Proventis Partners advised Quarter Media

Munich, August 24, 2021 – The shareholders of QUARTER MEDIA have sold their company to Olympia-Verlag. QUARTER MEDIA GmbH, Hamburg, founded in 2001, is one of the leading independent providers of marketing services in the area of programmatic advertising. With a complex and high-performance tech stack, QUARTER MEDIA markets the digital advertising inventory of over 40 publisher clients.

About the transaction

The company had grown strongly in recent years and wanted to explore strategic options for dynamic further development. For this reason, Proventis Partners was initially mandated with a consultancy assignment, which eventually led to the sounding out of potential partners. Only very select media companies that could offer strategic added value – also in terms of existing customer business – were considered as investors.

The perfect partner was found in the Nuremberg-based Olympia-Verlag, which had already developed the legendary sports brand KICKER with a wide reach.

For Olympia-Verlag, the internalization of digital marketing offers great economic opportunities. In addition, the prerequisites for cross-media, convergent and solution-oriented marketing were created and the critical know-how was brought in-house. Olympia-Verlag is part of the publishing house Nürnberger Presse, Northern Bavaria’s largest newspaper publisher, which operates, among other projects, the successful portal Nordbayern.de.

The planned governance structure offers QUARTER MEDIA’s existing customers and employees maximum continuity, as not only will the previous shareholder-managing directors remain with the company in the long term, but the Hamburg location will also be retained.

Tibor Gaddum, Managing Partner of QUARTER MEDIA, says: “We would like to thank Moritz von Laffert, who, as a partner of Proventis Partners, has implemented this transaction for us completely, in a very customer-oriented manner and with negotiating skills.” His co-partner managing director, Oliver Lessing, adds: “Due to his many years of experience and his network as a top media manager and his deep understanding of our business and of M&A processes, a deal has been made possible that is equally positive for us and for the buyers. These are perfect conditions for a fruitful cooperation with our new shareholder from the very beginning.”

Oliver Kühn and Werner Wittmann, authorized representatives responsible for M&A at Olympia-Verlag, add: “We are pleased that Moritz von Laffert from Proventis brokered this deal for us and would like to express our sincere thanks for his fair, solution-oriented and humanly pleasant conduct of negotiations at all times, which was always characterized by great thematic expertise.”

Moritz von Laffert, TMT Partner of Proventis Partners says: “Implementing M&A transactions is always a particular pleasure when clients and investors constructively pursue the same visionary goal and do not dwell on vanities or other trivialities. In the end, you don’t just bring business models together, but also people who are supposed to fill them with life. With this in mind, I would like to express my sincere thanks to my clients, Tibor Gaddum and Oliver Lessing of QUARTER MEDIA and to Werner Wittann and Oliver Kühn of the buyer, Olympia Verlag, for the exceptionally good cooperation.”

The role of Proventis Partners

Proventis Partners took over the entire management of the project. This included strategic advice on possible courses of action and forms of transaction, the search and selection of the most suitable buyer, the negotiation of all deal terms including the managing director contracts, the coordination of the due diligence process up to the closing. The Proventis Partners transaction team: Moritz von Laffert (Partner, Munich), Niladri Deb (Senior Associate, Munich). During the contract phase, the sellers were legally advised by Dr. Johannes Justus Brinkschmidt and Dr. Ann-Kathrin Schleusener from the law firm Huth Dietrich Hahn, Hamburg.

About Quarter Media

QUARTER MEDIA GmbH, Hamburg, founded in 2001, is one of the leading independent service providers for technology-based advertising financing of digital content and markets digital advertising space with auction-based processes on behalf of publishers. The team consists of experts in the areas of sales, ad technology, business development and marketing. QUARTER MEDIA currently reaches around 25 million users in Germany. The product range includes classic display advertising formats, innovative special formats, outstream video as well as integrative concepts across all end devices. Tibor F. Gaddum and Oliver Lessing have been responsible for the management since the company was founded. Further information is also available at: www.quartermedia.de

About kicker / Olympia-Verlag

kicker combines tradition, success and innovation – since 1920, kicker has been commenting on events on the international playing field, reporting on athletes, clubs and associations and covering 2,500 sporting events a month with its live ticker. To date, the print magazine reaches 1.88 million football fans per issue. kicker.tv also relies on an extensive range of moving image content; in the voice sector, the brand is represented with various podcasts, such as “kicker MEETS DAZN”. According to IVW, the sports brand records over 247 million visits with 2.2 billion page impressions per month via its broad digital offering. In addition, 12 million unique users (AGOF) prove that kicker is Germany’s highest-reach sports media brand.

Together with Olympia-Verlag, Nuremberg, kicker promotes innovative digital concepts in the sports and media industry and participates in Tickaroo, SportPlatz Media and MateCrate, among others.

About Proventis Partners

Proventis Partners is a partner-managed M&A advisory firm whose clients include a majority of medium-sized family-owned companies, group subsidiaries as well as private equity funds. With more than 30 M&A advisors, Proventis Partners is one of the largest independent M&A advisors in the German-speaking region and looks back on 20 years of M&A experience and more than 300 completed transactions. The M&A consultants with offices in Hamburg, Cologne, Munich and Zurich are active in the sectors Industrials & Chemicals, Business Services, Consumer & Retail, TMT, Healthcare and Energy & Sustainability. The exclusive membership in Mergers Alliance – an international partnership of leading M&A specialists – enables Proventis Partners to support clients in 30 countries in the most important markets worldwide. The members of Mergers Alliance, with over 200 M&A professionals, provide Proventis Partners and thus its clients with unique access to local markets in Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia and Africa.