WFW advises owners on sale of Frölich Internationale Transporte to Transimeksa7 September 2020

Watson Farley & Williams (“WFW”) has advised the Frölich family, owners of Hessisch Lichtenau-based Frölich Internationale Transporte GmbH & Co. KG (“Frölich”), on its sale to Lithuania’s Transimeksa Group (“Transimeksa”). Financial details of the transaction have not been disclosed.

Founded, owned and managed by the Frölich family since 1883, and including a fully-owned Polish subsidiary, Frölich developed an intermodal transport and logistics company operating between Germany and Italy via a direct rail connection, thereby bringing together northern and southern European markets across the Alps. The link is both environmentally friendly and commercially viable, and the Frölich family will be advising Transimeksa to ensure a smooth hand-over of the business.

Following its acquisition of Frölich, Vilnius-headquartered Transimeksa will have 1,200+ employees, a fleet of more than 600 trucks and 800 trailers, and 46,250 sqm warehousing space and offices in Lithuania, Germany, Russia, Italy, Latvia, Estonia and Belarus. Transimeksa also acquired the real estate on which Frölich operates its business.

The multi-disciplinary WFW Germany team advising the Frölich family was led by Frankfurt Corporate Partner Dr Christoph Naumann, working closely with Hamburg Tax Partner Verena Scheibe on all tax aspects of the transaction. They were supported by Partners Dr Sebastian Baum (Real Estate, Hamburg) as well as Frankfurt Corporate Associate Matthias Strecker and Transaction Lawyer Janine Henger.

Christoph commented: “We are delighted to have successfully advised the Frölich family on this succession planning, paving the business and in particular its employees a path to future growth. That we were instructed to do so underlines WFW Germany’s reputation for first class transactional advice across multiple service lines”.

The Frölich family said: “We were more than happy with the competent advice and the service level rendered by WFW and Christoph in particular”.