Palatine’s Impact Fund has acquired a significant minority shareholding in newly created environmental services group, Cura Terrae. Headquartered in Sheffield, Cura Terrae, the Latin form of ‘take care of the earth’, is a purpose-driven business led by experienced entrepreneur Professor Pete Skipworth.    Cura Terrae comprises three market-leading businesses, Environmental Monitoring Solutions (EMS), Ecus and Envirocare, and will look for further suitable complementary acquisitions to add to the Group as part of a strategic growth plan.    Ecus provides holistic environmental consultancy services to support the development of UK infrastructure and services include air quality, arboriculture, carbon services, ecology, environmental

Europe’s leading online private investment platform, Buildiro.com, has launched a crowdfunding investment round on Seedrs.

Bionic, an application security posture management platform, has closed a USD65 million Series B funding round led by New York-based global private equity and venture capital firm Insight Partners. Existing investors, Cyberstarts, and Battery Ventures also participated in the round.  Bionic will use this new funding to expand investment in R&D and scale its rapidly growing sales and customer success teams. Since launching from stealth in December 2020, Bionic has experienced significant growth and helped dozens of customers such as GSK, Armis, Chipotle, Freddie Mac, and Inspire Brands significantly accelerate their digital transformation projects and de-risk their application security posture.

Mutumutu International, an online life & income protection insurance startup, is aiming to raise EUR5.5 million in Series A funding. The funding is to be used mainly for Mutumutu’s expansion across Europe.  Mutumutu aims to maintain a high level of customer engagement using a smart application with weekly sports challenges and regular cashback rewards for sports activities. This proposition leads to an excellent customer rating and a high Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 75.  In the past two has years Mutumutu successfully raised EUR3.7 million from French bancassurance giant Societe Generale Assurances. Mutumutu entered the French market in November 2021

ClearBank, a clearing and embedded banking platform in the UK, has secured a GBP175 million equity investment led by funds advised by Apax Digital, the growth equity arm of Apax, a global private equity advisory firm. Existing investors, CFFI UK Ventures (Barbados) Ltd and PPF Financial Holdings BV, also participated. The new investment will accelerate ClearBank’s global expansion of its clearing and embedded banking offering, initially in Europe before moving into North America and Asia Pacific. The first new clearing bank in the UK in over 250 years at launch in 2017, ClearBank is the only next generation payments provider

Lune, a provider of software tools that make it easier for any business to integrate climate impact into its customer experience – starting with carbon emissions calculations and carbon removal, has raised USD4 million in a funding round led by early-stage VC Crane. Fifteen angel investors, including Maximilian Tayenthal (co-founder of N26), Fredrik Hjelm (co-founder of Voi) and Tony Jamous (co-founder of OysterHR & Nexmo), also particpated in the round.  TErik Stadigh, formerly a VC investor at Crane, and Roberto Bruggemann, most recently a Principal Engineer at Freetrade, co-founded Lune on a mission to make every product and service climate

Centricus, a London-based global investment firm, has confirmed it has made an official bid to acquired Fordstam Limited (CFC Group), the parent company of Chelsea FC. Centricus sees this as an opportunity to make a long-term investment in the Chelsea FC (and CFC Group affiliates).  Centricus will be committed to supporting the Company and its key stakeholders to ensure its continued success. Centricus says that if its offer is successful, it would be focused on ensuring that the CFC Group continues to achieve sporting excellence, high level of community support, transparent governance, financial sustainability, fan engagement and exemplary custodianship.