Trusted by the founder of Graal. “Money is the currency of transactions. Trust is the currency of interaction.”

We assisted the owner and founder of the Graal group in the process of selling part of the Graal business.

We had the pleasure of advising Mr Bogusław Kowalski, a Polish entrepreneur who built the Graal group from scratch and consistently developed it. Under his leadership, the Graal Group has grown to become a leader in the Polish fish processing market with its flagship products being fish preserves. Currently, the Graal Group is owned by its founder Bogusław Kowalski and the private equity fund Abris. It has several plants with different production profiles located in the northern part of the country and its own distribution centre. The transaction to sell such a large group as the Graal Group was a challenge. Talks and negotiations on the matter lasted more than a year and ended with the signing of a preliminary share purchase agreement.

The buyer of the Graal business is the German company Lisner, known mainly for its herring products, salads and sandwich pastes. The acquisition of Graal's canned fish, ready meals and marinades business expands Lisner's portfolio in Poland.Lisner belongs to the tycoon UTM (Unternehmensgruppe Theo Müller), which includes numerous, globally available, significant brands from the dairy, fish and deli (including dressings) and service sectors. On the Polish market, UTM is mainly represented by the Müller and Lisner brands. The finalisation of the transaction is subject to the approval of the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection. This is likely to be one of the largest M&A transactions in Poland in 2023.

Our support included strategic and legal advice to the Graal founder in direct discussions with Lisner and the Theo Müller group, as well as internal discussions with the Abris fund. Due to the ownership structure and the need to spin off parts of the Graal business for the transaction, the transaction deviated from market standards. It was very interesting in our direct discussions to confront the philosophy of Mr Boguslaw Kowalski's family business with that of Theo Müller's family business. What seemed to be an obstacle difficult to pass in the lawyers' talks, we solved in the course of a direct conversation between the owners with our participation.

We are proud that Mr Boguslaw Kowalski and his family fully trusted our competence and us as people when negotiating and selling the company, which is his business 'child'. This is not the end of our cooperation. Cdn ...

On the part of the law firm, advice in all aspects of the transaction was provided by a team consisting of Michał Romanowski and Aleksander Orzeł.