Slaughter and May advised GoDaddy on its €1.69 billion acquisition of Host Europe Group from Cinven

Slaughter and May advised GoDaddy on its acquisition of Host Europe Group (HEG) from the private equity firm Cinven for €1.69 billion, including €605 million paid to the selling shareholders and €1.08 billion in assumed net debt.

GoDaddy is the world’s largest cloud platform dedicated to small, independent ventures, with more than 14 million customers worldwide and over 63 million domain names under management. HEG is the largest privately owned web services provider in Europe. With strong positions in the UK and Germany and more than 1.7 million customers, HEG complements GoDaddy's leading position in the US and fast-growing international footprint.

The transaction was announced on 6 December 2016 and is expected to close in the second quarter of 2017, subject to regulatory and other closing requirements.

Slaughter and May worked as a team with Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (as lead counsel and advising on US aspects) and Gleiss Lutz (advising on German aspects).