BRENNTAG SE 
His Swiss Kühne Holding is taking over the Bavarian pharmaceutical contract manufacturer Aenova, which has been owned by the British financial investor BC Partners for twelve years, as the companies involved announced on Wednesday. BC Partners will remain on board as a minority shareholder. The 86-year-old Kühne had outbid the financial investor Apax Partners, which most recently wanted to pay 1.5 billion euros for Aenova and was considered the favorite, said a person familiar with the transaction. BC Partners and Aenova did not wish to comment on the matter.
"This investment is an important strategic step for us to expand the investment portfolio of Kühne Holding AG with companies from the healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors that have a strong financial basis and long-term growth prospects," said the new Kühne CEO Dominik de Daniel, explaining the investment in Aenova. Kühne, who is considered one of the richest Germans, has so far been mainly active in the logistics sector: as the majority owner of the freight forwarder Kühne + Nagel and as a shareholder of Lufthansa and the chemicals trader Brenntag. Most recently, he made headlines as an investor in the collapsed real estate holding company Signa, owned by Tyrolean entrepreneur Rene Benko.
Aenova was formed in 2008 through the merger of the pharmaceutical companies Dragenopharm and Swiss Caps. The company from Starnberg near Munich produces medicines on behalf of large pharmaceutical groups for which in-house production is no longer profitable. The company employs 4000 people at 14 sites in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Ireland, Romania and the USA. Last year, Aenova increased its turnover by 17 percent to 832 million euros, which is more than ever before. According to a Moody's study, the operating result (EBITDA) amounted to 137 million euros in the twelve months to August 2023
In 2012, BC Partners took over the company from competitor Bridgepoint for 480 million euros and shortly afterwards acquired the pharmaceutical manufacturers Haupt Pharma and Temmler for 800 million euros. This almost tripled turnover. The company now sees itself as one of the ten largest contract manufacturers in the industry worldwide. However, the integration of the acquired parts of the company took longer than planned. As a result, Aenova remained in BC Partners' portfolio for an unusually long time. Holding periods of three to seven years are usual.
"With the new ownership structure, we will continue to pursue our strategy of further expanding Aenova to become the leading (manufacturer) in Europe with flexible capacities and innovative specialty technologies and platforms," said CEO Jan Kengelbach, who has managed Aenova since 2018.
(Report by Alexander Hübner, edited by Philipp Krach. If you have any queries, please contact our editorial team at berlin.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for politics and the economy) or frankfurt.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for companies and markets).)
