In what was a busy end to the year for mutares and its advisers, the listed German financial investor bought component manufacturer Balcke-Dürr group from US-based SPX Corporation. mutares is listed in ‘Scale’, the new SME segment
of Deutsche Börse.
The deal, which closed on 30 December 2016, will see Balcke-Dürr become incorporated into mutares’ Engineering & Technology segment.
mutares plans further investment in this segment and Balcke-Dürr represents the first stage in the process. The future strategy for Balcke-Dürr is to use its prominent brand and market position to access new international customers and industries.
mutares acquires mid-sized companies that are being sold by their owners as part of a repositioning strategy and offer potential for operational improvement. By actively engaging via its own teams, mutares aims to help its portfolio companies achieve sustainable long-term growth and thereby deliver a significant increase in value.
A multi-disciplinary CMS team from China, Germany, Italy, Hungary and Poland advised mutares on the transaction. This was the first time that CMS has advised mutares on a cross-border deal.
CMS Munich partner Martin Kolbinger said, “This was a tightly negotiated deal involving six jurisdictions and challenging deadlines. We worked very closely with the in-house legal and business teams at mutares to ensure all objectives were achieved.”
In 2015, Balcke-Dürr had 650 employees and sales of EUR 142m. The company has engineering and production sites in China, Germany, Hungary, India, Italy and Poland.
