University of Edinburgh startup OGI Bio has secured £1 million of investment to help revolutionise microbial culturing. TRICAPITAL led the investment round alongside Apollo Informal Investment, Old College Capital, the University of Edinburgh’s in-house venture investment fund, Sapphire Capital Partners in conjunction with Queen’s University Belfast’s QUBIS Innovation Fund, Merleview (Capital), and Scottish Enterprise.  The funding will help OGI Bio establish a new laboratory and manufacturing facility, grow the team, and ramp up sales of the company’s automation systems to the microbiology and biotechnology sectors. The automated device developed by OGI Bio improves processing capability, cost effectiveness and data analytics

Elwood Technologies, British hedge fund billionaire Alan Howard’s cryptocurrency trading platform, has attracted investment from Bothe Goldman Sachs and Barclays, according to report by The Financial Times. Venture capital firm Dawn Capital and the venture divisions of Germany’s Commerzbank, and US billionaire Mike Novogratz’s crypto finance group Galaxy Digital also participated in the round which vales the company at $500 million. News of the investment has emerged just as crypto assets have seen a sharp fall in value, with prices down by more then 50 per cent from the highs seen in 2021.

Puma Private Equity has exited its investment in Sunlight Education Nucleus Limited (SEN). The exit represents a 3.2x return on the company’s £4.7 million equity investment which was made in November 2017. This deal follows Puma’s successful exit of Tictrac Limited on 3 May 2022.   SEN is a provider of special educational needs schools in the Midlands run by an expert management team with a proven track record of sourcing, developing and launching highly successful special needs educational settings.

Javelo, a specialist the performance management and employee engagement space based in Paris, has secured growth investment from PSG Equity (PSG).

White Mountains Insurance Group is to sell NSM Insurance Group (NSM) to investment funds affiliated with global investment firm Carlyle. The transaction values NSM at $1.775 billion.   White Mountains expects the transaction will result in a gain of approximately $280 to its adjusted book value per share and will increase undeployed capital from approximately $0.4 billion to approximately $1.7 billion. The transaction is expected to close during the second half of 2022. 

Redcliffe Lifetech (Redcliffe), one of India’s leading diagnostics platforms, has raised $61 million in a funding round led by LeapFrog Investments (LeapFrog). Healthquad, Schroders, LC Nueva, Growth Spark Ventures and existing investors Chiratae Ventures and Alkemi Venture Partners also participated in the round.     The investment will be used to expand Redcliffe’s geographic reach across India, with a focus on expanding its low-cost but high quality Direct to Consumer Diagnostics into tier 2, 3 and 4 cities, providing affordable, rapid, and convenient pathology services from glucose to genetics in millions of households. Funding will also be used to scale

Freeverse.io has closed a Series A investment round of €10 million, co-led by Earlybird and Target Global.

Elwood Technologies (Elwood), a platform providing institutional-grade access to digital asset markets and liquidity venues, has closed a $70 million Series A funding round co-led by one of Europe’s largest B2B investor Dawn Capital and global investment bank, Goldman Sachs. There was additional participation from prominent investors in both the traditional finance and digital asset industries, including Barclays, BlockFi Ventures, Chimera Ventures, CommerzVentures, Digital Currency Group, Flow Traders and Galaxy Digital Ventures. Elwood will deploy the funds to meet the needs of its rising number of institutional clients by expanding both the company’s breadth of product offerings and its global

Atlantic Street Capital (ASC), a private equity firm that invests in lower middle market companies to unlock equity value through an operationally intensive investment approach, is to sell Advancing Eyecare, North America’s leading provider of ophthalmic instruments, to Cornell Capital. Advancing Eyecare was formed in 2019 when ASC combined its 2016 portfolio company investment in Lombart Instrument, the leading US distributor of ophthalmic instruments to ophthalmologists and optometrists, with Marco Ophthalmic Inc, a market leading, high-tech instrumentation supplier.  The transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2022. 

USEReady, a New York headquartered strategic data and analytics partner, has secured growth capital from Boston based Abry Partners. Since its founding in 1989, Abry has focused on media, communications, business, and information services to become one of the most experienced private equity firms investing in North America and Europe.