S&C advised Springer Nature, the publisher of leading science journals, such as Nature and Scientific American, as issuer’s counsel in its initial public offering on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (FSE) that valued the equity of the company at €4.5 billion—marking the first large European listing in the second half of 2024. Springer Nature and one of its owners, a fund controlled by the private equity company BC Partners, offered up to 27.4 million shares. The shares were placed at €22.50 per share, resulting in gross proceeds of around €600 million, including €200 million in new equity. The shares of Springer Nature started trading on October 4, 2024 on FSE’s Prime Standard of the regulated market, gaining 8.2 per cent to close at €24.24 on the first day of trading. Following the IPO, Holtzbrinck Publishing Group indirectly holds around 50.6% and BC Partners indirectly holds around 36.0% of the company’s shares after the offering (assuming full exercise of the greenshoe option).
Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, Springer Nature is a leading global research, health and educational publisher that was founded over 180 years ago. In 2023, Springer Nature published over 420,000 articles and its online platforms were visited and used by researchers on average more than 94 million times each month. The IPO is a testament of the successful cooperation of a family-controlled majority owner with a private equity firm who seeks an exit through the capital markets.
The Frankfurt-based S&C team advising Springer Nature led by Carsten Berrar and Clemens Rechberger included Sophie Moeder, Daniel Kornack, Johanna Schöbener, Ella Scholz and Tillmann Dehner. Jeff Hochberg, Saul Brander and Vincent Lan provided U.S. tax advice.
A global leader in capital markets, S&C’s Capital Markets Group has advised clients on some of the most important IPOs in recent years, including:
- SoftBank in Arm’s $5.23 billion IPO, the largest of 2023;
- Rakuten Bank in its 89.5 billion JPY IPO in 2023, the largest Japanese IPO since 2018;
- The underwriters in Mobileye’s $861 million IPO, the fourth largest in the United States in 2022; and
- The underwriters in Credo’s $230 million IPO, the first major tech IPO of 2022; and
- China Mobile in its $7.7 billion IPO in 2021, the first Hong Kong-incorporated, Hong Kong-listed company to have its shares listed on a stock exchange in mainland China.