Watson Farley & Williams (“WFW”) has advised the pan-European, mid-market investor Aurelius Group (“Aurelius”) on the cross-border acquisition of Colt Managed Cloud (“CMC”), the managed cloud business of Colt Group S.A. (“Colt”), by way of a carve-out from the IT services division of Colt Technology Services Group.

Aurelius, together with its investee company Getronics Group, has acquired the CMC business in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain (all with the assistance of local WFW offices), as well as in Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Romania and India. Following the completion of this acquisition, Aurelius will begin an integration of CMC into global ICT services provider Getronics, to further expand its European managed cloud offering. A long-term strategic business partnership has been agreed between Getronics and Colt which will allow Getronics to provide managed cloud services to Colt’s customer base and utilise Colt’s network, voice and data centre capabilities.

WFW advised Aurelius on all corporate aspects of the transaction, which is expected to close in early 2016.  Given the geographical spread of the CMC business and Aurelius’ offices in Munich, London, Stockholm and Madrid, WFW was well placed to assist Aurelius from its offices across Europe, providing a joined up service within a short timeframe.

The WFW team was led by London partner and Head of Corporate Jan Mellmann, assisted by senior associate Georgina Don, as well as Pascal Roux (partner, Paris), Anne-Kelly d’Amécourt (avocat, Paris), Tiziana Manenti (partner, Rome), Elena Macchi (senior associate, Milan), Giovanni Incardona (associate, Rome), Gonzalo Aranzabal (partner, Madrid), Rosana Segado (associate, Madrid), Anne Kleffman (partner, Munich) and Marcel Nurk (associate, Munich).

Jan Mellmann, said: “We are delighted to have advised our client Aurelius on the acquisition of Colt’s CMC business. This acquisition follows our previous work advising Aurelius and Getronics on their cross-border acquisition of the value added sales activities of the NEC Group’s Unified Communications business. Our mid-market European private equity practice is extremely well placed to execute transactions such as this swiftly and efficiently across multiple jurisdictions.”

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.”