Good morning Eurohubsters, Nina Lindholm here with the final Dealflow of the week.
It seems like the news from the UK isn’t likely to calm down anytime soon, after prime minister Liz Truss announced her resignation yesterday afternoon. Shevaun Haviland, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, demanded in a statement that the new administration must “immediately set out how they plan to deal with soaring energy bills, labour shortages, spiralling inflation and interest rates”. She also called for a leader who can return “both political and economic stability”.
We’ve been writing a lot about how some of those themes can create opportunities for private equity firms, so let’s look at the past week. On the deal front, the tech sector has been busy. There is also news of Morgan Stanley considering a stake sale in a German renewables firm.
A silver lining. In the seventh tech deal we’ve reported on this week, CapMan announced an investment in Fennoa, a developer and provider of cloud-based financial management software used by accounting firms and their clients. Fennoa was founded in 2014 and employs 32 people. It serves approximately 500 accounting firms.
Finnish pension insurance company Ilmarinen invested in the Helsinki-based company alongside CapMan.
CapMan is also headquartered in Helsinki and invests across real estate, private equity and infrastructure. It has over €4.8 billion in assets under management.
Find out more on Fennoa’s growth in the last three years here.
Logistical. Next up, an exit, but we stay on the software theme. Sobera Capital announced its exit from TM3 Software to Elvaston-backed proLogistik.
TM3, headquartered in Regensburg, offers professional logistics software for small and medium-sized companies. Sobera Capital divested from S-Refit EFRE Fonds Bayern, which had been invested in TM3 since a combined secondary/Series A transaction in 2011.
ProLogistik is a Dortmund-based warehouse management systems provider in the DACH region. It employs over 304 people across eight locations. The company is backed by Elvaston Capital Management, a Berlin-based private equity firm that invests in enterprise software companies.
Sobera is a Berlin-headquartered private equity firm that focuses on secondary direct transactions if portfolios of company interests.
To find out the return the deal generated, check out our full coverage here.
A human touch. Back in the UK, LDC announced the backing of human capital management services provider Talos360. The company, headquartered in Warrington, England, is one of the UK’s fastest growing HR technology providers, according to LDC.
It employs more than 120 people and ended 2021 with increased revenue of 56 percent – which included a 94 percent increase in tech revenues.
The deal provides an exit for investor Twenty20 Capital.
LDC is the private equity arm of Lloyds Banking Group and is headquartered in London. It has a portfolio of 90 businesses across the UK and invests across sectors.
Find out what kind of turnover Talos360 is on target to finish 2022 with here.
Energetic. Last Friday, I wrote to you about European energy deals, and there are further rumblings on that front.
Morgan Stanley’s infrastructure arm is considering a sale of a 40 percent stake in German wind and solar power project developer PNE AG, according to Reuters.
PNE has confirmed that New York-based investment management firm Morgan Stanley and Photon Management plan to enter open-ended preliminary talks with potential “interested parties” regarding Photon’s stake in PNE. Frankfurt-based Photon, which is controlled by Morgan Stanley, is PNE’s largest shareholder.
PNE Group is a wind power project developer of onshore and offshore wind farms.
Sources familiar with the matter told Reuters that the interested parties may include La Défense, France-headquartered utility company Engie, or Stockholm-based private equity firm EQT.
According to Reuters, buying the entire stake would trigger a mandatory takeover bid for all of Cuxhaven-based PNE under German stock market rules.
Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners (MSIP) acquired the PNE stake in 2020.
If you’re interested in further reading on the energy sector, check out my write up on anaerobic digestion assets, or Craig McGlashan’s story on energy management analytics provider Wattics, which nicely matches both of today’s themes: software and energy.
That’s it from me, Craig McGlashan will write to you on Monday. I hope you all have a great weekend. I’m quite tempted to turn off news notifications on my phone and spend my weekend focusing on a book I just started.
Cheers,
Nina
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