Together with the global law firm Linklaters LLP, Wolf Theiss advised the private equity investment company Triton on all legal and tax-related issues connected with the takeover of Wittur, the international lift components manufacturer.
The Wittur Group, with its headquarters in Germany, is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of lift components. It has a competence centre in Scheibbs, with about 400 employees, making Austria one of the most important production countries.
An international consortium consisting of Cerberus, Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse sold Wittur by means of an auction, which was won by the private equity firm Triton. Based in Frankfurt, Stockholm and London, Triton focuses largely on investments in the German-speaking and Nordic regions.
Wolf Theiss was responsible for advice on tax and legal issues related to Austrian law and also provided Triton with some advice on Czech and Hungarian law. Clemens Philipp Schindler, the leading partner on the project, headed the Wolf Theiss transaction team comprising partners Marcus Benes for the area of financing, Pavel Marc for Czech law and János Tóth for Hungarian law, attorneys Harald Stingl for due diligence, Hartwig Kienast and Philipp Trefil for company law, and attorney and tax advisor Benjamin Twardosz for tax law. Besides the legal due diligence review, Wolf Theiss also conducted a tax due diligence review.
“We are delighted to have successfully completed a complex transaction in a difficult market environment, something which further underscores the current positive trend in the M&A area”, says Clemens Philipp Schindler, whose team has had a number of highly successful M&A transactions under their belt for this year, including recently advising Infineon on the sale of its mobile chip division to Intel. Benjamin Twardosz, who also headed the tax due diligence team, remarks: “Due to the large number of countries involved and the complex group set up of the target, structuring the transaction presented a special challenge”. Marcus Benes emphasises: “The integrated team from the areas of corporate, finance and tax offers the clients decisive advantages in precisely this type of transaction and makes Wolf Theiss an obvious choice for private equity investors”.
An international team from Linklaters, headed by Dr. Rainer Traugott (partner, corporate/M&A) and Prof. Dr. Jens Blumenberg (partner, tax), spearheaded the client initiative. In addition to the above-named, several Wolf Theiss lawyers were also involved including: partners Jakub Adam, Horst Ebhardt, Kurt Retter and Matthias Unterrieder, as well as associates Karl Binder, Thomas Müller, Eva Strunz, Zuzana Jiristova, Petr Syrovátko and Erzsébet Varga.
