• bm‑t beteili­gungs­man­age­ment thürin­gen GmbH realises exit
• rubi­con IT GmbH acquires major­ity stake in PiNkey AG and plans to estab­lish a cen­tre of excel­lence for lost prop­erty man­age­ment in Thuringia

The ven­ture cap­i­tal investor bm‑t beteili­gungs­man­age­ment thürin­gen GmbH (bm|t) has sold its shares in PiNkey AG to the Vienna-based IT com­pany rubi­con IT GmbH. With this takeover, rubi­con IT GmbH plans to expand its mar­ket-lead­ing posi­tion in the field of lost prop­erty man­age­ment in Aus­tria and Switzer­land to Ger­many. PiNkey AG offers a range of ser­vices nation­wide in the field of key stor­age and the return of lost keys.
Founded in 2009 by Stef­fen Malessa, PiNkey AG is a provider of var­i­ous ser­vices related to the topic of “lost keys”. For this pur­pose, the com­pany has built up a nation­wide net­work for the secure stor­age or, if required, short-term deliv­ery of keys for its prod­uct www.Schluesseldepot24.de. As a fur­ther prod­uct, PiNkey sells key rings with inte­grated key find­ing ser­vice as a com­pany give-away with addi­tional ben­e­fits and cus­tomer feed­back chan­nel at www.einkaufswagenloeser.de and www.Keymortizer.de. At www.Code24.de, the com­pany also oper­ates a cen­tral reg­is­ter for per­sonal items.
As a busi­ness divi­sion, Vienna-based rubi­con IT GmbH has been oper­at­ing the funds ser­vice plat­form www.fundamt.gv.at since 2003. This is an inno­v­a­tive e‑government soft­ware solu­tion for the entire lost prop­erty sys­tem of a coun­try. In Aus­tria, it is used in 500 cities and munic­i­pal­i­ties as well as by Öster­re­ichis­che Post and Wiener Lin­ien. In Switzer­land, it is the offi­cial stan­dard solu­tion for lost prop­erty under the name easyfind and is thus avail­able to 3.9 mil­lion cit­i­zens in nine can­tons and numer­ous munic­i­pal­i­ties as well as to pas­sen­gers of the Swiss Fed­eral Rail­ways SBB. In addi­tion, rubi­con oper­ates easyfind, a loss pro­tec­tion sys­tem based on unique codes (www.easyfind.com).
With the acqui­si­tion of PiNkey AG, rubi­con has found an already estab­lished local part­ner for the expan­sion of its finds man­age­ment ser­vices to Ger­many and plans to expand the loca­tion in Thuringia as a finds man­age­ment cen­tre for Ger­many. The par­ties have agreed not to dis­close the pur­chase price.
“After hav­ing been able to accom­pany and sup­port PiNkey AG for almost six years in build­ing up the busi­ness, I am very pleased to have found in rubi­con IT GmbH a part­ner expe­ri­enced in the mar­ket who wants to fur­ther develop the com­pany at the Thuringia loca­tion,” says Stephan Beier, Invest­ment Man­ager of bm|t.
“The syn­er­gies result­ing from the coop­er­a­tion between rubi­con and Pinkey allow for a uni­form dis­cov­ery solu­tion for the entire D‑A-CH region. This has enor­mous advan­tages for cit­i­zens in par­tic­u­lar, as in the future they will only have to search for their valu­ables on a sin­gle plat­form in the event of a loss,” Peter Grass­nigg, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of rubi­con IT GmbH, explains the prospects.

About PiNkey AG

PiNkey AG, based in Oberweißbach/Thuringia, was founded in 2009 by Stef­fen Malessa and Katrin Linke and offers ser­vices for key stor­age and the return of lost keys. With cur­rently more than one mil­lion active key find­ers in the mar­ket, PiNkey AG holds a lead­ing posi­tion in Ger­many. (www.pinkey.de)

About rubicon IT GmbH

rubi­con, an inter­na­tion­ally active soft­ware com­pany with head­quar­ters in Vienna and branch offices in Berlin and Bern, spe­cialises in improv­ing cen­tral busi­ness processes through inte­gra­tive IT solu­tions based on rubi­con stan­dard prod­ucts or indi­vid­ual soft­ware devel­op­ments. A cen­tral busi­ness area are the inno­v­a­tive fund ser­vice solu­tions. (http://www.rubicon.eu)

About bm|t

bm‑t beteili­gungs­man­age­ment thürin­gen GmbH, head­quar­tered in Erfurt, is a sub­sidiary of Thüringer Auf­baubank and one of the top addresses for invest­ments in Thuringia. bm|t cur­rently man­ages eight funds with a total vol­ume of around EUR 320 mil­lion, which invest in inno­v­a­tive com­pa­nies in almost all sec­tors and in all phases of com­pany devel­op­ment — both in the start-up and growth phases or in com­pany suc­ces­sion sit­u­a­tions. Cur­rently, aroundEUR 100 mil­lion is avail­able for early-stage projects, for growth com­pa­nies and for estab­lished medium-sized and large com­pa­nies in Thuringia’s SME sector.

Contact:

bm‑t beteili­gungs­man­age­ment thürin­gen GmbH
Stephan Beier
Invest­ment Manager
Gork­istraße 9
99084 Erfurt
Phone: +49 361 7447–607
Fax: +49 361 7447–635
stephan.beier@bm‑t.de