ECOVIS STLex – with a team led by the partners Filippo Ingraffia, for the legal aspects, and Giovanni Ciurlo, for the tax aspects – assisted the minority shareholders with the sale of 100% of Fine PCB S.p.A., the parent company of the Somacis Group, to the French private equity fund Chequers Partenaires S.A., and also with the reinvestment transaction, together with the Somacis Group management, in Conero Holding S.p.A., a vehicle controlled by Chequers.
ECOVIS STLex had already assisted the then shareholders of Somacis in 2008, in facilitating the entry of the first minority investor and, again, in 2016, had supported the shareholders of Somacis in the sale of the majority of the company to the Quadrivio Fund (later succeeded by the Green Arrow Fund) and in their reinvestment in Fine PCB.
The current transaction has led to the exit of the Green Arrow Fund and some minority shareholders, and to the entry into Conero Holding of the main managers together with some of the old shareholders.
Mr Ingraffia and Mr Ciurlo handled both the negotiation of the sale of the shareholding in Fine PCB and the negotiation of the Investment and Shareholder Agreement regulating the relationship between the shareholders of Conero Holding.
This operation was made complex also by the international ramification of the Somacis Group and the residence of the minority shareholders in countries with different legislations and tax regimes.
The presence in the ECOVIS STLex firm of both lawyers and accountants enabled it to provide clients with an integrated and multidisciplinary service capable of resolving both legal and tax aspects.
The Somacis Group
Founded in 1972 and based in Castelfidardo (Ancona), the Somacis Group boasts a global presence through production sites in Italy (Castelfidardo and Manfredonia), China, the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as an extensive sales network serving technology-facing clients worldwide.
Somacis is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of high-complexity printed circuit boards for advanced technology applications in various sectors, including Aerospace and Defence, Infrastructure and Telecommunications, Industrial, Information Technology, Automotive/Electric Vehicles and Medical Devices.
The Group boasts a leading position in the so-called “high-mix low-volume” segment thanks to a business model that leverages synergic collaboration between the various plants, acting as a reference technology partner for more than 600 customers who are supported in all the crucial phases of the product life cycle – from co-engineering, prototyping and rump-up to mass production – according to a “one-stop-shop” platform logic capable of meeting the highest standards in terms of technology, quality and service.
In 2021, the Group achieved a turnover of approximately €144 million.
