Business Growth Fund (BGF), established to help the UK’s fast-growing smaller and medium sized businesses, has made its first oil and gas industry investment in STATS, an oilfield service sector business.  This is BGF’s first investment in Scotland and its fourth investment since the start of 2012.   BGF is investing

In a “familiar” move, Amin Amiri of a2e Venture Catalysts, has acquired the worldwide business and operations of Omnova Wallcovering (UK) Limited known as Muraspec, which was part of the commercial wall covering business of OMNOVA Solutions, a US based conglomerate. Net assets of USD11million were purchased by using only

The Currency Cloud, an FX payments automation platform, has secured USD4m in Series-A funding, led by Atlas Venture with follow-on participation from Anthemis Group. The company had previously raised USD2M from Anthemis and others.  The funding will be used to ramp commercial activity and continue product development. More than 100 corporate

Business VoIP telephony and Internet provider Gradwell has today announced a significant “4×4” expansion plan – four times larger in four years – supported by a GBP1.15 million investment from regional equity fund Altitude Partners LLP.   Gradwell was founded in 1998 by Dr Peter Gradwell, whilst studying at the

UK middle-market private equity firm Phoenix Equity Partners has acquired Gall Thomson Environmental (GTE), a global supplier of safety critical flow control products from Lupus Capital plc, in a transaction which values the business at GBP75 million.  This is the fifth investment from Phoenix’s GBP450 million fund, which was raised in

Shale-Inland is to be acquired by Shale-Inland Holdings, LLC, an affiliate of investment firms TowerBrook Capital Partners (TowerBrook) and The Stephens Group, LLC. Terms of the transaction have not been disclosed. The transaction is expected to close by the end of March. On transaction close, Shale-Inland is expected to be

Dragon Capital and Frontier Investment & Development Partners announce have formed a joint venture for regional private equity – Indochina Opportunity Partners (IOP) – which has now commenced marketing its Indochina Opportunities Fund. The Fund is the first-ever private equity vehicle specifically focused on the Indochina region. It will be opportunistic

BASF Venture Capital has invested USD13.5 million in Allylix Inc, a US-based renewable chemicals company. The BASF subsidiary led a USD18.2 million financing round, joined by existing investors Tate & Lyle Ventures, Avrio Ventures and Cultivian Ventures. Allylix has a proprietary technology platform to produce a wide variety of renewable