About us

Company sales and acquisitions in the Mittelstand have their own requirements. They call for advisors who understand how Mittelstand companies are run and how decisions are made there. This experience shapes how REDHILL Corporate Finance works — and what we bring to the table:

Experience in the Mittelstand

The Mittelstand thinks in generations, not in quarters.

The founding partner of REDHILL Corporate Finance has advised exclusively Mittelstand companies on M&A transactions since 1995 — more than 30 years in the business, more than 25 of them as a partner.

  • More than 75 completed company sales and acquisitions
  • Experience across four fields: industrial manufacturing, consumer goods and food, services, IT and media, and trade and distribution
  • Both sell-side and buy-side, domestic and cross-border, from succession to carve-out
  • Advisory, not brokerage — every process is set up individually, not served from a database

Personal, entrepreneurial advice

Mittelstand means entrepreneurial thinking and taking personal responsibility

REDHILL Corporate Finance is itself an owner-managed business. The founding partner knows the entrepreneur's side from his own experience: as Managing Partner at several advisory firms, and as an investor in companies ranging from start-ups through MBO financings to established Mittelstand businesses.

  • Every mandate is led by the founding partner — from the first outreach to signing at the notary
  • Deliberately limited to three to four actively managed mandates at a time
  • No rotating team, no change of contact after the pitch
     

Efficient processes

Mittelstand is characterized by efficiency and flexibility, especially compared to large corporates and conglomerates.

REDHILL Corporate Finance is not an institution — it works the way the companies it advises work. Whatever moves the deal forward gets done; whatever doesn't, doesn't.

  • Preparation comes before outreach: sale story, documentation and an agreed buyer list, before the first contact is made
  • How broadly we reach out is a joint decision based on the situation: a structured bidding process or a deliberately limited group of buyers
  • Discretion as part of how we run the process: targeted outreach at decision-maker level

Access to buyers and markets, at home and abroad

The Mittelstand looks for customers, suppliers and partners wherever they are — and goes beyond familiar borders to find them.

Who genuinely qualifies as a buyer or target can't be fully researched. That knowledge comes from years in the same segment, and from contacts you have personally.

  • Personal access to the family offices, private equity firms and private investors who are genuinely active in the Mittelstand — including for smaller transaction sizes
  • Knowledge of strategic buyers in the Mittelstand, in German-speaking markets and across Europe
  • Research is done in-house, supported by AI-based tools for buyer search and market analysis — never for client data
  • Around 60% of transactions are cross-border, spanning more than 20 countries — supported by an established network of leading M&A firms in Europe, North America and Asia

Founding Partner

Kai Sessinghaus Geschäftsführer

REDHILL Corporate Finance was founded in 2018 by Kai Sessinghaus. He has specialised in small and mid-cap company sales and acquisitions since 1995 — more than 75 completed transactions.

Before founding REDHILL Corporate Finance, he spent more than 13 years as Managing Partner at CAPEO, responsible for its corporate finance business. Prior to that, he was Partner and shareholder at Sannwald Jaenecke & Cie., in which the investment bank Merrill Lynch had acquired a stake in recognition of its Mittelstand M&A expertise. He began his career in 1995 at Dr. Ferber & Partner, today Ferber & Co. He studied in Regensburg and Berlin and completed his degree in Business Administration at the Freie Universität Berlin in 1995 with distinction.