Press re­lease - 03 March 2023An in­ter­na­tion­al CMS team ad­vised DPE Deutsche Private Equity GmbH (DPE) on all as­pects of the trans­ac­tion. The team in­cluded law­yers from CMS of­fices in Ger­many, Aus­tria, Switzer­land, Italy, Bel­gi­um, Ro­mania and Po­land.   DPE is selling its stake in VTU Group, a lead­ing European pro­vider of en­gin­eer­ing solu­tions for the life sci­ence in­dustry based in Graz, to Altor Funds. The Swedish private equity firm, which in­vests in mid-sized com­pan­ies with the aim of cre­at­ing value through growth ini­ti­at­ives and op­er­a­tion­al im­prove­ments, pre­vailed in a bid­ding pro­cess. The sellers, DPE-owned funds, were ad­vised on all as­pects of the trans­ac­tion by an in­ter­na­tion­al CMS team led by Hendrik Hirsch (CMS Ger­many). The trans­ac­tion is sub­ject to the re­quis­ite ap­provals from the com­pet­ent au­thor­it­ies. The parties have agreed not to dis­close fur­ther de­tails of the trans­ac­tion.   The CMS Aus­tria team led by Al­ex­an­der Rakosi con­sisted of cor­por­ate/M&A ex­perts Flori­an May­er, Marco Sel­en­ic and Chris­toph Birner. The em­ploy­ment de­part­ment was rep­res­en­ted by Jens Winter and Shi­ma Baban­za­deh. Com­pet­i­tion is­sues were handled by Di­eter Zand­ler. Real es­tate law ex­pert­ise was provided by Mar­i­ella Ka­poun and Max­imili­an Uidl. Mar­lene Wim­mer-Nistel­ber­ger was in charge of pub­lic law is­sues and Thomas As­pal­ter saw to tax is­sues.   Al­ex­an­der Rakosi, part­ner at CMS in Vi­enna and lead­er of the Aus­tri­an team, is en­thu­si­ast­ic about the cross-bor­der co­oper­a­tion: “Once again, we were able to demon­strate our in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pert­ise, es­pe­cially in the private equity area, in a multi-jur­is­dic­tion­al pro­ject – con­grat­u­la­tions to all in­volved!”

Pub­lished on CEE Leg­al Mat­ters | Feb­ru­ary 23, 2022 CMS has ad­vised Grein­er on the sale of its ex­tru­sion di­vi­sion, in­clud­ing op­er­a­tion­al as­sets in Aus­tria and the Czech Re­pub­lic, to Nim­bus. KP­MG Leg­al ad­vised Nim­bus.Grein­er is an Aus­tri­an plastics and foam spe­cial­ist com­pany.

Shortly be­fore the be­gin­ning of the year, CMS Aus­tria sup­por­ted the Aus­tri­an plastics and foam spe­cial­ist Grein­er AG on the suc­cess­ful sale of its ex­tru­sion di­vi­sion, in­clud­ing the as­so­ci­ated op­er­a­tion­al real es­tate in Nußbach, Up­per Aus­tria, and Trhové Sv­iny, Czech Re­pub­lic. On 21 Decem­ber 2021, the Ger­man Fed­er­al Car­tel Of­fice ap­proved the sale of the Aus­tri­an- based Grein­er Ex­tru­sion Group (GEG) to the Dutch-Ger­man in­vest­ment com­pany Nim­bus – the ma­jor­ity own­er, amongst oth­er things, of bat­ten­feld-cin­cin­nati, one of CEG’s com­pet­it­ors with sub­si­di­ar­ies in Ger­many, Aus­tria, the USA and China. The now af­fil­i­ated com­pan­ies in­tend to ex­ploit syn­er­gies in pur­chas­ing, at least. Oth­er­wise, both en­tit­ies will re­main in­de­pend­ent com­pan­ies with their or­gan­isa­tion­al struc­tures and mar­ket pres­ence. As part of the trans­ac­tion, the ex­perts of the CMS ad­vis­ory team, led by Al­ex­an­der Rakosi, Flori­an May­er and Anna Hiegel­sper­ger, had to nav­ig­ate nu­mer­ous com­plex leg­al top­ics on trans­ac­tion-re­lated as­pects as well as in the areas of real es­tate law and an­ti­trust/com­pet­i­tion law. The in­ter­na­tion­ally ex­per­i­enced team of ex­perts at CMS Aus­tria also in­cluded Di­eter Zand­ler (an­ti­trust law), Vanessa Hor­aceck (com­pet­i­tion law), Hans Le­der­er (trade­mark law), Jo­hannes Hysek (real es­tate law), Mar­i­ella Ka­poun (real es­tate), Sibylle Novak (in­ter­na­tion­al tax law), Thomas As­pal­ter (tax law), Cor­ne­lia Kreuth (M&A), Chris­toph Birner (fin­an­cing) and Al­ex­an­dros Hant­asch (cor­por­ate trans­ac­tions). In ad­di­tion, the Aus­tri­an ad­vis­ory team was also sup­por­ted by col­leagues from oth­er CMS of­fices. The in­ter­na­tion­al CMS team con­sisted of Stepan Hav­ranek (CZ), Eva Bryn­dova (CZ), Mi­chael Mun­zinger (PRC), Lei Shi (PRC), Dipesh Santilale (UK), Sabby Ken­zie (UK), Mar­gaux Deuchler (F), Thomas Hains (F), Blazej Zagor­ski (PL) and Marta Os­owska-Buba (PL). Lead part­ner Al­ex­an­der Rakosi hap­pily notes: “In­ter­na­tion­al trans­ac­tions bring multi-fa­ceted chal­lenges. We are glad to have been able to provide com­pre­hens­ive leg­al ad­vice to the Grein­er Group from pro­ject kick-off to its suc­cess­ful clos­ing across all coun­tries.”

The in­ter­na­tion­ally act­ive spe­cial­ist in re­cyc­ling and pack­aging solu­tions AL­PLA is adding to its already broad product port­fo­lio. AL­PLA was ad­vised by CMS again on its re­cent ac­quis­i­tion of Wolf Plastics Group.

US-based Mod­ine Man­u­fac­tur­ing Com­pany, a di­ver­si­fied glob­al lead­er in thermal man­age­ment tech­no­logy and solu­tions, is selling part of its European air-cooled auto­mot­ive busi­ness, in­clud­ing its man­u­fac­tur­ing...

CMS ad­vised GRAPHA-Hold­ing AG on the ac­quis­i­tion of POLY­DATA AG An in­ter­na­tion­al team of CMS Switzer­land, Aus­tria and Ger­many un­der the lead of Stefan Brunnsch­weiler (CMS Switzer­land) has ad­vised GRAPHA-Hold­ing...

The pro­found tech­nic­al ex­pert­ise and in­dustry know­ledge of the CMS team en­sured EN­CAV­IS As­set Man­age­ment were happy to place their trust in the leg­al ad­vice of the in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness law firm on the...