LB Invest sells 60% stake to Astraco

The investment, which will maintain managerial and strategic continuity, involved the acquisition of a stake by CEO Emilio Benedetti and a substantial reinvestment by the family of Edoardo Ligabue, who has taken on managerial roles.

LB Invest, the holding company of the LB Group (LB Officine Meccaniche, Sermat and Sitec), has sold 60% of its shares to Bac Due, a special purpose vehicle for club deal investors managed by Astraco, an independent advisory company that structures private capital investments. The deal was finalised on 2 April, creating – for the first time in 45 years – a new corporate structure consisting of Bac Due, Fimec 1 (Ligabue family) and Emilio Benedetti. The investment will maintain managerial and strategic continuity and involved the acquisition of a stake by Emilio Benedetti, who has been appointed CEO of the Group with responsibility for strategic and ordinary management of operations, and a substantial reinvestment by the family of Edoardo Ligabue who has taken on the role of project manager supervisor and a member of the board.

“I am proud and honoured to have presided over another very important step forward in the growth and development of the LB Group,” said Emilio Benedetti. “Throughout our 45-year history, we have kept constantly ahead of our times, exploiting our inspiration and ideas to develop extraordinarily advanced solutions in terms of plant, mechanics, engineering and software. Thanks to our recent projects and the enormous human capital of the men and women who work with me, we are now capable of taking on new and highly diverse challenges. Thanks to its constant innovation, the LB group has been and will continue to be a global benchmark in the design and construction of plants for handling and processing raw materials in the ceramic, ready-mixed powder, granulation and mining sectors. We identified the Astraco Club Deal as the ideal partner for its high capacity for analysis, synthesis and management. It will certainly act as an accelerator in the pursuit of growth, development and diversification projects already under way and in achieving new goals and success.”

Investors were particularly impressed by the business skills of the team at the helm of the LB Group, which in 2018 posted excellent results including consolidated revenues of 45 million euros and an EBITDA of 4.5 million euros.

“I am very pleased that the second investment completed by Astraco involved a leading company in the Italian mid-cap segment,” said Nino Dell’Arte, founder and CEO of Astraco. “I firmly believe that the LB Group’s management team led by Emilio Benedetti is capable of pursuing an ambitious long-term international development programme for this successful Italian company in the field of engineering, installation and maintenance of hi-tech, high-performance industrial plants,” he continued.