International law firm Watson Farley & Williams (“WFW”) has advised mid-market investor Aurelius Group (“Aurelius”) on the successful completion of its cross-border acquisition of Colt Group S.A.’s (“Colt”) virtualised cloud computing and managed hosting services business, Colt Managed Cloud (“CMC”).

WFW advised Aurelius on all corporate aspects of the transaction, in which CMC has been fully integrated into Aurelius’ ICT Services subsidiary Getronics. This has created a long-term strategic partnership between Getronics and Colt, in which Getronics will also provide its Cloud services to Colt’s customer base and utilise Colt’s data centre and network.

CMC is a leading European provider of Cloud and Hosting services, with data centres and support structures in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Romania and India.  Given the geographical spread of the CMC and Getronics businesses, and Aurelius’ offices in Munich, London, Stockholm and Madrid, WFW was well placed to assist Aurelius and Getronics from its offices across Europe.

The WFW team was led by London partner and Head of Corporate Jan Mellmann, assisted by senior associate Georgina Don and associates Andrew Slucky and Simon Elliot, with Devan Khagram (senior associate) advising on employment matters.  Local law advice was provided on the transaction by Pascal Roux (partner, Paris), Anne-Kelly d'Amécourt (avocat, Paris), Pierre Chipaux (avocat, Paris), Tiziana Manenti (partner, Rome), Cristina Betti (associate, Rome), Giuseppe Franch (counsel, Rome), Giovanni Incardona (associate, Rome), Luca Sfrecola (counsel, Rome), Gonzalo Aranzabal (partner, Madrid), Rosana Segado (associate, Madrid), Simon Preisenberger (partner, Munich), Joachim Heinemann (associate, Munich) and Florian Dehmel (associate, Munich).

Jan Mellmann, said: “We are delighted to have advised Aurelius and Getronics on the acquisition of Colt’s managed cloud business. This is the third significant cross-border acquisition on which we have advised Aurelius”.  

WFW advised Aurelius on the acquisition of the Scholl Footwear business from Reckit Benckiser in 2014 and also advised Aurelius and Getronics on the acquisition of the value-added sales activities of the Unified Communications business within the NEC Group in 2013.

Aurelius Group London General Counsel, Kimberley Whitaker said: “We are very pleased to have again worked with WFW as Aurelius continues to support the Getronics family in the expansion of its European managed cloud offering. The breadth and depth of WFW’s advisory expertise, their commercial acumen and their ability to mobilise quickly and efficiently were invaluable in supporting Aurelius with the kind of complex, cross-border carve-out transaction that the Group actively targets”.

Getronics Head of Legal, Graham Brown said: “Throughout the transaction WFW provided exceptionally clear and high quality advice, blending technical rigour with commercially astute solutions. Their ability to work seamlessly, advising on complex issues across multiple jurisdictions, underpinned the success of the transaction”.