Under the lead of M&A expert Christian Ritschka, DORDA’s Digital Industries Group advised Florian Schicker and easyname on the merger with the German dogado group.

Vienna, 8 June 2020 – With the signing of the contract on 28 May 2020, easyname became part of a successful group of companies with the greatest ambitions in the DACH market. Florian Schicker, who continues to be co-owner and managing director, will also manage the Austrian business and international expansion. DORDA advised him under the lead of M&A Partner Christian Ritschka, supported by Christoph Brogyányi (Partner), Clemens Burian (Attorney at Law) and Julia Haunold(Associate) in the area of corporate law, Axel Anderl (Managing Partner), Nino Tlapak (Attorney at Law), Bernhard Heinzl (Attorney at Law) and Tullia Veronesi(Associate) on IP/IT and data protection as well as Thomas Angermair (Partner) and Günther Posch (Associate) on employment law.

Continuing the success story together 
“I am very happy that we were able to support Florian Schicker with easyname in strategically taking his company to the next level and bundling the competence of two market pioneers”, explains Christian Ritschka. “This is a further example of the strong competence of our Digital Industries Group in advising companies in digital and technological business fields.”

Florian Schicker and easyname now belong to the dogado group, which is majority-owned by European Directories, a portfolio company of the private equity fund Triton Fund III. The new group will be one of the largest owner-managed hosting companies in the German-speaking market. Based on the merger it will be possible to jointly develop the portfolio further in order to position the company even better on the market in the future.

Florian Schicker created the brand easyname in 2006 as part of Nessus GmbH, with the aim of enabling fast domain checks and easy handling of the user interface. Meanwhile the company has become one of the largest web hosting providers in Austria. It has been an independently managed company since 2013 with 27 employees and serves more than 50,000 customers.

As an alternative to large international corporations, dogado, as a full service cloud provider, has been supporting businesses in all kinds of web projects and digitalization processes for over 15 years and is continuing its expansion with the merger. The group now employs almost 170 people and has more than 250,000 customers.

Further advisors
DORDA worked together with RITTERSHAUS Rechtsanwälte (Mannheim), lead partner Milena Charnitzky (Partner, Corporate/M&A) on the German specific aspects of the transaction. Hannes Eichinger of Rabel & Partner acted as tax advisor of the seller. dogado was advised on the transaction by SIWE Rechtsanwälte, lead partner Martin Sinzger (Partner, M&A) and bpv HÜGEL, lead partner Thomas Lettau (Partner, M&A). The tax advisors Leidel & Partner, Jakob Eisenreich, provided tax advice to dogado GmbH from the German side.

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