IMAP advises the majority shareholder and founder of CEMA AG on the partnership with netgo group, a portfolio company of Waterland Private Equity

CEMA AG, a specialist in modern IT infrastructures for enterprises, has entered into a partnership with netgo group ("netgo"), a portfolio company of Waterland Private Equity ("Waterland"). Together with the majority shareholder Waterland, CEMA and netgo will expand their presence in the German market and take an important step towards becoming a one-stop-shop provider. The previous majority owner and founder, Thomas Steckenborn, sells his shares as part of the partnership and will continue to be associated with the company by taking a reverse shareholding. Rolf Braun, who has been a member of the Management Board for many years, will also continue to help shape the company's path within the netgo group.

CEMA, founded 30 years ago, is a reliable partner for the public sector as well as medium-sized companies from the industrial and healthcare sectors. The service spectrum ranges from IT solutions to IT business consulting as well as managed & cloud services to an eProcurement platform. This platform enables companies to ensure IT purchasing "in-house" quickly and easily, to map their own business processes and to benefit from volume discounts. In addition, CEMA offers consulting, training and continuous IT operations from a single source. Headquartered in Mannheim, CEMA AG employs c. 250 people at ten locations in Germany.

"IMAP's support has always been outstanding, both professionally and personally. Entrepreneurial competence paired with remarkable M&A expertise helped a lot to lead the negotiations to success", commented Thomas Steckenborn, CEO of CEMA AG.

Founded in 2007, netgo group, an IT provider with 31 offices in Germany, has been majority-owned by Waterland since the end of 2019 and has significantly expanded its presence in the German market for IT service providers in recent months as part of a targeted buy-and-build strategy.

"We are getting much closer to our overall goal of a one-stop shop with a full-service offering for our customers with this partnership with CEMA AG," says Benedikt Kisner, CEO of the netgo group. "Through the growth partnership with CEMA, we are developing our group's solution portfolio, ensure greater customer proximity in the delivery of IT solutions and further expand our competencies in the growth market of managed and cloud services."

The IMAP team with Peter A. Koch and Basem El-Bouz exclusively advised the majority owner and founder Thomas Steckenborn of CEMA AG and supported him in structuring, negotiating and signing the transaction.