wiwo.de/Handelsblatt GmbH -Dennis Pesch
The Göttingen-based IT company Sycor, owned by Hans Georg Näder, is selling a subsidiary for around €20 million. Above all, the timing is surprising.
The company Sycor is selling its subsidiary IQ Solutions to the newly established IT group Cohemi. The two companies confirmed this to WirtschaftsWoche. They agreed to remain silent on the price. Insiders say the sum is around €20 million. Sycor sells IT solutions to medium-sized companies. IQ Solutions trades in Microsoft licenses.
€20 million for an IT specialist – that doesn’t sound particularly spectacular. What’s interesting is less the sums involved, but rather the people acting and the timing. The company Sycor is one of dozens in the corporate network of Hans Georg Näder, the owner of the prosthetics manufacturer Ottobock.
The timing of Näder and Sycor’s sale is interesting: 25 March 2024. Just three days later, Hans Georg Näder bought back 20 percent of the shares in his billion-dollar prosthetics manufacturer Ottobock from financial investor EQT. The family borrowed €1.1 billion for this. The Ottobock parent company, Näder Holding GmbH, was already indebted to the tune of over €874 million at the end of 2021. This is evident from the 2021 consolidated financial statements.
Complicated Succession
Until the end of 2020, Sycor itself was still part of the Ottobock parent company. As of January 2021, Näder Holding internally sold the business to Näder Ventures GmbH. There, the Ottobock owner collects minority interests such as the Finnish luxury yacht builder Baltic Yachts or the mattress business Technogel.
Sycor CEO Thomas Ahlers justifies the sale of IQ Solutions by saying that the IT group is focusing on its core business: “Focusing on one’s own core competencies and expanding them is essential to remain future-proof in the rapidly evolving environment of IT services and solutions.”
Hans Georg Näder Remains Silent
Hans Georg Näder did not want to comment on the sale when asked by WirtschaftsWoche. The Ottobock owner is under pressure due to the debts from the buyback of the EQT shares and the financial debts of
Näder Holding. The debts will become due in a few years. Experts in mergers and acquisitions say that servicing the debt would only be possible with another sale of shares or an IPO of Ottobock.
In 2017, Näder Holding sold Ottobock’s plastics division for several hundred million euros. Insiders say that he used this to pay off a large debt burden. Sycor started the sales process in the third quarter, and in the fourth quarter, IQ Solutions was offered to the Cohemi investor Silver Investment Partners. The process was managed by the M&A advisory firm Translink Corporate Finance.
The Sycor Group itself has debts of €40 million – with the Ottobock parent company Näder Holding. The IT group says that the decision to sell the subsidiary was made for operational reasons. The sale was approved by the shareholder LLC Näder Ventures.
With the sale, Sycor has divested a subsidiary that was profitable in contrast to the entire group. Sycor CEO Thomas Ahlers states: “By selling Sycor IQ Solutions GmbH, we are sharpening the profiles of both companies – IQ Solutions GmbH as well as Sycor GmbH.”