BULGARIA - Mezzanine Management backs bottled water firm

Guy
21 March 2006

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Mezzanine Management, the independent mezzanine and private equity provider, has announced that its Central European fund, Accession Mezzanine Capital (AMC), has backed the institutional buyout of the Devin Group, the largest bottled water company in Bulgaria, from a group of Bulgarian investors. The transaction value is undisclosed. Wing Equity Investment AG, an Austrian private equity investor focusing on investments in food and beverage companies in South Eastern Europe, provided the majority of the equity funding for the transaction.

Devin sells premium branded mineral and spring water through a well-developed distribution network in Bulgaria. The company’s water is bottled directly at the spring in the Rhodope mountains. In the year to December 2005, Devin had a market share in Bulgaria exceeding 25%. The management team is led by Christian Wimmer, former CEO of McDonalds in Austria, and Tzvetan Lazhanski.

In Bulgaria, per capita bottled water consumption is around 60 litres per year, compared to an average of approximately 110 litres in Western Europe.

AMC’s investment in Devin follows its recent investments in Jet Finance International, Bulgaria’s leading provider of consumer loans for the purchase of retail goods and small cash loans, and ZABERD, the leading traffic engineering services business in Poland. In addition, in January 2006, AMC announced its first realisation following the option granted by Advent International to Novator Holdings to acquire Viva Ventures Holdings GmbH, which owns 65% of The Bulgarian Telecommunications Company.

Advisers on this transaction were Dorda Brugger Jordis, Vienna (legal), and PricewaterhouseCoopers, Vienna and Sofia (financial and tax due diligence).