Telefónica Tech has acquired the European Microsoft Cloud provider BE-terna for up to €350 million, including potential earnouts.
BE-terna, which has until now been owned by Deutsche Private Equity (DPE) and other minority shareholders, operates in 28 locations across Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Adriatic region and Nordics, among other markets.
Commenting on the transaction, José Cerdán, CEO of Telefónica Tech, said: “I am extremely delighted to announce this acquisition. As a next-gen IT services integrator our priority is to build and become a leader and continue to deliver differential growth both organically and inorganically. BE-terna will reinforce our Cloud capabilities in Germany and enable us to enter into other Central European and Nordic markets.
“As the pandemic forces a faster move to the Cloud and a greater need for digital transformation, Microsoft stands as one of the preferred partners for these projects, and BE-terna is a leading European player in this field”.
Christian Kranebitter, founder of BE-terna, added: “This is a key turning point in BE-terna’s journey, and we thank Deutsche Private Equity, and in particular Dr. Frank Mueller, partner and MD, for the invaluable support over the last three years to get us to where we are today. Becoming part of Telefónica Tech is the logical next step in the development of the BE-terna Group. Since our founding, we have strived to be a stable and reliable long-term partner for our customers. The offerings from Telefónica Tech and BE-terna are very complementary and will empower us to serve existing and new customers with all key technologies and solutions that are required to design, deliver and operate a successful digitalization strategy. Many customers are currently moving more and more business-critical workloads to the cloud. Combining our existing solutions with Telefónica Tech’s offering creates a solution portfolio that ideally supports this transformation”.
The closing of the transaction will take place in the coming weeks, following clearance by the German competition authority.
