Lesaffre acquires Butalco

Lesaffre, a French family group with estimated revenues of 1.6 billion euros which is active in the development and sales of value added fermentation solutions to the bioethanol and bio based chemical industries, announced on July 23, 2014 that is has acquired Butalco GmbH. Butalco, which was founded by Professor Eckhard Boles and Gunter Festel as a spin-off of the Goethe University of Frankfurt, is a research company focused on yeast technology and the development of yeast strains for second generation biofuels and bio based chemicals.

Lenz & Staehelin advised Lesaffre in this transaction. The Lenz & Staehelin team was led by Stephan Erni (Partner, Corporate / M&A) and included Eric Olivier Meier and Thomas Spörri (both Corporate / M&A), Stefan Schwaller (Tax), and Laura Egli and Raphael Nusser (IP).