Gleiss Lutz has advised the French group Valeo on its acquisition of the Spheros Group, the worldwide leader in air conditioning systems for buses, with its headquarters in Germany. Following the acquisition of the automotive supplier Peiker, this is the second transaction within a matter of days that Gleiss Lutz has successfully concluded for Valeo.
Spheros is majority owned by the private equity fund Deutsche Beteiligungs AG. With annual revenue of around €250 million, Spheros has a worldwide sales network and a vast industrial footprint, with plants in Germany, Finland, Turkey, the United States, Brazil, China and India.
The transaction is subject to the approval of the relevant anti-trust authorities.
Valeo employs 82,700 people in 30 countries worldwide and generated sales of €12.7 billion in 2014. Valeo is listed on the Paris stock exchange (Euronext).
Valeo was advised by a Gleiss Lutz team headed up by Dr. Cornelia Topf (lead, partner, Frankfurt) and Dr. Martin Viciano Gofferje (counsel, Berlin, both corporate/M&A). The team included the following lawyers: Dr. Hans-Georg Schulze, Bernhard C. Barth (both Berlin), Christian Kleppmann (Frankfurt, all corporate/M&A), Dr. Johann Wagner (partner, tax, Hamburg), Dr. Andreas Neun (partner), Dr. Katharina Lubitzsch, Dr. Daniel Görlich (all public law, Berlin), Hannah Bug (IP/IT, Berlin), Dr. Simon Wagner, Dr. Marc Orgel (both commercial, Stuttgart), Dr. Birgit Colbus (counsel), Sergej Bräuer (both competition/antitrust, Frankfurt) and Christian Mathias (employment, Frankfurt).
Gleiss Lutz regularly works on high-profile cases in all areas of business law on behalf of well-known national and international companies in the automotive and automotive supplier industry.
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