DLA Piper has advised ATESTEO GmbH on the acquisition of a majority stake in the straesser Group, a leading vehicle testing service provider. The two companies signed a corresponding agreement on 8 September 2017. This investment expands ATESTEO’s range in the field of vehicle tests, thus opening up significant growth potential. The contracting parties agreed to keep the purchase price confidential.

Based in Alsdorf, ATESTEO GmbH is the world’s leading independent service provider for powertrain testing, it has 460 employees and more than 130 powertrain test benches in Germany and China. Its customers include almost all automotive and gear manufacturers. The company offers quality assurance through efficient endurance testing and function tests of manual and automatic gears, differentials and Hybrid-Powertrain.

The straesser Group, headquartered in Kernen near Stuttgart, consists of straesser automotive testing GmbH, straesser fahrversuche GmbH and straesser beratung und dienstleistung GmbH and has more than 280 employees, most of whom work in the road and vehicle endurance testing. Its customers include numerous renowned automotive manufacturers, automotive suppliers as well as development and engineering service providers. straesser offers road and vehicle endurance testing as comprehensive vehicle and special testing, such as assistance systems and autonomous driving.

The DLA Piper team was led by partner Dr Cornelius Frie (Corporate) and comprised partner Dr Bernd Borgmann (Employment), senior associates Dr Stephanie Reuvers (IPT, all Cologne) and Dr Philipp Clemens (Corporate, Hamburg) as well as associates Rodrigo Weihermann (Employment) and Dr Heiner Feldhaus (Real Estate, both Cologne).