Houlihan Lokey Advises Deutsche Beteiligungs AG

Houlihan Lokey is pleased to announce that Deutsche Beteiligungs AG (DBAG) has sold its stake in Cloudflight, a leading European end-to-end digital transformation and digital product engineering services provider to Partners Group, acting on behalf of its clients. The transaction closed on 22 March 2023.

Cloudflight is one of the leading full-service providers of digital transformation in Europe. With more than 950 qualified staff in software development, cloud architecture, data science, and strategic IT, the company enables successful digitalisation for its customers. Having further expanded its technology portfolio through the integration of Cognostics, macio, Divante, and mogree, Cloudflight now offers its customers an end-to-end service portfolio, ranging from consultancy services to the development of customer-specific software and cloud-native solutions, through to operations.

The sale of the Cloudflight investment is the second disposal of a management buyout from DBAG Fund VII’s portfolio. The shares held by DBAG Fund VII (advised by DBAG), will also be sold. This successful divestment underscores DBAG’s progress in the IT services and software sectors. Having built extensive know-how and a strong network, DBAG has now executed six investments in this space.

Based on Houlihan Lokey's strong track record and expertise in the IT services space, the firm was mandated to lead a structured and competitive sales process. Houlihan Lokey served as the exclusive financial advisor to DBAG and assisted management and shareholders throughout the transaction, including presentation and business plan preparation, due diligence process coordination, and transaction negotiations.

This deal highlights Houlihan Lokey's strong sector expertise in IT services, other transactions in this sector include the sale of Xalient to Volpi Capital, the acquisition of AdEx by Capvis, the sale of significant parts of Kontron's IT services business to Vinci Energies, as well as the sale of Neudesic to IBM, amongst others.