Apleona CEO, Dr. Keysberg, expects digital innovations as well as inorganic growth.

Apleona, the real estate services company headquartered in Neu-Isenburg, close to Frankfurt am Main, has been acquired by PAI Partners (PAI), the French private-equity company. The seller is EQT, the Swedish financial investor. The transaction is subject to approval from the antitrust and regulatory approval.

For Apleona CEO, Dr. Jochen Keysberg, the change in ownership offers an excellent basis for the real estate service provider to continue its successful development and achieve above-average growth. “With PAI as the new owner, Apleona can continue to operate independently on the market as an autonomous company, while at the same time being able to advance digital innovations, supplementing both its service range and regional coverage on the basis of inorganic growth,” commented Dr. Keysberg on the sale.

As a financial investor, PAI had a tradition and industrial expertise spanning decades and was known for developing equity investments on a long-term and sustained basis, continued Dr. Keysberg. The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic would amplify existing trends, such as large companies outsourcing real estate services, the increasing size of international tenders with cross-border portfolios and strong demand in respect to digital solutions and products for building users and building technology, such as saving energy and lowering CO2 emissions.

Dr. Keysberg is convinced that “the beneficiaries will be integrated facility management companies with strong technical expertise and an international platform, like Apleona”. This would go hand in hand with market consolidation, particularly on the strongly fragmented German facility management market. “In the anticipated market consolidation in Germany, with its new owner PAI, Apleona will undoubtedly play a decisive and active role,” expects Apleona CEO in the medium term.

Since the sale of Bilfinger’s Real Estate business to EQT in the fall of 2016, the company has operated successfully on the market under the Apleona name. With approx. 20,000 employees, the company has focussed its business model on integrated real estate services for industrial and property companies and expanded its European platform for managing large portfolios spread over several countries and regions.