- Liberta Partners plans to develop travel specialist
- Close cooperation with Deutsche Bahn will continue
- Ameropa has significant growth potential in low emission travel segment
Berlin, January 23, 2020 – Deutsche Bahn (DB) is selling its subsidiary Ameropa Reisen to Liberta Partners, a multi-family holding based in Munich. Liberta Partners invests in companies based in the DACH region with a particular growth potential given the active operational development of their business models. Ameropa, headquartered in Bad Homburg near Frankfurt am Main, specialises short (holiday-) trips by train as well as theme oriented and luxurious train experiences. The company has 120 employees and more than 500.000 customers. The existing close cooperation with Deutsche Bahn will be continued. Ameropa trips can be booked in 7,000 travel agencies and 400 Deutsche Bahn travel centers located in train stations as well as via the webpage of Deutsche Bahn.
„The Ameropa brand will continue to be synonymous for holidays by train. Many Ameropa customers are also customers of Deutsche Bahn and we want their numbers to rise. When looking for a new partner for Ameropa we kept our declared goal to promote low emission travel in mind. Therefore, we are very much looking forward to continuing the Ameropa success story with Liberta Partners”, commented Dr. Michael Peterson, CEO of Deutsche Bahn Fernverkehr.
“Ameropa is a company with a long tradition, strong partnerships and compelling growth potential”, said Nils von Wietzlow, Partner at Liberta Partners, “short (holiday-)trips by train as well as theme oriented and luxurious train experiences are very popular and traveling by train will increase as people are becoming more climate conscious.”
Florian Korp, Partner at Liberta Partners, added: “We will actively support the company in realising its full potential, expanding partnerships and developing new and innovative products.”
„I am looking forward to working for Liberta Partners and continuing the cooperation with Deutsche Bahn”, says Kai de Graaff, who has been Managing Partner at Ameropa for the past seven years and will continue in this position. “Together we are better positioned to bring Ameropa a big step forward.”
Deutsche Bahn is selling Ameropa as part of its “Strong Track” strategy of focussing on its core business, the German train system. Thereby, Deutsche Bahn plans to invest a record EUR 8.5 billion in new long-distance trains amongst others. The goal is to double the number of passengers travelling by train to 260 Million per year.
The transaction is scheduled to close on February 3, 2020.
About Liberta Partners
Liberta Partners is a multi-family holding based in Munich. Liberta invests in companies with growth potential in the DACH region and supports the transformation of their business models. Liberta Partners is backed by renowned families and entrepreneurs as well as the managing partners of the firm. A dynamic team of entrepreneurs, lawyers, M&A and Private Equity professionals actively manages portfolio companies to release their full potential and create sustainable growth for the future.