LONDON | October 2, 2020 – Drake Star Partners is pleased to announce the release of its next Drake Star DEAL INSIGHTS publication – an in-depth interview with Eric Ward (Partner) and Kasper Kruse Petersen (Partner), on their role in advising Freepik Company on its recent majority sale to EQT Mid-Market Europe Partners (“EQT”), announced on 28 May 2020. This ‘behind the scenes’ Q&A interview provides insights into some of the learnings from this successful M&A process and how rapidly adapting the process in response to the global pandemic lockdown was critical to deliver the right outcome.
In this interview, conducted by Drake Star Partners’ CEO Greg Bedrosian, Eric and Kasper:
- The importance of sector expertise in helping Freepik achieve their objective, ultimately exceeding expectations both in value and terms
- How careful and meticulous preparation is critical in delivering the right M&A outcome
- How, through a carefully crafted equity story, to effectively position the Company as an emerging major player in the visual content sector
- Fascinating insights into the process, especially in relation to COVID-19, and specifically focusing on:
- Changing buyer behaviour reflecting challenging market conditions
- Process and timeline challenges imposed by the lock-down
- Running an entire competitive second round fully virtual
- The importance of engaging with both strategic and financial parties through a dual-track process
- The benefits of preparing a Vendor Due Diligence (‘VDD’) report upfront
- How to ultimately determine the right future partner for Freepik and assessing certainty of close
- Summary of the key success factors of the process
This DEAL INSIGHT report follows the insightful Q&A interview Eric and Kasper conducted with the Freepik founders Alejandro Blanes, Pablo Blanes and Joaquin Cuenca on their learnings from the process, which was released in June 2020 on Drake Star’s LinkedIn page which you can follow here: LinkedIn
Missed our last DEAL INSIGHTS report? Download it here.
The Drake Star DEAL INSIGHTS series is a new feature that aims to share valuable insights into the world of M&A in the broader technology sector, gained by both our clients and our Partners on key M&A transactions in the sector. More DEAL INSIGHTS reports will be released in the coming weeks, including exclusive interview with Travis Witteveen, the CEO and Matthias Ollig, the CTO of AVIRA following their sale to Investcorp, led by Drake Star Partners.
Drake Star Partners acted as exclusive financial advisor to Freepik Company and its shareholders on this transaction. The acquisition of Freepik represents a landmark transaction in the broader technology and digital media sectors in Europe, and one of the largest European private equity backed technology M&A transactions in 2020. This is particularly notable given the current difficult COVID-19 environment. Drake Star managed a highly competitive process featuring a number of strategic and private equity parties.
About Freepik Company
Freepik supports approximately 32 million monthly visitors, leveraging consumer demand insights from 5 billion downloads to date, to create over 10 million high quality and curated graphic resources across icons, vectors, photos, and templates. Freepik is a global leader in the fast-growing visual content, online graphic design and digital media space, thanks to a disruptive business model and a unique, data-driven approach to content sourcing and in-house content production, supporting a rapidly growing community of 20 million registered users.
More information:
www.freepikcompany.com
www.freepik.com
www.flaticon.com
www.slidesgo.com
www.stories.freepik.com
www.editor.freepik.com
About EQT
EQT is a differentiated global investment organization with more than EUR 62 billion in raised capital and around EUR 40 billion in assets under management across 19 active funds. EQT funds have portfolio companies in Europe, Asia-Pacific and North America with total sales of more than EUR 27 billion and approximately 159,000 employees. EQT works with portfolio companies to achieve sustainable growth, operational excellence and market leadership.
For more information, please visit www.eqtpartners.com
About Drake Star Partners
Drake Star Partners is a global investment banking firm serving the technology, media and communications sectors (TMC) with offices in New York, London, Paris, Munich, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Geneva. The firm focuses on M&A and corporate finance for its clients worldwide. Drake Star Partners completed over 350 transactions since 2004, 70% of which are cross-border.
Drake Star Partners is the marketing name for the global investment bank Drake Star Partners Limited and its subsidiaries and affiliates. In the USA, all securities are transacted through Drake Star Securities LLC. In the USA, Drake Star Securities LLC is regulated by FINRA and is a member of SIPC. © 2016 Drake Star Partners.
www.drakestar.com
