Deloitte Legal advises Main Capital on strategic sale of artegic to UNITED Marketing Technologies by DuMont

A Deloitte Legal team co-led by Max Lüerßen (Counsel) and Felix Felleisen (Partner; both Corporate/M&A, Düsseldorf) has advised strategic software investor Main Capital Partners on the strategic sale of artegic, a marketing automation software specialist, to marketing technology provider UNITED Marketing Technologies (“UNITED”), part of DuMont Mediengruppe. The sale marks the 3rd successful strategic sale of Main Capital Partners in 2022.

The acquisition by UNITED sets yet another successful exit for Main Capital Partners. With the acquisition UNITED further expands its stance in the marketing technology space. artegic’s offering of marketing automation solutions strategically complements UNITED’s current portfolio of marketing technology solutions such as its cloud-based platform for social media management and its omnichannel content platform.

Headquartered in Bonn in Germany, artegic was founded in 2005 as marketing automation software provider. Since its foundation, the company has developed to one of the leading European providers of real-time, cross-channel SaaS marketing automation solutions and digital CRM. artegic offers its customers a strong value-add proposition covering the design, customization, execution and automation of highly individualized marketing campaigns via email and mobile and enabling them to execute customer-centered, best-in-class digital dialogue marketing.

Main Capital Partners invested in artegic in 2016 and since then has supported artegic in its organic growth path with a strong focus on the transformation from a business model driven by transactional revenue to a highly scalable and strongly growing SaaS model. In collaboration with Main Capital, artegic has almost tripled it SaaS revenue while increasing the SaaS growth rate from lower single digits growth to over 33% in 2022/23 over the investment horizon.

By joining forces, UNITED and artegic can jointly accelerate their growth path in the marketing technology space. The merger also combines DuMont’s extensive experience and network in the media and business information field and its resources of being a one of the largest media Groups with artegic’s cutting-edge marketing automation solution and its specialized experience in the field.

Together with their team, Felix Felleisen and Max Lüerßen had already advised Main Capital on their original investment back in 2016 and have now been instructed to assist with the strategic sale.

“Working with Deloitte Legal, who have advised us on many platform and add-on acquisitions in Germany ever since we expanded into the German market, seemed like the logical decision to us” said Yves Souren (Senior Investment Manager Main Capital Partners DACH). “Their experience and expertise contributed a lot to making this transaction a success. Their combination of collaborative approach, efficiency and pragmatism as well as negotiation skills, make them ideally suited to work with our teams and our other advisors. Max’ business acumen, ability to accurately map complex issues, and orientation to our goals aided a lot to master the negotiations.”

Main Capital have relied on Deloitte Legal and Deloitte cross functional teams on numerous acquisitions before, more recently the creation of a strategic partnership with biomedion, a leading GxP data cloud platform provider, as well as the acquisition of a majority stake in synetics, a leading provider of CMDB and IT documentation software. They were also retained to assist Main Capital in the context of the sale of financial software provider b+m Group to German technology investor LEA Partners, representing Main Capital’s first divestment in the DACH region.

Advisors to Main Capital:
Deloitte Legal: Max Lüerßen (Counsel, Corporate/M&A, Düsseldorf, Lead), Felix Felleisen (Partner, Corporate/M&A, Düsseldorf, Co-Lead); Frauke Heudtlass (Partner, Employment Law, Düsseldorf); Dr. Fleur Johanna Prop, LL.M. (Counsel, Corporate/M&A, Düsseldorf), Nicole Deneke, Nicole Rurik (both Associate, Corporate/M&A, Düsseldorf); Leonie Onkelbach (Associate, Employment Law, Düsseldorf).