Neu-Isen­burg — Swedish finan­cial inves­tor EQT has sold Neu-Isen­burg-based faci­lity mana­ger Apleona to French private equity firm PAI Part­ners (PAI) for €1.6 billion. EQT had itself acqui­red the former real estate divi­sion of the Bilfin­ger Group only four years ago in the fall of 2016.

Apleona will conti­nue to operate as an inde­pen­dent company on the market under the new owner, empha­si­zes Mana­ging Direc­tor Dr. Jochen Keysberg. He not only wants to drive digi­tal inno­va­tions, but also play a signi­fi­cant role in the “expec­ted market conso­li­da­tion in Germany”. To this end, the company will comple­ment both its service offe­ring and regio­nal coverage through inor­ga­nic growth, he announced.

PAI has deca­des of tradi­tion and indus­try exper­tise as a finan­cial inves­tor and is known for deve­lo­ping corpo­rate invest­ments in a long-term and sustainable manner, Keysberg adds. He said the ongo­ing Covid 19 pande­mic will rein­force exis­ting trends, such as outsour­cing of real estate services by large indus­trial compa­nies, inter­na­tio­nal bidding for ever-larger port­fo­lios, inclu­ding cross-border ones, and strong demand for digi­tal solu­ti­ons and products for buil­ding users and for buil­ding tech­no­logy, for exam­ple, to save energy and CO2.

Who is PAI Partners?

The orig­ins of PAI Part­ners date back to 1872 as the invest­ment arm of Handels­bank Pari­bas, now part of BNP Pari­bas. Follo­wing a manage­ment buy-out in 2001, the company now opera­tes inde­pendently on behalf of pension funds, insu­rance compa­nies, banks and private inves­tors. A team of 95 employees mana­ges a port­fo­lio of more than 20 Euro­pean compa­nies or 13.9 billion euros in assets under manage­ment. PAI invests in compa­nies in the Busi­ness Services, Food & Consu­mer, Gene­ral Indus­tri­als, Health­care and Retail & Distri­bu­tion sectors. The average holding period for invest­ments is five years, accor­ding to the PAI website.

Hengeler Mueller advises PAI on the transaction

The part­ners Dr. Emanuel Strehle, Dr. Daniel Möritz (both lead, M&A), Dr. Markus Ernst (Tax) (all Munich), Dr. Alf-Henrik Bischke (Anti­trust, Düssel­dorf) and Hendrik Bocken­hei­mer (Labor, Frank­furt), the coun­sels Dr. Andrea Schlaffge and Patrick Wilke­ning (both Intellec­tual Property/IT, Düssel­dorf) as well as the asso­cia­tes Dr. Thomas Weie­rer, Johan­nes Schmidt, Chris­tian Linke, Dr. Constan­tin Alex­an­der Wege­ner (all M&A), Dr. Tim Würst­lin (Tax) (all Munich), Dr. Katha­rina Gebhardt, Dr. Marius Mayer, Dr. Andreas Kaletsch (all Labor Law, Frank­furt), Dr. Cars­ten Bormann (Public Commer­cial Law), Dr. Anja Balitzki, Dr. Kyra Brink­mann and Chris­tian Dankerl (all Anti­trust) (all Düsseldorf).