Advising shareholders on acquisition of RETAILO AG by Blackhawk Network

Blackhawk Network Holding, Inc., is expanding its international sales network in the prepaid segment by acquiring RETAILO AG headquartered in Cologne. Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek advised Retailo AG's founding shareholders and the shareholding venture capital investors Seventure Partners, Wellington Partners and Endeavour Vision as well as Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau on the successful exit with a team comprised from various offices, led by Dr. Thorsten Kuthe.

The listed Blackhawk Network group belongs to the Safeway group, one of the biggest US retail companies. Blackhawk Network is a leading prepaid payment network, which supports the distribution of gift cards, prepaid telecom products and financial service products across a global network. Blackhawk’s digital platform supports prepaid across a network of digital distribution partners including etailers, financial service providers and mobile wallets. The company is headquartered in Pleasanton, California, and added over 40,000 new sales points by acquiring RETAILO AG. With the addition, Blackhawk’s network now consists of roughly 70,000 sales points in Europe and Africa (EMEA). More information can be found under www.blackhawknetwork.com.

RETAILO AG is Europe’s market leader in multi-channel distribution of prepaid cards. The company will keep its offices in Cologne and is supposed to become a business unit of Blackhawk Network. More information is available under www.retailo.de.

A Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek team lead by Thorsten Kuthe has been advising Retailo in various financing rounds and commercial matters since 2007.

Responsible for the project
Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek:
Dr. Thorsten Kuthe (Lead),
Madeleine Zipperle,
Dr. Oliver Böttcher (all M&A),
Dominik Eickemeier (IP), all Cologne
Dr. Marc P. Scheunemann (Tax), Frankfurt
Dr. Rainer Velte,
Beatrice Stange, LL.M. (both Antitrust Law), both Düsseldorf