Milbank Acts As Advisor to Prof. Litfin, CEO and Major Shareholder of Linos AG, and His Family
Munich, July 14th, 2006 – Optco Akquisitions GmbH announced today that it will launch a bid to take over Linos AG, a leading international provider of sophisticated optical solutions. Optco is an investment company of the Qioptiq Group, a portfolio company of funds managed by the major European Private Equity investor Candover. The Qioptiq Group already signed an agreement to acquire the shares of Prof. Dr. Gerd Litfin, Chief Executive Officer and major shareholder of Linos AG, and his family who hold together 40.8 per cent of all outstanding shares in Linos AG. The take-over bid and the acquisition of Prof. Litfin’s shares are in particular subject to the condition precedent that Qioptiq holds at least 75 per cent of the shares in Linos AG after the consummation of its takeover bid.
The Qioptiq Group is a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of high-precision optical components and modules for military and commercial applications with a turnover of 142 million Euro in 2005 and 1.450 employees worldwide in Europe, Asia and North America.
The Milbank team representing Prof. Litfin included:
Munich: Dr. Norbert Rieger (Partner – M&A; lead), Dr. Christoph Rothenfußer (Associate – Corporate Advisory/Take Overs) and Stefan Kroeker (Associate – M&A).
About Milbank
Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP is a preeminent global law firm that for more than 140 years has provided innovative legal solutions in many of the world’s largest, most complex, “first-ever” corporate transactions and litigation. Our transactional expertise includes capital markets, corporate finance and transactions, project finance, acquisition finance, and other major fields of law practice. Milbank litigation teams resolve disputes involving mergers and acquisitions, proxy battles, financings and secu-rities offerings, intellectual property, white collar crime, and corporate restructurings, among others. Our clients range from prominent multinational financial, industrial and commercial enterprises to governments, institutions and individuals. The Firm is headquartered in New York, with offices in Los Angeles, Washington, DC, London, Frankfurt, Munich, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Milbank set up its first European office in London in 1979. The firm´s German offices were opened in Frankfurt in 2001 and in Munich in 2004. Milbank´s European presence has more than doubled in the last two years with growing practices in capital markets, corporate, finance, private equity, outsourcing and litigation. By combining the skill and experience of the lawyers in Milbank´s German offices with that of the finance, corporate and tax lawyers based in other Milbank offices, in particular London and New York, Milbank Germany offers its clients fully integrated legal advice at the highest level in these core areas under German, English and US law.