Baker McKenzie Austria has advised Accenture GmbH ("Accenture") on the acquisition of Allgemeines Rechenzentrum GmbH (ARZ), a technology services provider specializing in the banking sector. This acquisition is in line with Accenture's strategy to expand its banking platform-as-a-service offering across Europe. The signing of this transaction took place on 31 May 2022.
With the acquisition, Accenture is poised to expand its cloud-based platform-as-a-service offering for banks, ranging from core banking services to online banking and regulatory services for banking customers across Europe.
ARZ is majority-owned by the Volksbanken Group and the Hypobanken Group as well as other private banks. With locations in Vienna and Innsbruck, ARZ acts as a technology competence center for innovation and technology services in the banking sector in Austria. ARZ's approximately 600 employees will transfer to Accenture and continue to work at their current locations in Vienna and Innsbruck.
"Our vision is to develop an innovative, cloud-based banking platform-as-a-service offering for new and existing clients across Europe," said Roland Smertnig, senior managing director in Accenture's Financial Services practice in Europe. "With the acquisition of ARZ, we are investing in digital transformation that will help us shape the banks of the future, which are increasingly moving their core functions to the cloud to enable new business models and reinvent themselves."
The project was managed in-house by Marco Lechner, legal director for the DACH Region, together with Mathias Brandauer, head of legal for Accenture Austria.
"We are very pleased to be able to support Accenture in this important transaction," said Gerhard Hermann, partner and head of Baker McKenzie Austria's Corporate/M&A practice group. The range of advice in connection with the acquisition of ARZ's core business included, among others, corporate law, banking supervisory law, employment law, intellectual property law and antitrust law. The legal challenge of the transaction lay in particular in the special shareholder structure of ARZ, and the project required special attention to legal issues relating to the integration and further expansion of ARZ's core business.
Legal Advisor to ACCENTURE
Baker McKenzie
Lead:
Corporate/M&A: Gerhard Hermann (Partner, Vienna), Claudia Fochtmann-Tischler (Counsel, Vienna)
Team:
Corporate/M&A: Teresa Stüttler (Associate, Vienna), Ladislav Bulajcsik (Associate, Vienna), Mariella Neidhart (Associate, Vienna), Klara Kastner (Associate, Vienna), Peter Wand (Partner, Frankfurt), Denise Tayler (Associate, Frankfurt)
Employment Law: Philipp Maier (Partner, Vienna), Victoria Fink (Associate, Vienna)
IP/IT: Lukas Feiler (Partner, Vienna), Martina Grama (Associate, Vienna), Silvia Grohmann (Associate, Vienna), Alexander Hofmann (Associate, Vienna), Michaela Petsche Associate, Vienna), Susanne Milne (Associate, Frankfurt), Tobias Born (Associate, Frankfurt), Anna-Lena Bußer (Associate, Frankfurt)
Banking & Finance: Robert Wippel (Counsel, Vienna), Balint Oszvar (Associate, Vienna)
Real Estate: Wolfgang Eigner (Counsel, Vienna), Filip Peric (Associate, Vienna)
Antitrust: Andreas Traugott (Partner, Vienna), Katerina Schenkova (Associate, Vienna), Nina Lenhard (Associate, Vienna)
Commercial: Daniel Larcher (Associate, Vienna), Abanoub Abd El Malak (Associate Vienna)