Cinven and Ontario Teachers Agree to Buy and Merge Group.One and Dogado Group
Posted on 12/07/2022
The Nordic, Benelux and DACH online presence markets are expected to continue to experience growth over the next decade. The Seventh Cinven Fund, in partnership Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board has agreed to acquire and combine group.ONE and dogado group. The combination of group.ONE and dogado will create a pan-European one-stop-shop provider of online presence solutions for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and small-office home-offices (SOHOs) including domain, web hosting, cloud hosting, business software and digital marketing services. Financial details of the transaction are not being disclosed.
Funds advised by Triton signed an agreement to sell dogado Group, part of Triton portfolio company EDSA Group, to Cinven and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board. Triton invested in dogado group in 2015 alongside dogado management and its founders.
The Sixth Cinven Fund acquired group.ONE (formerly one.com) in February 2019. The Sixth Cinven Fund has agreed to sell group.ONE to the seventh fund and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.
Jacob Nordestgaard Jensen, founder and non-executive director of group.ONE, who has remained a significant minority shareholder in the company, is reinvesting alongside Cinven and Ontario Teachers’ in the new transaction for a significant minority stake in the combined group. Senior managers from both group.ONE and dogado are also reinvesting materially in the business.
group.ONE is a European provider of online presence solutions via mass hosting and software products to around 1.6 million customers through brands including one.com, Hostnet and WP Media. Headquartered in Sweden, group.ONE operates across a number of European countries and has strong positions in the Nordic and Benelux mass hosting markets. The company has more than 650 employees.
Founded in 2006, dogado is a provider of online presence solutions in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, offering mass and cloud hosting and digital marketing services to more than 380,000 customers through brands including dogado, Metanet and Herold. Headquartered in Germany, the company employs more than 500 people.
Completion of the transaction is subject to customary regulatory and antitrust approvals.
Advisors
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer is advising Cinven and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board on an investment in the combination of group.ONE and the dogado group. The Freshfields team advising Cinven and Ontario Teachers’ is led by financial sponsors partners Alastair Brown, Victoria Sigeti and Wessel Heukamp, financing and capital markets partner Aled Batey, antitrust, competition and trade partner Martin McElwee, and tax partners May Smith and David Beutel.
Keywords: Ontario Teachers Pension Plan.
