The founders of the group, Benedikt Kisner and Patrick Kruse, will remain invested in netgo and stay on board as managing directors. With Waterland investing, netgo’s portfolio is to be expanded systematically via strategic acquisitions.
Benedikt Kisner and Patrick Kruse, were advised on the legal and tax aspects of the transaction by an international cross-practice team of Simmons & Simmons under the lead of M&A and Private Equity Partner Dr. Christian Bornhorst in Düsseldorf. Besides negotiating the investment documentation, the focus was on setting up the corporate legal and tax structure in Germany and The Netherlands, based on which the founders of netgo re-invested in the group.
“It was especially important to us to have an advisor at our side with the ability to bridge between us, co-owners and sellers of a a medium-sized company, and a private equity investor such as Waterland, and to give us an understanding of both the opportunities as well as of the standard market conditions and framework of such a partnership.” Benedikt Kisner, founder of netgo, says. “Also in this regard, Christian Bornhorst and his team have provided us with excellent support and clear advice.”
Waterland was advised by Hengeler Mueller under the lead of Dr Alexander Nolte.
About netgo
netgo was founded as an IT systems provider in Borken, Germany, in 2007 and has grown faster than the market average in recent years. Today, the group has about 350 employees across 17 different locations, offering a broad range of consulting, products and services in the areas of hosting & storage, IT infrastructure, IT security, communication & messaging, and IoT & analytics along with customer-specific solutions. netgo relies on its many years of experience and expertise with regards to all operating models of IT – from on-premise to private and public cloud. With this broad range of offerings, netgo already serves as a so-called one-stop shop for its more than 3,000 clients throughout Germany.
About Waterland
Waterland is an independent private equity investment group that supports entrepreneurs in realizing their growth ambitions. With substantial financial resources and committed sector expertise, Waterland enables its portfolio companies to achieve accelerated growth both organically and through acquisitions.
Advisers to netgo
Simmons & Simmons Düsseldorf
- Dr Christian Bornhorst, partner (Corporate/M&A)
- Michael Surmann, associate (Corporate/M&A)
- Dr Anja Schlichting, associate (Corporate/M&A)
- Sabine Krause, supervising associate (Corporate/M&A, Real Estate Law)
- Sascha Kuhn, partner (Data Protection and Compliance)
- Dr Martin Gramsch, counsel (Competition and Antitrust)
- Dr Steffen Nguyen-Quang, counsel (Employment)
- Lara Kalina, associate (Employment)
Simmons & Simmons Frankfurt
- Heiko Stoll, partner (Tax)
Simmons & Simmons Amsterdam
- René van Eldonk, partner (Tax)
- Pim Duteweert, tax advisor (Tax)
