Siemens AG (Munich, Germany) has successfully closed the sale of Flender GmbH to The Carlyle Group for €2.025 billion (enterprise value). In October 2020, Siemens announced its plans to sell the specialized supplier of mechanical and electrical drive systems to Carlyle. Now that the relevant authorities have granted the required approvals, the transaction has closed. As previously announced, the sale of Flender results in a disposal gain of a euro amount in the mid-triple-digit millions for Siemens AG.
“The sale of Flender is another step in executing our strategy for enabling Siemens to become a focused technology company,” said Ralf P. Thomas, who is Chief Financial Officer at Siemens, where he is also responsible, among other things, for Siemens’ Portfolio Companies. “Flender has developed excellently in recent years, and the unit impressively demonstrates that our Portfolio Companies concept has proven effective,” added Thomas. Siemens aims to give its individual Portfolio Companies – which tend to have the characteristics of medium-sized enterprises – more independence and autonomy, possibly also in connection with a change in ownership.
Following the sale of Flender, five units remain under the Portfolio Companies umbrella. In fiscal 2020, these five units had a total of about 15,400 employees and generated around €3.2 billion in revenue. With some 8,600 employees, Flender generated pro‑forma revenue of roughly €2.2 billion in fiscal 2020.