NürnbergMesse

NürnbergMesse, one of the largest exhibition companies in the world, acquired WEKA Fachmedien from Paragon. The company is a leading specialist publisher in the field of embedded systems technologies, with which NürnbergMesse has been working successfully for a long time. The acquisition was intended to be a step towards the strategic diversification of NürnbergMesse beyond the exhibition business in the direction of content and specialist conferences. As part of the project, strategic questions had to be answered with regard to the dynamic market environment in the embedded systems sector, the challenges facing the specialist publishing industry and trends in the trade fair sector.

Horváth supported NürnbergMesse from pre-commercial due diligence, through confirmatory commercial, HR and ESG due diligence, to the development of a strategic target image for the future combined business. In addition to the analysis of website, association, market, competition and company data, among other things, the perspective of experienced industry experts, interviews with executives of the buyer and the target as well as our own topline scenario models were also incorporated. The analyses and results were prepared for various addressees involved in the acquisition process.

The work packages provided an objective and critical perspective for the assessment of risks, the purchase negotiations and the design of the integration target image. By linking the results of the individual work packages, the conditions for a successful integration were created - for example, by identifying key employees of the target in order to leverage the potential identified in the commercial due diligence. The transaction was successfully completed on January 1, 2025.