is on stable and estab­lished busi­ness models, niche play­ers and soft­ware and tech­no­logy compa­nies. Mana­ging Part­ner Dr. Andreas Spie­gel (photo) brings more than 15 years of expe­ri­ence as an entre­pre­neur and inves­tor in medium-sized companies.

Advi­sor to Ascora GmbH: Rödl & Part­ner Esch­born — Corpo­rate Finance
HenningKürbis, Asso­ciate Part­ner (Lead, Corpo­rate Finance and M&A)
Hendrik Blumen­stock, Senior Consul­tant (Corpo­rate Finance and M&A)

Rödl & Part­ner Nurem­berg — Legal advice:
Michael Wiehl, Part­ner, Attor­ney-at-Law, Tax Law Specia­list (Lead, Legal M&A), Sebas­tian Dittrich, Asso­ciate (M&A and Corpo­rate Law)

Rödl & Part­ner Munich
Björn Stübi­ger, Part­ner (Head of Corpo­rate Finance and M&A)

About Rödl & Partner
Rödl & Part­ner — The agile caret­a­ker for medium-sized global market leaders. As lawy­ers, tax advi­sors, busi­ness and IT consul­tants and audi­tors, we are repre­sen­ted at 108 of our own loca­ti­ons in 50 count­ries. Our clients trust our 4,500 colle­agues worldwide.

Frank­furt — The Eckes-Granini Group has acqui­red a 35% stake in true fruits GmbH, Bonn, through Eckes-Granini Betei­li­gungs­ver­wal­tung GmbH. The tran­sac­tion is subject to appr­oval by the rele­vant anti­trust autho­ri­ties. Foun­ded as recently as 2006, true fruits is one of the leading suppli­ers of smoothies in Germany with sales of EUR 43 million (2017). At the same time, the company repea­tedly makes head­lines with its head­line-grab­bing adver­ti­sing campaigns.

The smoothies market is conside­red one of the fastest-growing areas of the indus­try. The foun­ders of true fruits will remain opera­tio­nally respon­si­ble as share­hol­ders and mana­ging direc­tors. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the tran­sac­tion volume.

Eckes-Granini is one of the most important brand manu­fac­tu­r­ers of fruit juices and fruit-based soft drinks in Europe and is best known for brands such as granini, Pago, hohes C, Joker, Rynkeby and YO Syrup. Eckes-Granini was compre­hen­si­vely advi­sed on the tran­sac­tion by Reed Smith under the leader­ship of Frank­furt-based Corpo­rate Part­ner Dr. Andreas Jürgens and Asso­ciate Dr. Philip Schmidt. Dr. Jürgens has a long-stan­ding client rela­ti­onship with Eckes-Granini in which he has alre­ady advi­sed on seve­ral transactions.

Based on this rela­ti­onship, Reed Smith now came into play for Eckes-Granini for the first time. Consul­tant Eckes-Granini Reed Smith:
Dr. Andreas Jürgens, Dr. Philip Schmidt (both Corporate/M&A, Lead), Tilman Siebert (Part­ner), Helge Aulmann (Asso­ciate) (both Merger Control), Dr. Anette Gärt­ner (Part­ner), Iris Kruse (Asso­ciate) (both IP), Dr. Marc Spiel­ber­ger (Part­ner), Clau­dia Kuhn (Asso­ciate) (both Employ­ment) END About Reed Smith Reed Smith is one of the leading inter­na­tio­nal law firms with more than 1,700 lawy­ers in 27 offices in Europe, the US, the Middle East and Asia. For more infor­ma­tion, visit www.reedsmith.com.

Munich-Bird & Bird LLP advi­sed the share­hol­ders of BBS Auto­ma­tion GmbH, one of the leading provi­ders of high-quality auto­ma­tion solu­ti­ons for complex assem­bly and test­ing proces­ses with loca­ti­ons in Germany, USA, Malay­sia and China, on the invest­ment through and joint venture with EQT Mid Market Europe.

The growth of BBS is to be supported both orga­ni­cally and by further acqui­si­ti­ons in new appli­ca­tion areas, in parti­cu­lar to drive the further deve­lo­p­ment of Indus­trie 4.0 produc­tion systems. In addi­tion, the expan­sion of inter­na­tio­nal acti­vi­ties — parti­cu­larly in Asia and America — will be an important aspect of future cooperation.

The foun­ders of BBS Auto­ma­tion GmbH, Josef Wild­gru­ber and Uwe Behr, will conti­nue the manage­ment and like­wise all current share­hol­ders will remain inves­ted in BBS Auto­ma­tion. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the volume of the deal.

BBS Auto­ma­tion GmbH and its share­hol­ders were advi­sed by the follo­wing Bird & Bird lawy­ers: Part­ner Stefan Münch, Coun­sel Stephan Kübler (both lead) and Asso­cia­tes Michael Gaßner and Bene­dikt Weiß (all Corporate/M&A, Munich) as well as Senior Coun­sel Dr. Martin Jäger (Anti­trust, Düsseldorf).

About Bird & Bird
Bird & Bird is an inter­na­tio­nal law firm that supports compa­nies and insti­tu­ti­ons that are trans­for­med by tech­no­logy or the digi­tal world. 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.

Munich/ Naald­wijk — Funds advi­sed by Equis­tone Part­ners Europe (“Equis­tone”) have acqui­red a majo­rity stake in BOAL Group. The Dutch company deve­lops and produ­ces high-quality alumi­num roof and side wall systems for glass and foil green­hou­ses. The sellers are the mana­ging direc­tor Ronald Boers and the foun­der Mari­nus Boers, both of whom will conti­nue to hold mino­rity shares. BOAL’s manage­ment team will also parti­ci­pate in the company. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price. The acqui­si­tion is still subject to appr­oval by the rele­vant anti­trust authorities.

BOAL Group, head­quar­te­red in Naald­wijk, the Nether­lands, has 48 years of expe­ri­ence in the design and manu­fac­ture of alumi­num roof and side­wall systems for green­hou­ses. This makes the Group one of the leading suppli­ers in the market. In addi­tion, BOAL supplies the cons­truc­tion, mecha­ni­cal engi­nee­ring and trans­port indus­tries with extru­ded alumi­num profiles. The manu­fac­ture of the high-quality products is based on many years of expe­ri­ence, tech­ni­cal exper­tise and inno­va­tive strength. Produc­tion takes place at the company’s three Dutch sites ’s‑Gravenzande, Maas­dijk and De Lier, as well as in Shep­s­hed in the UK. BOAL curr­ently employs appro­xi­m­ately 370 people and gene­ra­ted sales of around 155 million euros in 2017.

Toge­ther with Equis­tone, BOAL aims to further streng­then its market-leading posi­tion in the green­house indus­try. The focus is on conti­nuous product inno­va­tion, geogra­phic growth and expan­ding the posi­tion in the market for roof systems for film green­hou­ses. Proven part­ner­ships with exis­ting custo­mers for green­house systems as well as alumi­num profiles remain unaf­fec­ted and are to be continued.

“BOAL Group’s impres­sive posi­tion in the market is a prime start­ing point for the next phase of growth,” said Dr. Marc Arens, Part­ner at Equis­tone. “Toge­ther with the outstan­ding manage­ment team, Equis­tone will build on BOAL’s strengths and consis­t­ently pursue its growth stra­tegy. In doing so, we are focu­sing on geogra­phic expan­sion, inno­va­tion and enhan­cing the Group’s exis­ting product portfolio.”

Ronald Boers, Mana­ging Direc­tor of BOAL Group, comm­ents: “The green­house indus­try is growing rapidly and BOAL Group will bene­fit enorm­ously from this deve­lo­p­ment. Equis­tone is the ideal part­ner for our ambi­ti­ons — toge­ther we will conti­nue to drive our growth plans. In doing so, we build on long-term stra­te­gic part­ner­ships with our custo­mers as well as many years of expe­ri­ence and exper­tise in the extru­sion of high-quality alumi­num profiles for the green­house indus­try and other markets.”

On the part of Equis­tone, Dr. Marc Arens, Roman Emanuel Hegglin and Moritz Treude are respon­si­ble for the tran­sac­tion. The mid-market inves­tor was advi­sed by h&z (Commer­cial), Deloitte (Finan­cial), Allen & Overy (Legal), PwC (Tax), ERM (Envi­ron­men­tal), GCA Altium (Dept Advi­sory), Shear­man & Ster­ling and Stek Advo­ca­ten (Finan­cing, Legal). BOAL Group was advi­sed by William Blair (M&A), Roland Berger (Commer­cial), Deloitte (Financial/ Tax), Hout­hoff (Legal), Tauw (Envi­ron­men­tal), Oaklins (Finan­cial), Van Doorne (Legal) and Yeald (Manage­ment). The tran­sac­tion is expec­ted to close in April 2018.

About Equis­tone Part­ners Europe
Equis­tone Part­ners Europe is one of Europe’s leading equity inves­tors with a team of more than 35 invest­ment specia­lists in six offices in Germany, Switz­er­land, France and the UK. Equis­tone prima­rily invests in estab­lished medium-sized compa­nies with a good market posi­tion, above-average growth poten­tial and an enter­prise value of between EUR 50 and 500 million. Since its foun­ding, equity has been inves­ted in more than 140 tran­sac­tions, mainly mid-market buy-outs. The port­fo­lio curr­ently compri­ses over 40 compa­nies across Europe, inclu­ding around 20 active holdings in Germany, Switz­er­land and the Nether­lands. Equis­tone is curr­ently inves­t­ing from its sixth fund, which closed in March 2018 with €2.8 billion at the hard cap.
For more infor­ma­tion, visit www.equistonepe.de

Frank­furt, Munich, London — Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP advi­sed the finan­cial inves­tor Noval­pina Capi­tal in connec­tion with a public take­over offer for Olym­pic Enter­tain­ment Group AS, listed on the Tallinn Stock Exch­ange. The tran­sac­tion is the largest of its kind so far in the Baltic States.

The public tender offer is being made by Odys­sey Europe AS, a company owned by funds mana­ged by Noval­pina Capi­tal, for all shares in Olym­pic Enter­tain­ment Group for a price of EUR 1.90 per share. Accor­ding to this, the delis­ting of the Olym­pic Enter­tain­ment Group from the Tallinn Stock Exch­ange and the merger of Odys­sey Europe AS with the Olym­pic Enter­tain­ment Group are being sought.

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

Advi­sors to Noval­pina Capi­tal: Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP
The Weil tran­sac­tion team is led by part­ner Prof. Dr. Gerhard Schmidt and is supported by the part­ners Stephan Grauke (Corpo­rate, Frank­furt), Tobias Geer­ling (Tax, Munich), Dr. Barbara Jagers­ber­ger (Corpo­rate, Munich) as well as Coun­sel Dr. Heiner Drüke (Corpo­rate, Frank­furt) and the asso­cia­tes Manuel-Peter Fringer (Corpo­rate, Munich), Dr. Ansgar Wimber (Corpo­rate, Munich), Benja­min Rapp (Tax, Munich), Alex­an­der Pfef­fer­ler (Corpo­rate, Munich), Daniel Zhu (Corpo­rate, Munich) and Julian Schwa­ne­beck (Corpo­rate, Frank­furt) as well as para­le­gals Madleen Düdder, Patrik Marten and Sonja Popp (all Munich).
The Weil team working on the acqui­si­tion finan­cing is led by Frank­furt Finance Part­ner Dr. Wolf­ram Distler and London Finance Part­ner Patrick Bright and was supported by asso­cia­tes Dr. Dorian Legel and Julia Schum (both Frank­furt) as well as Nick Kren­del and Antony Serban (both London).

About Noval­pina Capital
Noval­pina Capi­tal is an inde­pen­dent Euro­pean private equity firm that focu­ses on making control equity invest­ments in middle market compa­nies throug­hout the conti­nent. Noval­pina has a solu­tion-orien­ted, entre­pre­neu­rial approach to inves­t­ing and crea­ting value in its port­fo­lio compa­nies. Noval­pina Capi­tal was estab­lished by Stephen Peel, Stefan Kowski and Bastian Lueken in 2017. The Foun­ding Part­ners bring combi­ned expe­ri­ence of 48 years in private equity inves­t­ing, inclu­ding senior posi­ti­ons in the Euro­pean opera­ti­ons of leading global private equity invest­ment firms, and have a shared history of working toge­ther for nearly a decade.

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.

Frank­furt am Main / Munich — Allen & Overy LLP has advi­sed private equity inves­tor Bencis Capi­tal Part­ners (“Bencis”) on the acqui­si­tion of HALEX Holding GmbH (“Halex”) from H2 Equity Part­ners.

Halex, based in Alden­ho­ven, North Rhine-West­pha­lia, is one of Europe’s leading manu­fac­tu­r­ers of extru­sion dies and service provi­ders for heat treat­ment with its two busi­ness units Halex Extru­sion Dies and Härtha Hardening Indus­tries. The company opera­tes twelve sites in Germany, Italy, the Nether­lands and Roma­nia and employs around 460 people.

Bencis is a private equity firm that invests in successful mid-sized compa­nies prima­rily in the Bene­lux and Germany.

The Allen & Overy team advi­sed on all M&A legal issues in this tran­sac­tion as well as on the complex finan­cing struc­ture of the tran­sac­tion, consis­ting of a unitran­che finan­cing in the form of notes provi­ded by Muzi­nich & Co., Idin­vest Part­ners and CVC Credit Part­ners and a revol­ving credit faci­lity gran­ted by ABN AMRO.

The team was led by Munich part­ner Dr. Alex­an­der Veith with support from senior asso­ciate Dr. Daniel Epe and asso­ciate Tobias Hugo (all Corporate/M&A, Munich).

The finan­cing of the tran­sac­tion was advi­sed by Part­ner Thomas Neubaum (Banking and Finance), Part­ner Dr. Stefan Henkel­mann (Inter­na­tio­nal Capi­tal Markets), Coun­sel Jens Noll­mann (Inter­na­tio­nal Capi­tal Markets) and Bianca Engel­mann, Senior Asso­cia­tes Elke Funken-Hötzel and David Schmidt, Asso­ciate Louisa Drew­niok and Tran­sac­tion Support Lawyer Anasta­siya-Evan­ge­lina Gordienko (all Banking and Finance, Frankfurt).

Further­more, the part­ners Dr. Asmus Mihm (Tax Law, Frank­furt), Dr. Börries Ahrens (Anti­trust Law, Hamburg), Coun­sel Dr. Chris­tian Hilmes (Real Estate, Hamburg), the Senior Asso­cia­tes Peter Seidel and Dr. Domi­nic Paschke (both Tax Law, Frank­furt) as well as the Asso­cia­tes Heiner Meck­len­burg (Anti­trust Law, Hamburg) and Dr. Wolf­gang Wittek (Labor Law, Hamburg) provi­ded advice.

Notes to the Editor:
www.allenovery.de

Allen & Overy is an inter­na­tio­nal law firm with appro­xi­m­ately 5,400 employees, inclu­ding appro­xi­m­ately 550 part­ners, in 44 offices worldwide.

Allen & Overy is repre­sen­ted in Germany at its offices in Düssel­dorf, Frank­furt am Main, Hamburg and Munich with appro­xi­m­ately 220 lawy­ers, inclu­ding 50 part­ners. The lawy­ers advise leading natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal compa­nies prima­rily in the areas of banking, finance and capi­tal markets law, corpo­rate law and M&A, tax law as well as other areas of busi­ness law.

This press release is issued by Allen & Overy LLP. In this press release, “Allen & Overy” refers to “Allen & Overy LLP or its affi­lia­tes.” The named part­ners are either share­hol­ders, advi­sors or employees of Allen & Overy LLP and/or its affiliates.

Gladenbach/ Munich — The Munich-based family-owned Sera­fin Group of Compa­nies (“Sera­fin”) acqui­res Weso-Aurorahütte GmbH (“WESO”), a subsi­diary of the Viess­mann Group (“Viess­mann”), one of the leading inter­na­tio­nal manu­fac­tu­r­ers of heating, indus­trial and cooling systems. Viess­mann Group was advi­sed by DC Advi­sory.

With more than 400 employees and sales of around EUR 64 million, WESO belongs to the to the major German found­ries. The company from Gladen­bach in Hesse specia­li­zes in the manu­fac­ture of high-quality gray cast iron products that are used inter­na­tio­nally in various indus­tries. Last year, the company cele­bra­ted its 130th anniversary.

WESO had been part of the Viess­mann Group for seve­ral deca­des, supp­ly­ing it with castings for its heating tech­no­logy divi­sion. Viess­mann will remain an important custo­mer of WESO in the future. In addi­tion, the foundry serves well-known indus­trial custo­mers from various sectors with a focus on agri­cul­tu­ral and rail­road tech­no­logy. This busi­ness has been conti­nuously expan­ded over the past two deca­des and is to be pushed even further in the future.

Prof. Dr. Martin Viess­mann, Presi­dent of the Execu­tive Board of the Viess­mann Group, states: “With their exem­plary commit­ment, the employees in Gladen­bach have contri­bu­ted signi­fi­cantly to the successful deve­lo­p­ment of WESO over the many years. I would like to express my sincere thanks for this. At the same time, I am plea­sed that with the hando­ver to Sera­fin, WESO conti­nues to be in good, family-run hands. We are firmly convin­ced that WESO is thus also very well posi­tio­ned for the future.”

Phil­ipp Haindl (photo), one of the foun­ders of the Sera­fin group of compa­nies and repre­sen­ta­tive of the share­hol­der family, empha­si­zed that nothing would change for the more than 400 employees of the Gladen­bach foundry. WESO’s previous stra­tegy as a custo­mer foundry will be further deve­lo­ped. “We invest in estab­lished medium-sized compa­nies that have a func­tio­ning busi­ness model and can be further deve­lo­ped through the use of opera­tio­nal and stra­te­gic measures.”

The tran­sac­tion is still subject to appr­oval by the anti­trust authorities.

Advi­sors to sola­ris­Bank AG: P+P Pöllath und Partner
Chris­tian Tönies, LL.M. Eur. (Part­ner, M&A, Venture Capi­tal, Munich/Berlin)
Dr. Eva Nase (Part­ner, Stock Corpo­ra­tion Law, Munich)
Dr. Sebas­tian Gerlin­ger, LL.M. (Senior Asso­ciate, M&A, Venture Capi­tal, Berlin/Munich)
Dr. Sebas­tian Käpplin­ger (Coun­sel, Regu­la­tory Law, Frankfurt)
Daniel Wied­mann, LL.M. (NYU) (Coun­sel, Anti­trust Law, Frankfurt)
Phil­ipp Opitz (Senior Asso­ciate, Stock Corpo­ra­tion Law, Munich)
Tim Jung­in­ger (Senior Asso­ciate, Corpo­rate and Capi­tal Markets, Munich)
Dr. Georg Seitz (Asso­ciate, M&A, Venture Capi­tal, Munich)
Chris­toph-Alex­an­der May (Asso­ciate, Corpo­rate and Capi­tal Markets Law, Munich)

Munich — Munich-based private equity firm Para­gon Part­ners has acqui­red a majo­rity stake in UNICEPTA. Pesca Private Equity initia­ted the exit through the previous group of share­hol­ders around the Ippen media group, former Bertels­mann execu­tive Hart­mut Ostrow­ski and other inves­tors in an inter­na­tio­nal bidding process. The manage­ment team remains invol­ved in the company.

UNICEPTA is one of the leading Euro­pean service compa­nies for stra­te­gic media moni­to­ring, media response analy­sis and intel­li­gent issue manage­ment concepts. UNICEPTA has achie­ved an average annual increase in sales of around 18 percent over the last ten years. In the 2016/2017 finan­cial year, sales amoun­ted to €31.5 million. The company works for around 300 custo­mers, inclu­ding two-thirds of the DAX compa­nies and nume­rous other multi­na­tio­nals. UNICEPTA is also the leading provi­der in Germany for so-called news­room solu­ti­ons in corpo­rate communications.

Advi­sors to Pesca Private Equity: P+P Pöllath + Partners
P+P Pöllath + Part­ners advi­sed the sellers around Pesca Private Equity on the sale of their shares.

Tobias Jäger (Coun­sel, Lead, M&A/PE, Munich), Dr. Nico Fischer (Part­ner, Tax, Munich), Dr. Jens Linde (Asso­cia­ted Part­ner, Finan­cing, Frank­furt), Daniel Wied­mann, LL.M. (NYU) (Coun­sel, Anti­trust Law, Frank­furt), Andrea Strei­fen­e­der (Asso­ciate, M&A/PE, Munich), Dr. Sebas­tian Rosen­tritt (Asso­ciate, M&A/PE, Munich), Chris­toph Beigel (Asso­ciate, Tax Law Munich)

Stuttgart/ Düssel­dorf — BWK GmbH Unter­neh­mens­be­tei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft has acqui­red a mino­rity stake in Crui­se­Vi­sion GmbH. Foun­ded in 2009 by Chris­tian Paulick and Mirko Berloge, the company is one of the tech­no­lo­gi­cal leaders in photo and video products on ocean cruise ships. It curr­ently employs 14 perma­nent staff at its site in Sche­ne­feld near Hamburg and around 95 freelancers.

Crui­se­Vi­sion offers custo­mi­zed photo and film solu­ti­ons for up to 25,000 passen­gers daily on cruise ships opera­ting world­wide. Further­more, Crui­se­Vi­sion offers guided bicy­cle tours for cruise passen­gers and plans to expand the successful concept to new market segments. “CruiseVision’s indus­try-expe­ri­en­ced and inno­va­tive manage­ment as well as its profi­ta­ble and scalable busi­ness model have convin­ced us. We will cons­truc­tively support the company in the imple­men­ta­tion of its growth stra­tegy,” explains BWK Mana­ging Direc­tor Bernd Bergschneider.

BWK GmbH Unter­neh­mens­be­tei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft, based in Stutt­gart, is one of the oldest German private equity compa­nies and pursues a long-term invest­ment approach. ARQIS first acted for the company through a cont­act of part­ner Chris­tof Alex­an­der Schneider.

Advi­sors to BWK GmbH: ARQIS Rechts­an­wälte (Düssel­dorf)
Dr. Chris­tof Alex­an­der Schnei­der (Lead; Corporate/M&A), Dr. Andrea Panzer-Heemeier (Labor Law), Marcus Noth­hel­fer (IP & Commer­cial; Munich); Coun­sel: Saskia Kirsch­baum (Labor Law); Asso­cia­tes: Carina Engel­hard (Labor Law), Dr. Phil­ipp Maier (IP & Commer­cial; Munich), Scha­bana Alam Yar (Legal Support Specialist)

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 lawy­ers 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.

Munich/Graz — Funds advi­sed by DPE Deut­sche Private Equity Manage­ment III GmbH (DPE) acquire a majo­rity stake in VTU Engi­nee­ring (“VTU” or the “Company”). The foun­ding team remains signi­fi­cantly invol­ved in the company.

VTU is a leading engi­nee­ring service provi­der for the plan­ning and opti­miza­tion of process plants up to the gene­ral plan­ning of major invest­ments in the phar­maceu­ti­cal, biotech­no­logy, chemi­cal, metall­ur­gi­cal, and oil and gas indus­tries. The company has 20 loca­ti­ons in Austria, Germany, Switz­er­land, Italy and Roma­nia and employs over 400 highly quali­fied employees.

“Since its foun­da­tion in 1990, VTU Engi­nee­ring has stood for the highest level of compe­tence, quality and relia­bi­lity in plant design. Our growth path so far proves that we have deve­lo­ped from an Austrian specia­list to a leading plant desi­gner and project mana­ger in the entire German-spea­king region and beyond through tech­ni­cal know-how and a constant expan­sion of core compe­ten­cies,” comm­ents foun­der Dr. Michael Koncar, who will support the company in the future as a member of the advi­sory board.

Since 2010, VTU has more than tripled its sales and more than doubled its work­force. Major projects with phar­maceu­ti­cal custo­mers in Germany, Austria and Switz­er­land are the main growth drivers. DPE Mana­ging Direc­tor Guido Prehn empha­si­zes: “We have been follo­wing VTU’s deve­lo­p­ment for more than two years. We are impres­sed by how the company has estab­lished long-stan­ding rela­ti­onships with the big names in the phar­maceu­ti­cal indus­try. We see signi­fi­cant growth poten­tial for VTU and will stron­gly support the manage­ment team as it conti­nues on its course.” VTU intends to leverage its strong market posi­tion and repu­ta­tion as a phar­maceu­ti­cal specia­list to drive growth with new custo­mers. “We are looking forward to tack­ling VTU’s next growth initia­ti­ves with an expe­ri­en­ced, entre­pre­neu­rial and strong part­ner behind us,” under­lines VTU CEO Dr. Fried­rich Fröschl.

About DPE Deut­sche Private Equity
DPE Deut­sche Private Equity (“DPE”), foun­ded by Volker Hichert (photo ) and Marc Thiery, is an inde­pen­dent German private equity firm and one of the largest growth capi­tal provi­ders in Germany. It focu­ses on medium-sized compa­nies in German-spea­king count­ries that operate in sectors with posi­tive long-term deve­lo­p­ment pros­pects. DPE was foun­ded in 2007 and has since inves­ted in 21 compa­nies, making 48 follow-on invest­ments and employ­ing more than 7,300 people today. DPE mana­ges total assets of around € 1.2 billion.

Advi­sor DPE: P+P Pöllath + Partners
P+P advi­sed DPE on German tax aspects of the acqui­si­tion with the follo­wing team:
— Dr. Michael Best (Part­ner, Tax Law, Munich)
— Gerald Herr­mann (Coun­sel, Tax Law Munich)

Frank­furt am Main / Hamburg — Allen & Overy LLP is advi­sing US finan­cial inves­tor Cerbe­rus Capi­tal Manage­ment on the acqui­si­tion of HSH Nord­bank by inde­pen­dent inves­tors. The agree­ment provi­des for a purchase price of around one billion euros for 94.9 percent of the shares held in HSH Nord­bank. The other buyers include finan­cial inves­tors J.C. Flowers, Golden­Tree Asset Manage­ment and Centau­rus Capi­tal, as well as Austria’s BAWAG P.S.K. Bank für Arbeit und Wirt­schaft and Öster­rei­chi­sche Post­spar­kasse.

In connec­tion with the acqui­si­tion, problem loans with a nomi­nal value of seve­ral billion euros will be sold from the bank. This will enable HSH Nord­bank to compete without state aid in the future. The acqui­si­tion of HSH Nord­bank by inde­pen­dent inves­tors marks the first time that a German Landes­bank has been successfully privatized.

The tran­sac­tion will be comple­ted once the neces­sary regu­la­tory appr­ovals have been obtai­ned. These include appr­oval by the Euro­pean Commis­sion, the Euro­pean Central Bank, the parlia­ments of the states of Hamburg and Schles­wig-Holstein, and the rele­vant anti­trust authorities.

Allen & Overy is advi­sing Cerbe­rus on, among other things, the purchase agree­ment, the offloa­ding of the problem loans, on all regu­la­tory aspects (inclu­ding banking super­vi­sion law and anti­trust law) and on labor and tax issues.

The Allen & Overy team was led by part­ners Dr. Hart­mut Krause (Corporate/M&A, Frank­furt) and Dr. Nico­laus Ascher­feld (Corporate/M&A, Hamburg — both lead) and included the follo­wing addi­tio­nal team members:

Coun­sel Max Lands­hut (Corporate/M&A, Hamburg), Dr. Andre P.H. Wandt (Corpo­rate, Frank­furt), Senior Asso­ciate Alex­an­der Wüpper (Corporate/M&A, Frank­furt) and Asso­cia­tes Gregor Petric, Tatiana Marzoli, Frede­ric Wünsche (all Corporate/M&A, Frank­furt), Dr. Moritz Meis­ter and Dr. Stefan Witte (both Corporate/M&A, Hamburg), Fabian Schulze and Kai Schadtle (both Banking Regu­la­tory, Frankfurt).

Further­more, the team consis­ted of the part­ners Dr. Jan Schrö­der (Corporate/M&A, Düssel­dorf), Jürgen Schind­ler (Anti­trust, Brussels), Dr. Heike Weber (Tax, Frank­furt), John Coburn, Dr. Franz Bern­hard Herding, Wolf­gang Melzer, Dr. Norbert Wieder­holt (all Banking and Finance, Frank­furt), Dr. Walter Uebel­hoer (Banking, Munich), Dr. Stefan Henkel­mann (Capi­tal Markets, Frank­furt), Dr. Jens Matthes (IP/IT, Düssel­dorf), Markulf Behrendt (Labor Law, Hamburg), Dr. Hans-Peter Löw (Labor Law, Frank­furt), Tobias Neufeld (Labor Law, Düssel­dorf), the Coun­sel Dr. Udo Herbert Olgem­öl­ler (Public Law, Frank­furt) and Dr. Ilja Baudisch (Banking and Finance Law, Munich), the Of Coun­sel Frank Herring (Banking Super­vi­sory Law, Frank­furt) and Dr. Oliver Wald­burg (Banking and Finance Law, Frank­furt), Senior Asso­cia­tes Fatih Coskun, Chris­to­pher Jahnke, Lorenz Riehl (all Banking and Finance Law, Frank­furt), Dr. Chris­toph Börskens, Dr. Riccardo Mari­nello (both Real Estate, Frank­furt), Dr. Andreas Zieg­ler (Public Law, Frank­furt), Dr. Sebas­tian Schulz (Labor Law, Frank­furt), Karen Zöttl (Banking and Finance Law, Frank­furt), Daniela Schmitt (Inter­na­tio­nal Capi­tal Markets, Frank­furt) and Asso­cia­tes Dr. Rauni Aham­mer (Banking and Finance, Munich), Louisa Drew­niok, Dr. Anna Serwotka, Dr. Jörg Weber, Anto­nia Wolf (all Banking and Finance, Frank­furt), Dr. Anna Opel (Public Law, Frank­furt), Dr. Lisa Müller, Anja Glück (both Labor Law, Frank­furt), Catha­rina Glugla (Labor Law, Düssel­dorf) and Dr. Wolf­gang H. Wittek (Labor Law, Hamburg) as well as Tran­sac­tion Support Lawyer Ange­lika Pikulska (Corpo­rate, Munich).

Munich — A team led by M&A part­ner Boris Dürr has advi­sed the private equity funds advi­sed by AUCTUS Capi­tal Part­ners AG on the acqui­si­tion of GS Star Group. In the course of the tran­sac­tion, the two previous mana­ging direc­tors of GS Star GmbH, Andreas Erben and Heiko Grote, also acqui­red a stake in the newly estab­lished Gorge­ous Smiling Hotels Holding GmbH by way of a reverse share­hol­ding and will conti­nue to manage the group’s business.

The GS Star Group opera­tes hotels throug­hout Germany as well as in Austria and the Nether­lands under the Hamp­ton by Hilton, Holi­day Inn, Holi­day Inn Express and Super 8 brands and under its own ANA Art Hotels brand. In addi­tion, Gorge­ous Smiling GmbH, a subsi­diary of GS Star GmbH, acts as a service provi­der in the areas of marke­ting, yield manage­ment and purcha­sing services for third-party hotels not owned by the GS Star Group. Here, solu­ti­ons are offe­red for the opera­tion of hotels as well as for hotel real estate. In total, the current hotel port­fo­lio of the GS Star Group compri­ses over 50 hotels.

AUCTUS is one of the leading private equity inves­tors in the German-spea­king region. One focus of AUCTUS is the imple­men­ta­tion of indus­try concepts in conso­li­da­tion markets by means of a buy & build stra­tegy. Such a concept also under­lies AUCTUS’ invest­ment in the GS Star Group. For the future, GS Star Group toge­ther with AUCTUS plans to conso­li­date the opera­tor market of hotels. To this end, further hotels and hotel opera­ting compa­nies are to be acqui­red and the company’s own hotel real estate divi­sion expan­ded. Expan­sion into Italy and Spain is also planned.

The finan­cing, on which Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek also advi­sed, was provi­ded in the form of a unitran­che by IDIn­vest Partners.

On the part of Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek, the tran­sac­tion was lead-mana­ged by Munich part­ner Boris Dürr. Boris Dürr’s team regu­larly advi­ses funds advi­sed by AUCTUS on transactions.

Advi­sors to AUCTUS (tran­sac­tion and finan­cing): Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek
Boris Dürr (Lead, M&A), Daniela Szczesny (Corporate/M&A), Dr. Arnold Büsse­ma­ker (Finan­cing), Chris­tian Schild, LL.M., (Corporate/M&A), Ricarda Marschall, LL.M. (Corporate/M&A), Stef­fen Wilberg (Real Estate), Dr. Philip Wennin­ger (Labor Law), all Munich, Astrid Lued­tke (Trade­mark), Düsseldorf

London — IK Invest­ment Part­ners (“IK”), a leading pan-Euro­pean private equity firm, today announ­ced the closing of its IK Small Cap II Fund (“IK Small Cap II” or “the Fund”) at the hard cap of €550 million set out in the Fund’s Artic­les of Asso­cia­tion. The fund was signi­fi­cantly over­sub­scri­bed and was placed exclu­si­vely with exis­ting inves­tors of IK.

The new fund is twice the size of its prede­ces­sor, which was IK’s first small cap fund closed in March 2016 at a hard cap of 277 million euros. The IK Small Cap I Fund has inves­ted in 12 compa­nies, of which three invest­ments have been successfully sold to date.

Like its prede­ces­sor fund, IK Small Cap II will focus on growth compa­nies in the core markets of Bene­lux, DACH, France and the Scan­di­na­vian count­ries. The invest­ments are carried out by a dedi­ca­ted small cap team with offices in Amster­dam, Hamburg, Paris and Stockholm.

Chris­to­pher Masek (photo), CEO of IK Invest­ment Part­ners, said, “Compa­nies, such as those that fall within the invest­ment focus of IK Small Cap II, are, we believe, the drivers of econo­mic growth and job crea­tion in Europe. The contin­ued confi­dence and support of our inves­tors unders­cores the high importance of inves­t­ing in this market segment, enab­ling compa­nies to enter their next phase of growth.”

Kris­tian Carls­son Kemp­pi­nen, Part­ner and respon­si­ble for the IK Small Cap Funds at IK Invest­ment Part­ners, added: “In 2017, we have seen an unpre­ce­den­ted abun­dance of invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties, with very crea­tive and ambi­tious compa­nies. We look forward to iden­ti­fy­ing and helping these future indus­try leaders reach their full potential.”

Nils Pohl­mann, Part­ner at IK Invest­ment Part­ners, said: “We are encou­ra­ged by the large number of excel­lent compa­nies in the DACH region and the resul­ting invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties. IK’s value crea­tion approach combi­nes buy-and-build stra­te­gies and opera­tio­nal excel­lence, making it ideally aligned with high-growth natio­nal and global cham­pi­ons of the German Mittelstand.”

Gregor Korte, Part­ner at IK Invest­ment Part­ners, added: “Our far-reaching Euro­pean plat­form, combi­ned with our exten­sive local market know­ledge, offers unique growth oppor­tu­ni­ties to ambi­tious German small cap compa­nies. We look forward to part­ne­ring further with talen­ted entre­pre­neurs in the DACH region and helping them grow their businesses.”

Kirk­land & Ellis was manda­ted to provide legal advice to the IK Small Cap II Fund.

About IK Invest­ment Partners
is a Euro­pean private equity firm with an invest­ment focus on the Nordic count­ries, the DACH region and France/Benelux. Since 1989, IK has laun­ched funds with a cumu­la­tive equity volume of more than 9.5 billion euros and inves­ted in more than 115 Euro­pean compa­nies through the funds. The IK funds invest toge­ther with the respec­tive manage­ment and their inves­tors in medium-sized compa­nies with signi­fi­cant growth poten­tial in order to create successful, well-posi­tio­ned compa­nies with excel­lent pros­pects for the future.

Bietig­heim Bissingen/ Eschborn/ Frank­furt a. M. — Funds advi­sed by private equity firm Triton have successfully comple­ted the acqui­si­tion of BFC Fahr­zeug­teile in Bietig­heim Bissin­gen. BFC Fahr­zeug­teile GmbH is a leading global specia­list and tech­no­logy leader in the field of metal clam­ping profiles for the auto­mo­tive indus­try and main­ta­ins produc­tion sites in Germany, China, Turkey and the USA.

The Triton funds invest in medium-sized compa­nies based in Europe and support their posi­tive deve­lo­p­ment. They focus on compa­nies in the indus­trial, services and consu­mer goods/healthcare sectors. Triton’s goal is to successfully deve­lop its port­fo­lio compa­nies in the long term by working toge­ther as part­ners. Triton and its manage­ment strive to gene­rate posi­tive change and growth through the sustainable impro­ve­ment of opera­tio­nal proces­ses and struc­tures. At present, Triton’s port­fo­lio includes 36 compa­nies with total sales of around EUR 14.2 billion and around 91,000 employees. The Triton funds are advi­sed by expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment profes­sio­nals based in Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Italy, the UK, the US, China, Luxem­bourg and Jersey.

The inter­na­tio­nally active BFC Fahr­zeug­teile Group, head­quar­te­red in Bietig­heim-Bissin­gen, is one of the global market leaders in the field of metal clam­ping profiles for the auto­mo­tive indus­try. These products are mainly used in vehicle door, trunk and other body seals. BFC also designs and manu­fac­tures the machi­nes used, opera­ting highly flexi­ble produc­tion lines at seve­ral loca­ti­ons in Germany (2), the USA, China (2) and Turkey.

In the context of the tran­sac­tion, Triton was compre­hen­si­vely advi­sed by a team of Rödl & Part­ner specia­li­zed in private equity tran­sac­tions under the leader­ship of part­ner Jochen Reis in the context of the finan­cial due dili­gence. The Tran­sac­tion Services team led by Jochen Reis advi­ses private equity compa­nies in parti­cu­lar on natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal tran­sac­tion projects at the Esch­born / Frank­furt office.

About Triton
The invest­ment company Triton invests prima­rily in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, Luxem­bourg, the Nether­lands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Switz­er­land. We focus on medium-sized compa­nies that have the poten­tial to grow conti­nuously over econo­mic cycles. To foster this poten­tial, we work closely with the respec­tive manage­ment teams. Our invest­ment focus is on the indus­trial, service and consu­mer goods sectors

We curr­ently have invest­ments in compa­nies in Denmark, Germany, Finland, Luxem­bourg, Norway and Sweden. These compa­nies gene­rate total sales of around 14.2 billion euros and employ a total of around 91,000 people.

Advi­sor Triton: Rödl & Part­ner Eschborn
Jochen Reis, Head of Tran­sac­tion Services Esch­born, Diplom-Kauf­mann, Part­ner (Finan­cial Due Dili­gence), Simon Nieder­mann, Asso­ciate (Finan­cial Due Diligence)

About Rödl & Partner
As lawy­ers, tax advi­sors, busi­ness and IT consul­tants and audi­tors, we are repre­sen­ted at 108 of our own loca­ti­ons in 50 count­ries. Our clients trust our 4,500 colle­agues worldwide.

Munich — Private equity inves­tor Gene­ral Atlan­tic was successful in the bidding process for a mino­rity stake in the digi­tal divi­sion of ProSiebenSat.1 Group. The parties announ­ced that Gene­ral Atlan­tic is acqui­ring a 25.1 percent stake in NuCom Group. The tran­sac­tion, which is still subject to appr­oval by the rele­vant anti­trust autho­ri­ties, is based on an enter­prise value of the NuCom Group of EUR 1.8 billion.

In the NuCom Group, ProSiebenSat.l Media SE bund­les ten stra­te­gic invest­ments in predo­mi­nantly digi­tal commerce plat­forms, inclu­ding Veri­vox, Parship Elite Group and Jochen Schwei­zer mydays Group. The compa­nies bene­fit from the parent company’s high TV reach and mutual syner­gies, and are growing steadily on this basis. With Gene­ral Atlan­tic as a part­ner, ProSiebenSat.1 wants to further expand and inter­na­tio­na­lize the digi­tal division.

Gene­ral Atlan­tic is distin­gu­is­hed by deca­des of exper­tise as a stra­te­gic inves­tor in global compa­nies in the Inter­net and tech­no­logy sectors. Gene­ral Atlan­tic provi­des capi­tal and stra­te­gic support to compa­nies with high growth poten­tial. The fund employs more than 110 invest­ment profes­sio­nals across its offices in New York, Amster­dam, Beijing, Green­wich, Hong Kong, London, Mexico City, Mumbai, Munich, Palo Alto, São Paulo, Shang­hai and Singa­pore, and mana­ges more than $20 billion in assets.

Advi­sor Gene­ral Atlan­tic: Gleiss Lutz 
Lead Corporate/M&A Part­ners Dr. Jan Bals­sen (Munich) and Dr. Jan Bauer (Frank­furt)
Dr. Tobias Falk­ner (Coun­sel), Dr. Verena Kopp­mann, Dr. Tobias Harzenet­ter (Coun­sel), Dr. Stephan Dangel­mayer, Dr. Olaf Hohle­fel­der, Dr. Johan­nes Witt­mann, (all Corporate/M&A, all Munich), Dr. Stefan Mayer (Part­ner), Dr. Ocka Stumm (both Tax, both Frank­furt), Dr. Matthias Werner (Coun­sel), Dr. Björn Kalb­fus (Coun­sel), Dr. Manuel Klar, Dr. Theresa Uhlen­hut (all Munich), Dr. Hannah Bug (Berlin, all IP/IT/Data Protec­tion), Dr. Stefan Aubel (Part­ner, Frank­furt, Capi­tal Markets), Dr. Jens Günther (Part­ner), Dr. Matthias Bögl­mül­ler, Dr. Eva Heup (all Labor Law, all Munich), Dr. Reimar Buch­ner (Part­ner), Dr. Jan-Peter Spie­gel (Coun­sel, both Medi­cal Law, both Berlin), Dr. Phil­ipp Naab (Coun­sel), Svenja Bender (both Real Estate Law, both Frank­furt), Dr. Luid­ger Röck­rath (Coun­sel), Simon Fischer (both Dispute Reso­lu­tion), Dr. Petra Lins­meier (Part­ner) and Dr. Daniel Petzold (both Anti­trust Law, all Munich).

Gene­ral Atlan­tic is to acquire 25.1 percent of the shares in the Nucom Group , which includes online plat­forms such as Veri­vox and Parship, the company announ­ced in Unter­föh­ring. The Nucom Group is valued at 1.8 billion euros.
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This confirmed the specu­la­tion about the deal that had been circu­la­ting for seve­ral days and had alre­ady caused slight price jumps in the share price. The inves­tor is highly regarded in the indus­try for his exten­sive exper­tise. A few years ago, for exam­ple, he was a major share­hol­der in Axel Springer’s online clas­si­fieds busi­ness. He is also known in Germany as a co-owner of the long-distance bus opera­tor Flix­bus — in the USA, he holds shares in Airbnb and Uber, among others.

Berlin — German private equity firm Odewald KMU (Berlin) has sold 7days Group, a provi­der of work­wear for the health­care sector, to Silver­fleet Capi­tal. — The company’s foun­ders, Marc Staper­feld and Ulrich Dölken, conti­nue to be invol­ved in the company through a reverse shareholding.

7days designs, manu­fac­tures and distri­bu­tes work­wear for medi­cal profes­si­ons. The product range includes medi­cal and labo­ra­tory coats, tops, pants, shoes and access­ories. A special focus is on the offer for medi­cal and dental prac­ti­ces. Foun­ded in 1999, the company is head­quar­te­red in Lotte near Osnabrück.

Odewald KMU (Berlin) also acqui­red a majo­rity stake in Langer & Laumann Inge­nieur­büro GmbH.

Langer & Laumann Inge­nieur­büro GmbH specia­li­zes in the instal­la­tion and moder­niza­tion of door drives for eleva­tors and safety doors on or in machi­nes. The previous owners have taken a reverse stake in the tran­sac­tion and will conti­nue to manage the group. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the amount of the investment.

The invest­ment is the third invest­ment of the new Odewald KMU II Fund. Odewald KMU invests in medium-sized, estab­lished and high-growth compa­nies in German-spea­king count­ries. Inves­tors are predo­mi­nantly German insti­tu­tio­nal asset manage­ment compa­nies and wealthy private inves­tors. P+P Pöllath + Part­ners has alre­ady provi­ded tax advice to the first invest­ments of the Odewald KMU II Fund.

Advi­sor Odewald SME: P+P Pöllath + Partners
In both tran­sac­tions Odewald KMU was advi­sed on tax matters by:
— Alex­an­der Pupe­ter (Part­ner, M&A/Private Equity, Tax, Munich)
— Mareen Glaab (Asso­ciate, M&A/Private Equity, Tax, Munich)