• Clipperton acted as the sole financial advisor to the founding team of Peter Park and the ARBAnova family foundation on its strategic growth investment by Great Hill Partners, bringing the company’s total funding to more than €100 million.
  • Great Hill’s investment will support the accelerated build-out of Peter Park’s salesforce and market-leading technology, expand its footprint, and help continue executing its ambitious growth strategy.
  • This landmark deal follows a number of recent Clipperton-advised technology growth buyouts after the Didomi and Astorg/Redslim transaction earlier this year.
  • The Peter Park growth investment further cements Clipperton’s leading role in the European software sector, bringing our European software deal count since 2020 to more than 110 transactions.

Our Client

  • Founded in 2019, Peter Park is a Munich-based technology company that has created the market-leading European parking automation AI platform, redefining off-street paid urban parking. In a sector long constrained by analogue systems, Peter Park enables customers across various industries, including retail, healthcare, and tourism, to streamline operations and increase efficiency while enhancing user experience.
  • Through its proprietary Automatic License Plate Recognition (“ALPR”) technology, cloud-based management platform, and a wide range of digital technologies, including smart kiosks, parking apps, and a dynamic pricing tool, clients can seamlessly and automatically manage their parking estate without the need for physical barriers or manual controls.
  • The Company is currently present in nearly 250 cities across Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Italy, and manages more than 90,000 parking spaces and in excess of 40 million parking transactions per year; the company is currently in hypergrowth, accelerating the digitization of urban mobility.

Deal Rationale

  • With Peter Park driving a secular shift of the European off-street parking market towards AI-based platforms, the company has decided to double down on its existing growth strategy as well as to invest in further client-facing features to drive digitisation and market penetration.
  • The company has found in Great Hill Partners an investor who is fully aligned with the strategic vision of the founder team and who can provide the necessary resources to enable Peter Park to achieve a meaningful further acceleration of its already market-leading and capital-efficient growth.
  • The founding management team of Maximilian Schlereth, Patrick Bartler, Stefan Schenk and Christoph Heinle will roll over a significant part of their equity investment and continue to lead the Company. ARBAnova family foundation will also retain a minority position post-deal.
  • “As cities across Europe face growing pressure to reduce congestion and make smarter use of limited urban space, the need for scalable, digital parking infrastructure has never been more urgent”, said Maximilian Schlereth, Co-Founder and CEO of Peter Park. “We are thrilled to welcome Great Hill as a value-add partner. Their proven track record of turbocharging growth through effective go-to-market strategies, deep operational expertise, and access to seasoned growth partners makes them the ideal fit for our next phase. With their support, we’re well-positioned to scale our salesforce, expand our footprint, and unlock new growth opportunities.”
  • This deal was executed by Clipperton’s Munich and Berlin teams in close collaboration with our U.S. based colleagues from Solomon Partners.

Clipperton’s extensive track record with tech buy-out transactions

This landmark deal adds to a series of recent tech growth buyouts advised by Clipperton and represents its second recent growth buyout in the DACH region, closely following the Astorg/Redslim deal late last year.

The exit landscape for VC-backed startups has undergone a substantial transformation over the past decade, notably thanks to the emerging trend of what we like to call “VC-to-PE deals”. While exits to PE funds made up just 8% of total exits for VC-funded companies between 2006 and 2010, that figure has surged to a whopping 24% for the years 2021 to 2024. Read more about the VC-to-PE landscape in our recently published research paper.

Deal Team

About Clipperton

Clipperton is a leading pan-European investment bank dedicated to technology and growth companies, with offices in Paris, Berlin, Munich, London, and Amsterdam, as well as partnerships in the USA, China, Italy, and Spain. We provide strategic and financial advisory to entrepreneurs, corporates, and top-tier investors in Europe who are looking to execute strategic M&A, private equity, private placements, and debt financing transactions. Founded in 2003, we have completed over 500 deals with fast-growing technology companies, blue-chip corporates, and renowned financial investors.