Houlihan Lokey Advises Capvis on the Sale of Visable to Alibaba.com

Houlihan Lokey is pleased to announce that Visable, a portfolio company of Capvis, has been acquired by Alibaba.com.

Funds advised by the European private equity firm Capvis have completed the sale of their majority stake in the leading B2B platform operator Visable. The buyer is Alibaba.com, a leading platform for global B2B e-commerce and part of the Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group.

Visable is the leading business-to-business (B2B) marketplace in Europe and enables industrial businesses to make products and services internationally accessible to purchasers. The company offers a broad range of specially tailored services for business customers to increase their digital reach. Marketplaces operated by Visable include wlw (Wer liefert was), which is the leading B2B marketplace in the DACH region, as well as the leading European B2B platform europages.

Alibaba.com is an independently run business group that promotes global digital commerce through its portfolio of platforms. Given its experience and technology expertise from more than 20 years of e-commerce platform operations, Alibaba.com is the ideal partner to further enhance and globalise Visable's success story. The long-term strategic goal is to strengthen Visable's position as Europe's most comprehensive B2B marketplace.

Houlihan Lokey served as the exclusive financial sellside advisor to Capvis and Visable. Houlihan Lokey supported on all aspects of the transaction, including creating marketing documents, coordination of due diligence, and SPA negotiation. Financial details were not disclosed.