BAVARIA YACHTBAU
potential investment from
CINVEN
About Bavaria Yachtbau
Bavaria Yachtbau GmbH is one of the largest and most successful producers of sailing yachts and motor boats worldwide. Since 1978, Bavaria has gained widespread recognition in the market for its pioneering fully automated volume manufacturing approach and for the superior value proposition of its product offering.
About Cinven
Cinven is a leading international private equity firm, founded in 1977, with offices in London, Frankfurt, Guernsey, Hong Kong, Luxembourg, Madrid, Milan, New York and Paris. Funds managed by Cinven acquire companies with a European focus that will benefit from Cinven’s expertise of growing and building companies globally and require an equity investment of €200 million or more. Cinven can also invest selectively in businesses in North America. Cinven’s Portfolio team helps our portfolio companies take advantage of international best practices and growth in global markets, including those in Asia and the Americas.
The Deal
After 30 years of development, the founder and CEO Elfriede Herrmann wanted to sell the shipyard and find a new investor in order to accelerate international expansion of the German yachting brand. He therefore launched a selling process in January 2007. Cinven was one of the contenders of the beauty contest. Cinven asked AltaVenture – IBI Consulting and its partners to advise him on this potential acquisition. The mandate covered a strategic analysis of the opportunity, a market study and the development of a business plan of the company. Thanks to our work, Cinven letter of intent was successfully short listed together with its competitor Bain Capital. Then, thanks to our expertise, during our due diligence of Bavaria, we advise Cinven not to pursue the opportunity in June 2007 as prices became clearly unreasonable.
