• bm‑t beteili­gungs­man­age­ment thürin­gen GmbH real­izes exit
• rubi­con IT GmbH takes over the major­ity of PiNkey AG and plans to estab­lish a com­pe­tence cen­ter for lost prop­erty man­age­ment in Thuringia

The ven­ture cap­i­tal investor bm‑t beteili­gungs­man­age­ment thürin­gen GmbH (bm|t) sold its shares in PiNkey AG to the IT com­pany Rubi­con IT GmbH based in Vienna. With the takeover, the com­pany is plan­ning to expand its mar­ket-lead­ing posi­tion in the area of fund man­age­ment in Aus­tria and Switzer­land, also in Ger­many. PiNkey AG offers a wide range of ser­vices around the sub­ject of key stor­age and return of lost keys. Founded in 2009 by Stef­fen Malessa, PiNkey AG is a provider of var­i­ous ser­vices related to “lost keys”. Under the brand name www.Schlüsseldepot24.de the com­pany has set up a nation­wide net­work for the secure stor­age and – if required – short-term deliv­ery of keys. As a fur­ther prod­uct, PiNkey sells Key holder with inte­grated key­found ser­vice as com­pany give-away with add-on and cus­tomer back-up chan­nel at www.einkaufswagenloeser.de and www.keymortizer.de. With www.Code24.de, the com­pany also oper­ates a cen­tral reg­is­ter for per­sonal things. As a busi­ness unit, rubi­con IT GmbH, based in Vienna, has been oper­at­ing the fund ser­vice plat­form www.fundamt.gv.at since 2003. This is an inno­v­a­tive e‑government soft­ware solu­tion for a country’s entire lost prop­erty. In Aus­tria it is used in 500 cities and munic­i­pal­i­ties as well as at the Aus­trian Post and the Wiener Lin­ien. In Switzer­land, it is the offi­cial lost prop­erty stan­dard solu­tion under the name easyfind and is thus avail­able to 3.9 mil­lion cit­i­zens in nine can­tons and numer­ous munic­i­pal­i­ties as well as the pas­sen­gers of the Swiss Fed­eral Rail­ways SBB. In addi­tion rubi­con oper­ates easyfind (www.easyfind.com) based on unique codes. With the takeover of PiNkey AG, rubi­con has found an already estab­lished part­ner for the expan­sion of its fund man­age­ment ser­vices in Ger­many and is plan­ning to expand its loca­tion in Thuringia as a fund man­age­ment cen­ter for Ger­many. Spe­cific terms of the deal are not dis­closed. “Hav­ing been able to sup­port PiNkey AG for almost six years in the devel­op­ment of the busi­ness, I am delighted to have found a part­ner in the mar­ket with rubi­con IT GmbH, who wants to fur­ther develop the com­pany in the state of Thuringia” said Stephan Beier, Invest­ment Man­ager at bm|t. “The syn­er­gies result­ing from the col­lab­o­ra­tion between rubi­con and Pinkey allow a uni­form solu­tion for the entire D‑A‑CH area. This has enor­mous advan­tages for the cit­i­zen, as he will have to look for his valu­ables in a sin­gle plat­form in the future, “explains Peter Grass­nigg, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of rubi­con IT GmbH. About PiNkey AG PiNkey AG, based in Ober­weißbach / Thuringia, was founded in 2009 by Stef­fen Malessa and Katrin Linke. It offers ser­vices related to the stor­age and return of lost keys. With cur­rently more than one mil­lion active key hold­ers in the mar­ket, PiNkey AG holds a lead­ing posi­tion in Ger­many. (www.pinkey.de) About rubi­con IT GmbH Rubi­con, an inter­na­tional soft­ware com­pany head­quar­tered in Vienna, and offices in Berlin and Berne, spe­cial­izes in improv­ing core busi­ness processes through inte­gra­tive IT solu­tions based on rubi­con stan­dard prod­ucts or indi­vid­ual soft­ware devel­op­ments. A cen­tral busi­ness area is the inno­v­a­tive lost prop­erty man­age­ment ser­vice solu­tions. (www.rubicon.eu) About the bm|t With more than € 320m and eight funds under man­age­ment bm|t is the pre­mier part­ner for invest­ments in Thuringia. We pur­sue a return-ori­ented approach to financ­ing inno­va­tion and pro­mot­ing eco­nomic growth by invest­ing in promis­ing entre­pre­neur teams and busi­nesses in the Free State of Thuringia. bm|t is the ideal part­ner for invest­ments across all indus­tries and fund­ing stages, from start-up through growth cap­i­tal, includ­ing geo­graph­i­cal expansion.