Riemser Pharma GMBH
Successfully working alongside leading investment banks to prepare the management team to optimise the outcome in a sale process.
Riemser Pharma sells, licenses, markets and distributes specialist pharmaceuticals to treat serious diseases. Headquartered in Greifswald and Berlin, the company has subsidiaries in the United Kingdom, France and Spain and an international distribution network across more than 50 countries.
Ardian, the leading French private investment house, acquired the company in 2012 and together with the management team, successfully refocused the company on its core speciality pharmaceuticals business.
Following six years of successful ownership, Ardian decided to exit the business in 2018. Ardian instructed Rothschild & Co. and Jefferies as M&A advisors on the sale and asked h2glenfern to work alongside the investment banks, supporting the management team as they went through the sale process.
h2glenfern was appointed to help management in several key areas:
- Educating the management team in the transaction process, the format of the meetings and how best to engage with potential purchasers.
- Identifying the company’s key messages and working with the sponsor, management team and the advisors to refine and agree on the investment proposition.
- Coaching in the soft skills of presenting and conduct for both early-stage informal meetings as well as later-stage full management presentations.
- Preparing the full team for handling Q&A to ensure that all attendees were able to deliver answers confidently about both the business as well as the sale process, including dealing with any negative perceptions or objections.
Over two months, h2glenfern worked with the management team and the company’s advisors to successfully identify and develop the investment story. The work involved helping build the necessary materials as well as ensuring the management team were able to articulate the story effectively.
Due to unforeseen circumstances, the sale was put on hold in the middle of 2018 and relaunched in 2019.
During the intervening period, h2glenfern were able to work with the management team to help them reposition the equity story. The focus became the future business opportunities and the asset-light operating model rather than the historical transformation.
Having reshaped the story to emphasise the opportunity and the prospects for future growth, the goal for h2glenfern was to ensure that the investor meetings reflected the scale of the opportunity, the strength, vision and strategy of the Riemser business and ambition of its management team.
Following a competitive auction process, Ardian closed the successful sale of Riemser to the global pharmaceutical company Estevé in January 2020.
