Azubu receives $34.5 Million from Sapinda (ESGN) - Page 7

On March 26 2014 07:29 AyaaLa wrote:


Sapinda is an investment group that has done investments for billions of euros. Why shouldnt they be legit? Tbh I don't understand why they would invest in the esports related things.. It can't be very profitable..

On March 26 2014 07:33 Broodwurst wrote:
So, can they afford booths that are soundproof for an audience of 10.000 people?

On March 27 2014 01:25 zelderan wrote:



Tbh if a company wants to invest 30 mil in an esport I don't see why anyone would complain...

On March 27 2014 06:06 QuantumChaos wrote:
It's called layering people, layering..

On March 27 2014 00:08 Dyme wrote:
Wouldn't it be easier to launder money if you invested in something that actually has a return?

On March 27 2014 05:32 R1CH wrote:

I don't really buy this since Azubu outsource their streaming infrastructure. They aren't really creating anything, they are paying Brightcove for their white label streaming service so this money that is "going into esports" goes right back out as soon as they get their bandwidth bill. A bunch of people at Clauf / Azubu / etc will get rich, the investor funds will eventually dry out after being wasted on outsourced technology and ridiculously expensive studios and then the whole thing is written off as a failed investment because "consumers aren't ready for esports" or something. In the long run this will only end up hurting esports by scaring off future investors.

Maybe I'm wrong and this Azubu "relaunch" is a completely new in-house streaming platform that will actually be sustainable in the long run, but I have a feeling it's going to be another website re-skin along with a big marketing budget (ie paying popular people to stream on Azubu).

On March 27 2014 09:07 Thrill wrote:
Nothing is ever quite as fishy as an AZUBU announcement.

On March 27 2014 11:22 mostevil wrote:
I must be missing something, it's not very effective laundering if no money ever comes back out...

+ Show Spoiler +

On March 26 2014 08:01 Malli wrote:
http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-87818605.html

german article I found about the sapinda "owner". This dude got a lot of bad things going on in the past.
Too bad there is no translation available..

DER SPIEGEL - 20.08.2012 - by Markus Grill


The Honoured loser

No young entrepreneur flew higher, none fell deeper: Lars Windhorst was once celebrated as Helmut Kohl's wunderkind. Two bankruptcies later, the 35-year-old now plays a larger game than ever before. How does he do it?



At the back of Berlin's 'Hotel Adlon' is the entrance to one of the more exclusive places of the Republic: If you want to take the elevator to the upper floors, you have to become a member of Club China and pay the 10 000 € fee. This evening a special dinner is planned here. The Nigerian Government is on a state visit to Berlin, President Jonathan Goodluck has met with the Chancellor during the day. Now, the Secretary of Commerce and the Minister of Energy have arranged to meet Lars Windhorst here, with a young entrepreneur, who himself was part of the entourage of former Chancellor Helmut Kohl attending state visits almost 20 years ago.

Lars Windhorst was 18 years old at that time and had built up a computer parts trading business in his hometown of Rahden in East Westphalia. He was invited to the meeting of the business elite in Davos as a so-called "Global Leader of Tomorrow". But the heyday of the "miracle child" ended abruptly.

In 2003 the Windhorst AG went bankrupt, the Berlin regional court later sentenced him for embezzlement in 27 cases. His second attempt with the Vatas GmbH, a subsidiary of the investment company Sapinda, ended 2009 in a bust as well. By then the leading financial newspaper wrote that "the ex-star's end of career is probably coming up quickly". However, on this evening, in the dignified China Club, things look quite different: once again the now 35-year-old invites ministers and company executives, who are glad to belong to his guests.

Hubertus von Grünberg, for example: Until recently, he was chairman of the board of the tire manufacturer Continental, today he sits on the supervisory board of Deutsche Telekom and Allianz Insurance and acts as chairman of the Swiss energy technology giant ABB.

"Of course I have read the scandal stories about Windhorst", says Grünberg, "but this has not stopped me from getting to know him." The 70-year-old manager was promptly impressed by the half-as-old Windhorst. "He broke the ice by putting all things on the table that had gone wrong in his career". Grünberg is now Chairman of the Advisory Board of Windhorst's investment firm Sapinda.

After the gnarled Grünberg the two ministers from Nigeria also arrive, later joined by Johannes Eismann, Chief Executive of the Quirin Bank, other businessmen and Andreas Fritzenkötter, Chancellor Kohl's former government spokesman who is now Director of Communications at Sapinda. Lars Windhorst enters the library: dark tailored suit, white pocket handkerchief, shiny cufflinks. He welcomes every guest with a handshake, a waiter goes around with champagne, the Nigerian Trade Minister Olusegun Aganga rather orders a beer.

That is how business is done in the back rooms of power. Politicians compete for investment in their country: Nigeria has gold, coal, millions of acres of land. And Sapinda has money.

Lars Windhorst tells the round, they organized investments of around 3.5 billion dollars in the past two and a half years, these included bond loans for companies such as Air Berlin, Infineon and Freenet. Sapinda is especially interested in long-term investments. They currently buy arable land in Zambia and coal mines in South Africa through subsidiary companies.

As the evening goes on the guests relax more. When the Nigerian Minister of Energy Bart Nnaji asks, how much a minister in Germany earns and somebody gives the sum of 200 000 € in the year, the Africans get a little laughter.

Afterwards, Windhorst's personal chauffeur takes him home. His head of communications Fritzenkötter takes me along for a walk through night-time Berlin. In principle, he tells me, is he now doing the same job as with Chancellor Kohl: he organizes meetings with journalists to make them see that his client is not so bad after all. It worked with Kohl.

His bad image did hamper some of Windhorst's businesses in recent years: In 2006, he wanted to buy the foreign holdings of the Berlin water supply company. The Berlin council refused. Not because the offer was bad, but because it came from Windhorst. Therefore, Fritzenkotter wants to "communicate more modestly" these days. He only allows photos of Windhorst in his office, not in the private jet, that his boss regularly charters. If it were up to Fritzenkötter, you should not even mention the jet.

Accordingly, the German headquarters of Sapinda in Berlin does look appropriately down-to-Earth nowadays. It is located on Friedrichstrasse in an old building in which the International Trade Centre of the GDR was previously housed.

On the walls of the 16th floor where Windhorst resides hangs a large picture of an airplane wreck, all that remained from a crash on 26 December 2007 in Kazakhstan. One of the two pilots died in the disaster at the time, one of Windhorst's ears was riped off, it was later reattached. He now has visually different ears, one with an earlobe and one without.

Sapinda employs around 20 people here in Berlin according to Windhorst, about the same number in London and further 20 in smaller offices in Moscow, Milan, Johannesburg, Seoul, Hong Kong and Amsterdam.

One of the companies in which Sapinda holds the majority is Ichor Coal, a coal company that invests in mines worldwide. The day after the dinner at the China Club their CEO meets with the Nigerian Minister of Energy to discuss a project, says Windhorst. Such a thing never goes on the phone or via Skype. "All major deals are made between people, with all their quirks. Even in a hundred years that will be the case. Many misjudge this, but the human component is always extremely important."

Africa is currently the most interesting continent, he continues, there are there huge areas of fertile arable land, that lie completely fallow. Even investors in London would find that very interesting. "The capable hedge fund managers are among the best-informed people of all. If you talk to them, you know what happens where in the world and where capital flows are going." Arable land in Africa is definitely the thing of the future.

However, would these fund managers not keep their investment tips for themselves? "Not at all," says Windhorst, "they are not tight-lipped. If a high-level manager in London believes that arable land in Zambia is a good business, he will definitively not be the one who goes to Zambia and sets up a brand new business. Instead he tells me, that if you, Windhorst, build up something there and present it to me on a silver platter in a year's time, then I'll gladly pay you an extra and invest in your company."

Of course, Windhorst does not really build up anything himself as well. Instead, he buys companies that invest over there. He provides them with money and securities in return for the majority in these companies. This is Windhorst business model, the silver platter business.

Amatheon Agri is such a company that Windhorst will eventually serve to someone. Amatheon buys land in Zambia. The managers of this company sit on the same floor in the Berlin Friedrichstraße as Sapinda. Its CEO Carl Heinrich Bruhn is a former manager of milk baron Theo Müller.

A decade ago Bruhn (47) founded Hofkontor, an agricultural consultancy. A few years ago, he wanted to buy pig farms in Russia and Kazakhstan, but got no money from banks. One of his boards members then brought him together with Windhorst in March 2011. Of course, he read up on the young entrepreneur beforehand, says Bruhn. But in the talks he quickly realized that Windhorst understands his business. Together they founded Amatheon Agri.

By now, they have purchased several thousand acres of land in Zambia. "The land itself is not expensive," says Bruhn, "many governments even give it away." But it is expensive to build up a business, to acquire machines, to irrigate the land and to employ more workers. "We will invest around 50 million dollars there over the next five years," Bruhn says. This is "real pioneer work".

Many development organizations denounce such farmland investments in Africa as "land grabbing". Locals are expelled from the ground, which they had cultivated for ages, with rough methods so that western corporations can grow food for export. Bruhn rejects these accusations.

Amatheon negotiates with every single landowner and buys the land at fair prices. Moreover, no agriculture had ever been pursued there previously. And actually, they want to produce food for the African market, for a new middle class which can afford it now. Moreover, Amatheon promotes the construction of schools. "We know that we can only be successful there in the long term if the population sees us as a partner", says Bruhn, who almost sounds like a development aid worker now.

But why he has started this project with Windhorst of all people? "Because it is much faster and easier with him than with funds or banks", says Bruhn. "With them, we would have to go through many rounds and many bodies and would lose the competitive edge." Until this day he had not a single bad experience with Windhorst. He fulfilled all his commitments - and is an incredibly hardworking men.

Yeah, sure he works a lot, says Windhorst, he knows, that he had to start from the bottom again. But he benefits from the fact, that he only needs four hours of sleep per night. "I have had it checked in a sleep laboratory, it's all right." Moreover, he has worked out that he would have 50 working days less in a year with eight hours of sleep.

For three years Windhorst is married to a Russian who lives in London. The couple has no children. "Children would currently not fit my life." Windhorst's parents still live in Rahden, where his father operates a stationery shop. It was "with eight or nine years," that he "developed the dream to become an entrepreneur". Why this was so, is not quite clear to him even today. "I have not been pushed in this direction at all." Windhorst acts as if he has been thinking a lot about his defeats. But maybe he has just found the right phrases for it.

In the past, he was much too undisciplined, he says. He never finished secondary school, never went to university and he never had a boss above him. "The lack of discipline was also a reason for my business failures." Financial controlling did not really matter to him.

To prevent such mistakes in the future, he now has arranged an Advisory Board composed of experienced managers to whom he reports back at least once a week. Besides Hubertus von Grünberg these include among others Georg Thoma, a well-known lawyer from Düsseldorf, the management consultant Roland Berger, the former Air Berlin founder Joachim Hunold and the Saudi Arabian manager Kamal Bahamdan. What makes these people want to join Windhorst? Why, for example, is noted Roland Berger part of it?

A high-rise building in Munich's Schwabing district, the headquarters of the famous management consultant. The higher you go, the more the views of the Alps opens. From the 31st floor a staircase leads even higher, where the now 74-year-old company founder sits.

"I am someone, who gives people second or third chances. Many large American companies would not exist if their founder had not gotten these extra opportunities", says Berger. "Unfortunately, in Germany it is still mostly so, when someone falls down the stairs, he does not get helped up and sometimes even put the boot in."

He had met Windhorst in 2009 at a dinner party in Hamburg and talked with him about his plans. Even Berger could be ensnared: "I got the impression, this is a highly intelligent, creative, well-informed man who can roll up his sleeves, is respected by his business partners in the financial sector and is capable of a lot."

Berger says, he owns about three percent of Sapinda. And what if Windhorst gambles it away again? "If it gets lost, it would not hit me economically very much, but it would annoy me of course, because I would have misjudged the person."

Many others already know this annoyance. In Windhorst's first bankruptcy his creditors lost around 76 million euros, says insolvency governor Udo Feser. "But they were creditors who have not suffered particularly from the loss, no small craftsmen, but banks and investors."

When Windhorst went bust with Vatas in 2009, the creditors reported outstanding claims of around 400 million euros. Among them was also the Nord/LB. According to them, the bank had bought shares worth 234 million euros in the name of Windhorst, who later would not want to pay for them. Which resulted in a loss of 150 million euros for the Nord/LB. A number of employees up to the Board of Directors had to go. Officially the State Bank declines to say anything on the subject of Windhorst, but indicates to never want to do business with him again.

The toughest campaign against Windhorst was once led by Ulrich Marseille, a principal shareholder of a hospital chain with the same name. In March 2001, Marseille had given 20 million marks to Windhorst on recommendation by former 'Bild' Editor in Chief Hans-Hermann Tiedje. He also did not pay back this money as promised. But Marseille and Tiedje were not content with two percent of compensation which the insolvency governor offered, they placed big advertisements in worldwide newspapers that refer to the website 'www.truth-and-consequences.de'. There, they called Windhorst a "clear-cut scammer" who destroyed the money of millions.

And today? Tiedje and Marseille agree to talk in the 'Cölln's restaurant' in Hamburg, where every room has only one table, so that undisturbed conversations are ensured. Marseille says he got back back a third of his money now. Actually, he gets on with "Lars" again brilliantly, every two weeks they call up each other and talk about business. "Somehow we're even friends again."

He was at Windhorst's wedding in London, although this was a relatively small celebration with only 60 guests. "He's very quick. Most people you have to push for hunting, but with him you have to often hold him back." Tiedje, the PR veteran and Marseille's close friend gets along just fine with Windhorst now, even though he called him "criminal" only four years ago. "The story of Lars Windhorst is a fable of incredible tenacity", Tiedje declares, "everybody holds their breath and ask themselves: Will it work this time, can he keep his feet on the ground? I am sure - he can!"

At the meeting in the guarded restaurant Marseille forgets to mention that he himself had enough reasons to be grateful towards Windhorst. For he provided much-needed capital of 15 million euros for his hospital chain last year. Maybe that also explains the new leniency towards the old enemy.

In Windhorst's London office there are a number of trophies that show for whom he has already secured capital over the years: Air Berlin, Infineon, Freenet, Balda, for example. Sapinda organized such loans on better terms than a bank.
However, only to a small part of the money, that will earn substantial interests, comes from Sapinda itself. Windhorst usually wins over other investors to join in these deals.

But who is behind Sapinda? How financially strong is the company?

Windhorst does not provide any information about it. Sapinda is a private company and therefore barely accountable. Moreover, the other shareholders want to stay out of the public. He resolutely denies market rumors that dubious Russian oligarchs invest their money through his company: "There is not a single cent of Russian money in Sapinda."

At the end of May the company moved into new offices in the middle of the City of London, Savile Row 23. There, on the sixth floor is also the office of Rob Hersov, one of the few known Sapinda associate partners beside Windhorst. Hersov comes from a billionaire clan from South Africa. The other owners of Sapinda include Roland Berger, the former TV manager Georg Kofler and a Korean named Seok Ki Kim.

Kim, 54, has made his money according to own statements with South Korea's largest commercial bank, the Central Banking Corporation, which he sold in 2001. After that, he was a finance professor at a university in Tokyo. Since September 2009 he is a partner and Chief Investment Officer at Sapinda. Kim avoids the public. Nevertheless, he is willing to answer a few questions in the Sapinda offices in London. Windhorst is sitting next to him at the table.

Kim speaks softly and politely. "To lose money, is not the crucial point", says the Asian. "I even lost money through Lars." That was a loan for an Internet IPO. But Kim argued philosophically: "If I give one million dollars to an investor, and a year later he comes back with 10 percent of profit, then it can be that I scold him because maybe he could have made 100 percent of profit. If I give one million dollars, however, to another investor, and he comes back with maybe half of it, it can be that I still praise him because he has saved 50 percent under very difficult circumstances."

The key is not the profit, explains Kim, but the attitude with which you run a business. Windhorst listens and enjoys.

The more you talk to people from his surroundings, the more it becomes clear how much they have succumbed to Windhorst's charisma once again. Earlier, the young German was a projection screen for bold entrepreneurs dreams.

His business model works again. Better than ever it seems.

On March 27 2014 20:37 lord_nibbler wrote:

Here is my translation:

On March 26 2014 21:00 Butterz wrote:
is this true ??? how is this possible ( im thinking) ... i dont follow esports much but i do visit TL for some sc2 .... but 32 million smth .... unbelievable

In Windhorst's first bankruptcy his creditors lost around 76 million euros

When Windhorst went bust with Vatas in 2009, the creditors reported outstanding claims of around 400 million euros