Founding shareholder Deutsche Bank sells final stake in Deutsche Beteiligungs(2)

Deutsche Bank, a founding shareholder of Germany’s oldest private equity business Deutsche Beteiligungs, sold its shares in the firm on the open market last week.

The bank sold 2,000,000 shares, worth about €62 million and which represented 13.2 percent of Deutsche Beteiligungs, to a small number of predominantly German investment companies, according to the bank.

Deutsche Beteiligungs, which is listed on the German stock exchange, dropped 35 cents, or 1.1 percent, to €31.15.

Following this transaction, no single shareholder holds more than five percent of the shares. In mid June, Gerling Life Insurance, another principal shareholder, had sold its 10.4 percent interest in Deutsche Beteiligungs.
 
Following the transactions, roughly two thirds of the company’s shares are held by institutional investors: German and British banks each hold approximately 20 percent of the shares, US banks hold some ten percent, and another 15 percent are held in other European countries.

There are about 6,000 individual private shareholders holding 30 percent of the shares.

Since its share buy-back on June 14, Deutsche Beteiligungs itself holds just under five percent; these shares are being withdrawn from circulation.
 
In September 1965, Deutsche Bank founded Deutsche Kapitalbeteiligungsgesellschaft, which was one of the predecessor companies of Deutsche Beteiligungs and embarked on what was then an entirely new business field.

Private equity was unknown in Germany at the time. The establishment of the firm was in response to the shortage of equity among the strongly growing mid-sized companies at the time of the ‘economic miracle’.