Watson Farley & Williams (“WFW”) advised BayWa AG (“BayWa”) on the sale of a 94.5% majority stake in Schradenbiogas GmbH & Co. KG (“Schradenbiogas”) to BioCycling GmbH (“BioCycling”), a subsidiary of Veolia Deutschland GmbH (“Veolia”).
Schradenbiogas operates biogas plants for the disposal and processing of organic waste at Gröden and Alteno in Brandenburg and at Geislingen in Baden-Wuerttemberg. Veolia provides water, wastewater, waste disposal and energy supply services at approximately 250 sites In Germany. Schradenbiogas’ workforce will be taken on by BioCycling at all three sites.
The multidisciplinary WFW Germany team that advised BayWa was led by Hamburg Corporate Partner Dr Marcus Bechtel, working closely with fellow Hamburg Partners Christine Bader (Regulatory/Merger Control) Verena Scheibe (Tax) and Sebastian Baum (Real Estate) and supported by Managing Associate Nora Fleischhauer (Employment), Associates Cathleen Haack (Corporate/Energy), Tarek Fadl (Projects/Energy) and Marina Scharfenberg (Regulatory) and Transaction Lawyer Stefanie Igl (Corporate/Energy).
In Düsseldorf, Energy Partner Torsten Wielsch, Real Estate Of Counsel Thomas Wölfl and Projects/Energy Senior Associates Inès Stefen and Katharina Flehr also assisted, as did Munich Corporate Associate Robert Nagy and Frankfurt Tax Associate Manuel Rustler.
WFW recently advised BayWa on the sale of its bioenergy platform in November of this year.
Marcus commented: “That BayWa chose to instruct WFW on major disposal for the second time this year highlights our unrivalled ability to combine outstanding industry expertise in the energy and infrastructure sectors with first-class M&A know-how. We are very pleased that on this basis, we were able to support BayWa Group on this complex divestment through a structured bidding process”.
