Deal Announcement 01/17: Retail & Consumer
PwC acted as the exclusive M&A advisor to Rockaway Capital on the acquisition of Unister travel assets ab-in-den-urlaub.de and fluege.de
The Deal
The German PwC M&A team is pleased to announce the successful acquisition of the Unister travel assets including some of the best known brands in the German travel market “ab-in-den-urlaub.de” and “fluege.de” by the leading Czech internet investor Rockaway Capital.
PwC M&A acted as exclusive financial advisor to Rockaway Capital on this highly complex transaction.
Rockaway Capital has acquired the Unister travel assets consisting of some of the best-known brands in the German travel market (ab-in-den-urlaub.de (AIDU), fluege.de, reisen.de, billigfluege.de, reisegeier.de, urlaubstours.de, hotelreservierung.de and TravelViva) from Prof. Dr. Lucas F. Flöther in his capacity as insolvency administrator of Unister.
Rockaway Capital is fully committed to the German travel market and will take over all of the about 520 remaining travel business employees.
With the online travel agency (OTA) Invia, Rockaway Capital already operates a well-established brand and a leading player in the CEE travel market. “As Invia and the former Unister companies, especially ab-in-den-urlaub.de, have the same business model, our focus will be on leveraging combined forces and expertise with the vision to create a pan-European OTA leader. Our proven technology and superior know-how will allow us to provide the best service to up to 140 million existing and potential customers in Germany and beyond”, says Jaroslaw Czernek, Investment Partner at Rockaway Capital and Chairman at Invia.
The parties involved have agreed not to disclose financial details of the transaction.
The Unister travel assets
Unister has grown from a start-up in 2002 to the largest fully integrated OTA and producer of packaged tours in the DACH region with a gross booking value of €2bn prior to insolvency, operating through four business segments AIDU (OTA, packaged tours produced in-house or sourced from third party operators), ULT (packaged tours using dynamic and real-time packaging methods), Flight (OTA for low-cost, scheduled and charter flights) and Hotel (OTA for proprietary and third-party hotel inventory).
Unister possesses an outstanding largely self-developed technology platform and expertise supported by a strong IP portfolio.
Rockaway Capital
Founded in 2013, Rockaway Capital has grown from a local venture capital firm into the leading internet investor in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) focusing on ecommerce and internet companies with high growth potential.
With headquarters in Prague and offices in San Francisco and Sao Paulo, Rockaway Capital is building the internet economy in emerging markets by creating, investing and buying promising internet companies.
PwC
The global PwC network is a worldwide association of independent auditing and consulting companies which together employ more than 220,000 employees in 157 countries. Our global network comprises nearly 1,550 M&A professionals all over the world, realizing over 400 successful transactions in 2015. We specialize in a wide range of independent M&A services including advice on acquisitions and disposals, mergers, public takeovers, privatizations as well as structured financing.
The following PwC teams in Germany have been involved in the transaction:
M&A
Matthias Loos (Partner), Markus Müller (Manager), Tomas Artner (Senior Consultant), Nicolas Bender (Consultant), Paul Würth (Consultant)
Financial Due Diligence
Richard Siedek (Partner), Stefan Saalfrank (Senior Manager), John Couche (Manager), Angelika Rücker (Senior Consultant)
Commercial Due Diligence
Tim Feld (Director), Dirk Schmalzing (Manager), Julius Hölzl (Consultant)
Tax/Structuring
Hansjoachim Köhler (Partner), Sandra Zölch (Partner), Christian Schubert (Senior Manager), Laura Vivian Haidl (Consultant)
