Osborne Clarke advises FUNKE Mediengruppe on investment in High Five GmbH

Osborne Clarke has advised media company FUNKE on its investment in High Five GmbH, operator of portals such as iamstudent.de and studiumfinden.com.

A wider range of services for students and young professionals: that is FUNKE's goal – and it is therefore investing in High Five GmbH, the Viennese operator of portals such as iamstudent.de, studiumfinden.com and studiwohnen.com. In the future, the platforms are to be linked, for example, with the existing portals AZUBIYO, LehrstellenPortal.at or Absolventa, which are already bundled under the umbrella of FUNKE Works, a company of FUNKE Mediengruppe. 

The core product of High Five GmbH is the community iamstudent, founded in 2014. Several hundred thousand students from the DACH region are registered here. As a marketing platform for this – also for FUNKE – highly attractive target group, iamstudent has gained companies such as Samsung, Sky, Dominos Pizza and Thalia as partners, who offer special student discounts through it.

In the long term, the current significant investment – 40 percent shares for a seven-figure sum, as Daniel Holzner, co-founder of Iamstudent Medien told us – is aimed at the complete acquisition of High Five GmbH.

“We are very pleased to once again be able to support our long-standing client, FUNKE Mediengruppe, in such a strategically important project with our expertise in transactions with digital business models. The combination of transaction and industry expertise in an international context together with our best-friends law firm E+H paid off again here; we were able to provide comprehensive advice on the process and successfully design and implement a sophisticated transaction structure,” said Dr Björn Hürten, M&A Partner at Osborne Clarke.

The Osborne Clarke team advising FUNKE, led by Dr Björn Hürten (Corporate / M&A), consisted of Dr Philipp Reeb, Efthimios Detsikas, Charlotte Mager and Dr Patrick Stadbäumer (all Corporate / M&A) as well as Konstantin Ewald (IT).

In addition, Dr Clemens Lanschützer (lead, Corporate / M&A) from E+H Rechtsanwälte GmbH supported the transaction with his team consisting of Judith Feldner (Antitrust), Dr Natalie Hahn (Employment), Dr Helmut Liebel (IP / IT), Wolfgang Köfer (Corporate / M&A), Alexander Moser (Corporate / M&A), Marcel Neuhauser (IP / IT), Matthias Schmid (IP / IT) and Marcel Neuhauser (Antitrust).