Cleary Gottlieb represented Mubadala Investment Company, a sovereign wealth fund of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi (Mubadala), in connection with a voluntary public takeover offer to shareholders of German va-Q-tec AG (va-Q-tec) by EQT Private Equity (EQT), a global private equity firm headquartered in Sweden.
Mubadala, alongside Cinven, a leading international private equity firm focused on building world-class global and European companies, supports EQT’s voluntary public takeover offer as a co-investor.
EQT’s decision to launch a voluntary public takeover offer was announced on December 13, 2022. The takeover offer is expected to close in Q2 2023.
A business combination agreement signed by subsidiaries of EQT and va-Q-tec on December 13, 2022, governs the envisaged combination of va-Q-tec’s pharma-focused business with Envirotainer, a private company specializing in providing medical freight to pharmaceutical and biotech companies, which has been key to the COVID-19 vaccine supply chain, shipping over 1 billion doses via 6,500 temperature-controlled airfreight containers. Earlier this year, Cleary represented Mubadala in its investment alongside EQT in Envirotainer, whose enterprise value under the terms of that transaction amounted to about €2.8 billion.
va-Q-tec is a premium provider of thermal energy efficiency and temperature-controlled supply chain solutions (TempChain), listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. va-Q-tec is a pioneer in highly efficient products and solutions in the area of thermal insulation and TempChain logistics. The company develops, produces, and markets highly efficient and consequently thin vacuum insulation panels (VIPs) as well as phase change materials (PCMs) for reliable and energy-efficient temperature controlling. va-Q-tec deploys this key thermal technology in order to produce passive thermal packaging systems (containers and boxes) that maintain constant temperatures, depending on type, for up to 200 hours without external energy input. The company, which was founded in 2001, is based in Würzburg, Germany.