group.one announces new leadership team and corporate identity

The transaction is financed by Cinven Fund 7 (“Cinven”), Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (“OTPP”), as well as original founder and management shareholders. The new combined business is supercharged for further expansion and organic growth across Europe.

The new leadership team at group.one is formed by a combination of executives from both entities with Daniel Hagemeier as CEO.

group.one unveils a new visual identity incorporating signature elements from former Dogado branding.

Today marks the start of a new chapter for two major European providers of online presence and cloud services, with the combined Group set to become one of the leading online presence providers in Europe.

The rationale for the merger

“The merger is highly synergetic geographically and from a product perspective.” explains Daniel Hagemeier, new CEO of group.one. “Nordic brands contribute proprietary web building, e-commerce, and WordPress software; meanwhile, dogado expands the offering to enterprise-level customers and into do-it-for-me digital marketing services”.

The combination of group.ONE and dogado is acquired by the seventh fund of the international private equity firm Cinven, in partnership with the global investor OTPP as well as original founder and management shareholders.

Thomas Railhac, Partner at Cinven, commented, “We are excited to continue our journey with group.one to build a pan-European one-stop-shop for online presence solutions. With resilient organic growth drivers and an extensive M&A pipeline, we are confident that group.one is well positioned for success in the next stage of its growth journey”.

Jean-Charles Douin, Senior Managing Director, Private Capital for EMEA at Ontario Teachers’ said, “We are thrilled to be partnering with Daniel and the management team as we embark on the next phase of growth for the business. With its comprehensive product portfolio, group.one is well-positioned to take advantage of the growing demand among SMEs across Europe for digital tools to manage their online presence.”

The management team

In terms of organization, Daniel Hagemeier, formally CEO of dogado, becomes CEO of the Group, while Stephan Wolfram, formally CEO of group.ONE, assumes the role of COO Mass Hosting. The management team is combined as well, with industry expertise and new capabilities added in the following key areas:

• Four group-wide business divisions will be run by divisional COOs: Stephan Wolfram, Dr. Florian Kopshoff (cloud infrastructure & partner business), John Goddard (marketing services) and Jake Rooney (SaaS).
• Sara Fors (previously Logent AB) will join group.one as the new CFO.
• Marcel Chorengel will serve as CIO, and Søren Visti Kristinsen will take care of the entire technology stack as CTO.
• Gabriele Pulvermüller (former CFO of dogado) will be responsible for M&A, one of the most important strategic cornerstones of the new group.

The new identity

To celebrate the new era in the company’s history, group.one unveils a new corporate identity with strong heritage from both companies: the name comes from one of the source entities while Dogado contributes its good-mood colour “Happy Yellow” and the signature hexagon shape symbolizing integration and unity. The corporate brand dogado.group is no longer active, but end customers will continue using dogado.de and affiliated brands with no change.

About group.one

Headquartered in Sweden and with offices in 11 countries, group.one serves over 2 million customers, predominantly small- and medium-size enterprises. The company provides the full range of products and cloud services from domain names to web and email hosting, to productivity tools, cloud and dedicated servers, and digital marketing services. Under group.one ownership, leading brands like one.com, Hostnet.nl, Herold.at and 20+ others enable customers to go and grow online. In the last three years, the company more than doubled its revenue to reach of €280+ million turnover in 2022.