Houlihan Lokey Advises Tengelmann

Houlihan Lokey is pleased to announce that Tengelmann Warenhandelsgesellschaft KG (Tengelmann) has successfully raised a syndicated debt financing with a club of eight banks. Tengelmann is a large-cap German family holding and the parent company of German retailers OBI, KiK, and Babymarkt, the international real estate developer Trei Group, and the three venture capital firms Tengelmann Ventures, Tengelmann Growth Partners, and Emil Capital Partners. The transaction signed and closed in March 2023.

Tengelmann is an active entrepreneurial family investor that invests exclusively in companies that demonstrate their core values through sustainable and profitable management, strategic investments that are either market leaders or strive for market leadership. Tengelmann’s entrepreneurial activities focus on Europe and North America, with no regional boundaries for their venture capital activities.

Tengelmann has been owned and managed by members of the same family for over 150 years, currently under the 5th generation of leadership. Following the values of their family business, they create substance and sustainability for future generations by investing for the long-term in companies whose development they continuously and actively support. At the same time, Tengelmann’s venture capital activities enable them to realize opportunities arising from early involvement in innovative growth industries.

To enable the continuous portfolio enhancement while at the same time maintaining a leverage that optimizes return on equity, Tengelmann has decided to refinance its existing holding debt with a syndicated loan that provides operational flexibility as well as the financial means to fund future investments.

Houlihan Lokey acted as debt advisor on all commercial aspects of the financing transaction and supported Tengelmann on the structuring of a tailor-made financing with highly attractive terms and flexibility to support the company’s operational strategy. Along with Tengelmann’s existing lenders we could win new banks for the transaction and therefore diversify the consortium.

Closing of the transaction was 23 March 2023. Hengeler Mueller served as borrower’s counsel and Freshfields acted on behalf of the lenders.