Osborne Clarke advises OnePLM shareholders on its sale to the European Digital Transformation consortium

By Peter Davison

13 September 2022

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Reading-based lawyers at international legal practice Osborne Clarke have advised shareholders on the sale of OnePLM, a value-added reseller (VAR) of Siemens CAD/CAM and Product Lifecyle Management (PLM) software, to the European Digital Transformation consortium.

Based in Eynsham, Oxfordshire, OnePLM is one of the largest Siemens Digital Industries Software Resellers worldwide and the top Siemens Partner in Europe.

Backed by a large, diverse and highly rated team of specialists, the organisation supplies software solutions, technical consultancy and support services to thousands of customers across the UK and Ireland spanning a wide variety of industry sectors.

The European Digital Transformation is a Dutch consortium backed by Holland Capital. OnePLM will sit alongside existing consortium companies, Magnus Digital, Dimensys, cards PLM Solutions and Appronto, creating the largest software and service provider of its kind in Europe, enabling international customers to benefit from a range of best-in-class expert services.

The Osborne Clarke team was led by Reading-based corporate partner Robert Wood and included associate director Robert Pook and corporate associate Chris Flach.

In the Netherlands the team included corporate partner Geoffrey Beurskens and corporate senior associate Niels Dolk. UK employment partner Danielle Kingdon in Reading advised on cross-border employment matters, supported by Dan Charie. Mat Oliver and Ben Doeh advised on corporate tax.

For many years Osborne Clarke has enjoyed a good working relationship with the shareholders of OnePLM and has advised on several sales, mergers, and acquisitions.

This includes a successful merger with a German company (PRION) in 2013, an MBO from Accenture in 2017, and when BGF acquired a 25 per cent equity stake in the business in June 2018.

More recently, Osborne Clarke also advised OnePLM on its subsequent acquisitions of Majenta PLM (the largest Siemens PLM VAR in the UK) and Team Engineering, a Siemens PLM Gold Partner. The resulting combined business represented more than 75 per cent of Siemen’s UK PLM VAR channel.

Osborne Clarke has a market-leading practice for mid-market tech M&A and private equity and works closely with founders, shareholders management teams and institutional investors to support them through the course of a company's life cycle and its milestone transactions.

By Peter Davison

Peter Davison is deputy editor of The Business Magazine. He has spent his life in journalism – doing work experience in newsrooms in and around Bristol while still at school, and landing his first job on a local newspaper aged 19. By 28 he was the youngest newspaper editor in the country.

An early advocate of online news, he spent the first years of the 2000s telling his bosses that the internet posed both the biggest opportunity and greatest threat to the newspaper industry and the art of journalism. He was right on both counts.

Since 2006 he has enjoyed a career as a freelance journalist. He lives in rural Wiltshire with one wife, two children, and three cats.