Innova Capital has won the Deal of the Year Award 2007 – Emerging Europe, given by the European Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (EVCA) and Real Deals magazine for Innova investment in Automotive Components Europe (ACE).

Innova Capital, one of Central Europe’s leading Private Equity firms, has been recognised for a deal which took a unique merger of two companies from East and West Europe to create a new entity - ACE.

In early 2005, Innova acquired EBCC, a Polish aluminium parts production plant, from its distressed parent company, Valfond, with the intention of turning it into stand-alone automotive supplier. Subsequently in 2006, Innova teamed up with the management of Fuchosa (Spain) to complete a leveraged MBO of this leading European automotive Tier 2 supplier. The two operating units were combined to form ACE - a diversified automotive casting supplier. The new entity will leverage management, customers, product development and access to low cost location in CEE. This holding company, registered in Luxemburg, was floated on the Warsaw Stock Exchange in July 2007.

ACE combines the best from each component company. Fuchosa’s management has injected new expertise to enable the Polish aluminium plant (EBCC) to overhaul and enhance their production. The expansion of the iron division (Fuchosa) is foreseen by the purchase of brown-field sites in CEE. New prototype development and new sales orders are already in the pipeline.

As Andrzej Bartos, the Lead Partner for this deal at Innova explains: “When we invested in ACE we set ourselves a goal, namely to make ACE the leader in its industry sector. To achieve this our tasks were: to diversify product range, improve production quality and customer service, develop proprietary R&D and foster further consolidation on the European market. We diligently followed through on all these aspects and ACE has now significantly improved financial results and a respected position in the market.”

In July 2007, upon ACE’s formation, the aluminium division’s (EBCC) turnover was € 27 million per annum, with a profit of € 3.6 million net. At the end of this year, ACE is expected to reach € 86 million in turnover, of which an estimated € 9million will be net profit.

“We’re very pleased with ACE’s performance to date, but we intend to carry on working with its management to further their achievements – Innova’s involvement will carry on. The EVCA and RealDeals Award has been a great acknowledgement of our work. It motivates us further in our collaborations with our portfolio companies and our search for new attractive investments” added Andrzej Bartos.