Lovells leads the way in German private equity acquisition

Lovells has landed an instruction from German private equity house Deutsche Beteiligungs, advising on its €100m (£76.07m) acquisition of ICTS Europe Holdings.

This was Lovells' first instruction from Deutsche Beteiligungs and it saw the firm field a team led from Frankfurt by corporate partner Patrick Kaffiné involving up to 90 lawyers several of the firm's offices.

Airport security services provider ICTS Europe Holdings was until now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fraport, which operates Frankfurt international airport and several other foreign airports. According to Kaffiné the company's international reach made the deal complicated.

"It was a very complicated structure involving over 10,000 staff in 81 locations and 24 countries. That made the entire structure relatively complicated," he said. "The value of the transaction is no indicator of the amount of effort that was involved."

Kaffiné said that he bagged the deal after having met Deutsche Beteiligungs while working on another transaction. He met the chairperson and remained in contact, which resulted in the present instruction on the Fraport deal.

Fraport turned to Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer Frankfurt corporate partner Henning Oesterhaus and senior associate Tatjana Jendritzki.

Financing was arranged by WestLB, which was advised by partner Christina Ungeheuer from Latham & Watkins in Frankfurt.