After a six-year cycle, Innova Capital has decided to sell its 70 per cent stake in Polish industrial parts manufacturer Donako. Co-owner Franciszek Zeleznik of Zeleznik Industrie Consulting has also sold his stake in the company. The trade sale was made to Austrian industry player Rudolf Weinberger Holding, and puts the company’s value at under EUR50 mln. [...]

Baxter Ventures, set up by global healthcare provider Baxter International, is investing EUR 2 mln in a EUR 4 mln round of financing (series A) in Zytoprotec. The Viennese biotechnology company is developing an innovative cytoprotective compound for peritoneal dialysis (PD).  Zytoprotec has previously attracted investments of up to EUR 6.7 mln from various institutional and [...]

Leading CEE and Turkey-focused investment company Mid Europa Partners has recently completed the sale of its telecom company Orange Austria to Hutchinson 3G Austria. Regulatory approvals were obtained in December 2012 after the announcement of the sale earlier that year. The transaction will bring in a strong third player in the Austrian telecom market that [...]

Buy-Out Central Europe II Beteiligungs-Invest may be negotiating a sale of Austrian PVC additive company Chemson Polymer-Additive. The sale is currently in the second round of bidding, and less than five final bidders have been selected. The deal will mean a returns of more than six times EBITDA, which was calculated at EUR 12 mln in [...]

Photovoltaics company Crystalsol – based in Vienna and Tallin – has recently completed an EUR 8 mln round of financing with Conor Venture Partners in the lead. Other investors in the transaction include Arax Capital Partners, a domestic investor from Austria, as well as a considerable portion coming from public funds. The investment will be [...]

LikeHack, a startup that delivers personalized news feeds, has recently bagged USD 150,000 in financing from Altair Capital, operated by Igor Ryabenkiy out of Vienna. The startup is now based in St. Petersburg and feeds personalized content to users based on their profiles and shares. The real-time analysis helps feed the most relevant news and links, [...]

Swedish PE firm EQT Partners has agreed to purchase 100 percent of Austrian IT automation software developer UC4, currently valued at around EUR 220 mln (USD 271.3 mln). UC4′s founder, Frank Beranek, will also be selling his stake in the company, along with main investors, the Carlyle Group. Carlyle first acquired the company in 2006 [...]

Wappwolf is a Vienna, Austria based company that enables users to do automated actions on the web by just adding files to cloud storage services such as Dropbox and Google Drive. For instance, you could set an action such as “Whenever I add an image file to the folder X, upload it to Flickr” or [...]

Vienna-based biotech research company Apeptico has successfully concluded its series C funding of EUR 3.4 mln, EUR 1.4 mln of which came in 2011 in the form of a research grant from the Austrian Research Promotion Agency. The remaining EUR 2 mln has come from The BioScience Venture Group, V+ GmbH & Co Fonds 2 KG [...]

Gamma Capital Partners has taken on a stake in Swiss office furniture company Stilo.

Andlinger & Company, a group of private investors seeking opportunities to invest in growing companies, has agreed to buy 100 percent of Suspa, a global leader in gas springs manufacturing, from Tyrol Equity. The deal will go through with Andlinger and a co-investor effecting a total buyout of Suspa’s holdings, including its subsidiary units located [...]

Dutch electronics giant, Royal Philips Electronics, has confirmed plans to sell off its Speech Processing business to Invest AG. The PE fund is part of the Upper Austrian Raiffeisen Banking Group. Speech Processing has so far been a part of the Philips Consumer Lifestyle banner, operating directly under Lifestyle Entertainment division of the business. The acquisition of [...]

Balderton Capital, one of Europe’s premier VC firms, has invested in Archify, a tech company that is developing a web page archive and search plug-in for browsers. The investment will be used by the target company to complete the development of its product and also develop a mobile version of the application. Archify is also [...]

American energy company SunEdison has just received EUR 155 mln in funding from three top organizations – World Bank Group member IFC, Overseas Private Investment Corporation and UniCredit Bank, Austria – to build a solar plant in Bulgaria with a capacity of 60.4 MWp, at Karadzhalovo. The site has been identified as being in Plovdiv [...]

B&C Industrieholding has agreed to a purchase of a 29.9 percent stake in Austrian Aluminium Group (AMAG) from erstwhile stakeholder One Equity Partners. The sale will depend on whether the regulatory authorities will permit OEP’s sale of its last 4.2 percent stake in the group. The JP Morgan investment unit’s sale to B&C is sought [...]

Zurich-based PE firm Zurmont Madison Private Equity LP has acquired a 55-percent stake in Austrian company AKAtech Produktions und Handels GmbH, a manufacturer of complex wiring harnesses and high-quality electromechanical assembly. The deal will allow AKAtech to leverage Zurmont’s financial and technical expertise, and will help in the firm’s next round of growth. AKAtech (www.akatech.at) [...]

JP Morgan’s PE offspring, One Equity, has found a buyer for its 34.5 percent stake in Austrian aluminium and aluminium products supply company, Austria Metall (AMAG). Private investor Ronny Pecik has shown interest in the EUR 220 mln share currently owned by One Equity. In possibly related news, the supervisory board of AMAG has sanctioned [...]

Leading German automotive rim manufacturer BBS has been taken over by Austrian holding company Tyrol Equity. BBS, which currently employs about 1,200, is one of the country’s leading producers of premium light rims and counted Formula-1 among its clients. Tyrol is expected to invest EUR 8 million in the two facilities following the acquisition. Tyrol [...]

Super angel fund Speedinvest, based out of San Francisco, California, and Vienna, Austria, has already made four significant investments since its inception just over six months ago. The diverse investments range from online entertainment services to social media to VoIP vendors. In total, the company has pumped in about EUR 1 mln in these startups. [...]

Hutchison 3G Austria GmbH, a subsidiary of the Hong Kong based conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa, will acquire Austria’s number three mobile phone operator Orange Austria Telekommunikation GmbH from present owners Europa Partners and France Télécom SA for EUR 1.3 billion. CEE focused private equity firm Mid Europa Partners own 65 pc in Orange Austria while France [...]