Mittelstands-Fonds Thüringen II

New scope for SMEs in Thuringia

With the Mit­tel­stands-Fonds Thürin­gen II (MFT II), the Free State of Thuringia is launch­ing a fur­ther fund to sup­port the SME sec­tor and thus sup­port estab­lished, medium-sized Thuringian com­pa­nies that want to invest in their fur­ther growth by strength­en­ing their equity cap­i­tal or are seek­ing a successor.

MFT II Mitteslstands-Fonds Thüringen II

The MFT II par­tic­u­larly addresses the needs of fast-grow­ing, inno­va­tion-dri­ven com­pa­nies that are more than five years old and have a min­i­mum turnover of more than two mil­lion euros.

In addi­tion to strength­en­ing the equity base for fur­ther com­pany growth and to open up new and/or for­eign mar­kets, the fund is also avail­able for suc­ces­sion plan­ning, for exam­ple as part of a man­age­ment buy-out (MBO), man­age­ment buy-ins (MBI) and for spin-off­s/­carve-outs.

At a glance:

“With the new SME fund, we want to sup­port the Thuringian econ­omy in financ­ing urgently needed growth and mod­ern­iza­tion invest­ments. This is why we, the state gov­ern­ment, have launched the MFT II.” 

Colette Boos-John, Thuringian Minister of Economic Affairs at IDTX 2025

Which companies are eligible for the MFT II?

The pre­req­ui­sites for equity financ­ing through MFT II are

  • SMEs < 500 employ­ees with an annual turnover between 2 and 50 mil­lion euros in the last finan­cial year; larger com­pa­nies in excep­tional cases
  • Com­pany age of at least 5 years with a pos­i­tive EBITDA in one of the last three finan­cial years
  • Com­pa­nies with above-aver­age growth potential

The fund is open to all sec­tors, but has an invest­ment focus on:

  • Engi­neer­ing & Automation
  • Life Sci­ences
  • Med­ical technology
  • Micro- & Optoelectronics
  • Soft­ware / IT
  • Mate­ri­als and energy

The fund is avail­able exclu­sively for invest­ments in com­pa­nies with a con­nec­tion to Thuringia. This means that the tar­get com­pany has: 

  1. has its reg­is­tered office in the Free State of Thuringia or
  2. main­tains an oper­at­ing facil­ity in the Free State of Thuringia or has a sub­sidiary there and a pos­i­tive effect for Thuringia is to be expected in the event of a pos­si­ble investment.

Excluded are:

  • Com­pa­nies that are already listed on a stock exchange at the time of the ini­tial invest­ment, unless the invest­ment is made with the aim of delist­ing the com­pany in ques­tion from the stock exchange
  • par­tic­i­pa­tion in hos­tile takeovers of listed companies
  • direct invest­ments in real estate
  • par­tic­i­pa­tion in funds or invest­ment programs

Funds & volumes

MFT II can make invest­ments of up to a max­i­mum of EUR 5 mil­lion per tar­get company.

Forms of participation

  • Open par­tic­i­pa­tion
  • Silent part­ner­ship (mez­za­nine)
  • Share­holder loans if MFT II already holds an inter­est in the company

Mandatory co-investment

An invest­ment by MFT II is only made jointly with one or more inde­pen­dent, pri­vate co-investors on pari passu terms. The pri­vate co-investor(s) must invest at least 30% of the total invest­ment amount. 

Marco Zimmermann - Managing Director Tech consultment GmbH

As the man­ag­ing major­ity share­holder of HASEC-Elek­tronik GmbH, I was faced with the chal­lenge of sus­tain­ably financ­ing a rapidly grow­ing com­pany over ten years ago. This was no longer fea­si­ble with tra­di­tional bank­ing instru­ments.

bm|t con­vinced us in this phase as an equity part­ner: with quick, com­pe­tent pro­pos­als and a pro­fes­sional, part­ner­ship-based approach: from the entry to the due dili­gence to the imple­men­ta­tion of the invest­ment and the sale — later nec­es­sary for the internationalization. 

Investment Process

MFT II is not a pro­mo­tion, but an exit-ori­ented equity invest­ment with a profit ori­en­ta­tion. The deci­sion to invest in a fund is made as part of a struc­tured invest­ment process with an indi­vid­ual in-depth review.

Time scope

It nor­mally takes around three to six months from con­tact­ing bm|t to sign­ing the par­tic­i­pa­tion agreement.

Participation request

The first step is to send us a mean­ing­ful sum­mary of your com­pany and project for a pre­lim­i­nary assess­ment of whether your com­pany fits into the invest­ment focus of MFT II.

Funding Strategy

If the ven­ture passes our first assess­ment, we will invite the man­age­ment team to present their busi­ness model and strat­egy to bm|t. In the sub­se­quent dis­cus­sions, the gen­eral con­di­tions of a poten­tial financ­ing round and bm|t invest­ment are reviewed with the entrepreneurs..

Term Sheet or Letter of Intent

If the invest­ment team decides a poten­tial invest­ment is worth pur­su­ing fur­ther, we will pro­vide a Term Sheet or Let­ter of Intent that out­lines the terms of a poten­tial bm|t investment.

Due Diligence

In the sub­se­quent due dili­gence process, we deter­mine the legal, eco­nomic, finan­cial and tech­ni­cal cir­cum­stances of your com­pany in detail.

Investment Agreement

If the due dili­gence process has a pos­i­tive out­come, we will then pre­pare and nego­ti­ate an Invest­ment Agreement.

Investment Committee

Before the invest­ment agree­ment is signed, the invest­ment is sub­mit­ted to the Invest­ment Com­mit­tee of MFT II for approval.

Contract Conclusion

Payout

After sign­ing the invest­ment agree­ment, the invest­ment will be paid out accord­ing to nego­ti­ated milestones.

MFT II information sheet 

PDF-Down­load 2,2MB (as of July 21, 2025) 

MFT II Participation principles 

PDF-Down­load 2,5MB (as of July 17, 2025) 

Contact us

Note on the legally binding nature of the information

The con­tent pro­vided on this page is for ori­en­ta­tion and pre­lim­i­nary infor­ma­tion on the Mit­tel­stands-Fonds Thürin­gen II (MFT II) only. It does not con­sti­tute a legally bind­ing assur­ance of prop­er­ties or ser­vices. Only the fund’s invest­ment prin­ci­ples linked on this page are authoritative. 

There is no enti­tle­ment to fund­ing even if all the par­tic­i­pa­tion cri­te­ria are met in full. Only the MFT II Invest­ment Com­mit­tee decides on equity invest­ments at its own discretion.