They “strongly believe” that L’Osteria has the potential to become the market-leading restaurant group in Europe, said Henry McGovern, founding partner at McWin.
(Photo: L’Osteria)
Frankfurt The restaurant chain L’Osteria gets a new owner. The investment company McWin, which specializes in system catering and food technology, announced on Tuesday that it would take a majority stake of around two-thirds of the shares in the restaurant group.
According to McWin, the transaction values the company at around EUR 400 million. The purchase price was not mentioned. The founders Klaus Rader and Friedemann Findeis will remain in the company as minority shareholders.
The L’Osteria Group currently operates 157 restaurants and employs more than 6,000 people in German-speaking countries (DACH), Great Britain, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic.
The investment in L’Osteria comes from the McWin Restaurant Fund (MRF), which was launched in August last year and weighed in at 525 million euros. A subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority is the fund’s largest lender.
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The first restaurant serving Italian dishes opened in Nuremberg in 1999. In Germany, L’Osteria continues to see great potential that has not yet been exhausted. In addition, new markets are to be opened up – for example, the market entry in Poland planned for this year is already known. The investment in L’Osteria brings the total number of restaurants in the portfolio of McWin and its subsidiaries to more than 1,500.
Investment funds of the McWin Group also have Dean&David in their portfolio
They “strongly believe” that L’Osteria has the potential to become the market-leading restaurant group in Europe, said Henry McGovern, founding partner at McWin. The many years of experience of the team around Henry McGovern and Steven K. Winegar in the hospitality sector, brand building and expansion make McWin the ideal partner for L’Osteria’s growth and internationalization plans, said the founders Rader and Findeis.
The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2023. McWin was advised by the law firm of Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner and KPMG. L’Osteria and its shareholders were advised on the transaction by Ferber & Co., Deutsche Bank, law firm Dechert, PwC and Steiner & Partner. The deal shows that financial investors will also be able to close deals in 2023 despite the difficult framework conditions.
According to an analysis by the investment bank JP Morgan, the average share of private equity funds in transactions in German-speaking countries was 26 percent from 2010 to 2021, and by 2022 it was already 33 percent. The financial investors had good framework conditions for years, with falling interest rates and thus cheaper external financing.
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But in the end they felt a headwind. Acquisition financing has not only become significantly more expensive, it has also become more difficult to obtain. Especially if they go beyond the 500 million euro mark. That’s why deals on the scale of McWin’s entry into L’Osteria are becoming more important for the funds.
McWin, together with its subsidiaries, manages assets in excess of EUR 1 billion and advises a network of private equity and venture capital funds on investments in the global food technology and hospitality sectors. McWin and its partners currently have investments in Gail’s, Burger King Germany, White Rabbit Projects, Burger King and Popeyes CEE, Cook Unity and Dean&David, as well as alternative protein manufacturers.
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