Hübner Schlösser & Cie advised GEA Group AG, Germany, in the sale of its large scale plant engineering operations: Lentjes GmbH, Germany, was sold to A-Tec Industries AG, Austria

As of May 2, 2007, GEA Group sold its plant engineering subsidiary Lentjes GmbH, Rat-ingen, to a subsidiary of A-Tec Industries AG, a globally active industrial group based in Vienna that specializes in drive systems, plant engineering and mechanical engineering. In addition to the nominal purchase price of EUR 1, the buyer has agreed to inject a double digit million Euro amount to strengthen Lentjes GmbH's equity base. Chances and risks of Lent-jes’s current projects and orders have been negotiated and allocated to buyer and seller individually for every single project. The transaction is subject to approval by the antitrust au-thorities.

Hübner Schlösser & Cie (www.hscie.com), one of the leading German corporate finance advisory firms in the field of medium-sized transactions, advised the vendor in the entire sales process, i.e. Hübner Schlösser & Cie approached interested parties worldwide, prepared the information memoranda and presentations, managed due diligence examinations with prospective buyers, organized the communication process and advised in the negotiations. This transaction, as many transactions in the plant engineering business, was highly complex due to the particularity of individual project risks as well as of underlying the financing and guarantee struc-tures.

Lentjes GmbH designs, supplies and engineers turnkey industrial plants, specializing in processes, technologies and components for the industrial use of energy from fossil fuels and regenerative power generation from biomass and waste products. The company gener-ated sales of EUR 466 m and EUR 266 m in 2005 and 2006, respectively.

A-TEC Industries AG is a Vienna-based international industrial group with successful operations in drive systems, plant engineering, machine tools and metallurgy. The Group currently employs around 11,000 people worldwide. The preliminary results for 2006 show revenues of EUR 1.6 bn. A-Tec Industries AG is listed at the Vienna stock exchange with a current market capitalization of EUR 1.1 bn.

GEA Group AG, headquartered in Bochum, Germany, is a global technology group focus-sing on specialty mechanical engineering businesses - especially process engineering and equipment - with operating companies in around 50 countries. GEA Group is one of the world's market and technology leaders in 90 percent of its businesses. In 2006, approximately 17,500 employees generated Group sales of more than EUR 4.3 bn. GEA Group is listed in the MDAX index at the German stock exchange with a current market capitalization of approximately EUR 4.2 bn.

The divestiture marks the completion of GEA’s strategy to exit from large scale plant engineering operations and to focus on its high growth and high margin engineering operations for the food, pharmaceutical and energy supply industries.

Hübner Schlösser & Cie (www.hscie.com), located in Grünwald near Munich, Germany, is an independent corporate fi-nance advisory firm, specialised in acquisitions and divestitures of medium-sized and large companies worldwide. In the last years the firm advised in more than 100 transactions with a total transaction value in excess of EUR 17 bn. Hübner Schlösser & Cie is one of the leading advisory firms for medium-sized transactions in Germany.

Hübner Schlösser & Cie
Alice Steinhausen
Head of PR
Luise-Ullrich-Str. 8
82031 Grünwald
Germany

Phone: +49 (89) 998 997-0
Fax: +49 (89) 998 997-33
Email: info@hscie.com
URL: www.hscie.com

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