Allocations
Leicestershire HR software firm StaffCircle has secured GBP250,000 investment from the MEIF Proof of Concept & Early Stage Fund, managed by Mercia and part of the Midlands Engine Investment Fund
StaffCircle’s platform helps clients to improve communication and feedback between employees in different location, providing them with easy access to training, tasks and contacts within the company. The equity investment will allow the company to create five new jobs, add further software features and launch a sales and marketing campaign.
StaffCircle’s software breaches the ‘digital divide’ between office-based staff and those working at home or on site – who
Two UK artificial intelligence (AI) companies, Biorelate Limited and Intellegens Limited, have secured a significant investment in the third round of the Innovate UK open grant funding competition.
Together, the two companies have secured over GBP300,000 from Innovate UK and will co-invest an additional GBP130,000 to deliver a partnership project entitled: “Chemeia: A synergistic AI integrated architecture for augmenting high value dark-data”.
Project Chemeia (‘Chem-ee-a’) will test the potential for combining the capabilities of Biorelate’s deep text mining (Galactic AITM) technology with Intellegens’ sparse data solution, to produce up to date, comprehensive, and reliable data sets for high-value R&D
Global private equity firm The Riverside Company has made a significant investment in E&A Scheer (Scheer), a global blender and vendor of premium rum in bulk.
With origins dating back to 1712, Scheer specialises in sourcing and custom-blending to create high-quality, tailor-made rum blends. Scheer’s blending operation is located in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and ageing facilities reside in Liverpool, United Kingdom, where its subsidiary the Main Rum Company (MRC) is located.
Scheer occupies a unique position in the rum value chain, connecting the output of high quality rum distilleries with rum brand owners. Thanks to an extensive inventory of high-quality
Alliance Ventures, the strategic venture capital arm of Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, has made a new investment in PowerShare, an electric vehicle (EV) charging platform startup based in China.
PowerShare provides an online platform that connects EV drivers, charge point operators and power suppliers to streamline the charging experience. It offers a cloud-based system, enabling suppliers to monitor the demand from vehicles with the supply capacity of the grid and drivers to find available charging stations.
PowerShare is the most recent addition to the Alliance Ventures portfolio in the field of early-stage development and entrepreneurs on the cutting edge of next-generation systems
Private equity investor Mid Europa Partners (Mid Europa) has sold Bambi, a biscuit producer in the countries of former Yugoslavia, to Coca-Cola HBC AG (Coca-Cola HBC). The transaction is subject to customary competition authority clearance and is expected to close in Q2 2019.
Mid Europa acquired Bambi in 2015 together with Imlek and Knjaz Miloš, the leading regional dairy and natural mineral water players, respectively, forming the consumer group – Moji Brendovi. Bambi, a confectionery producer, recognised the increased consumer focus on health and wellness and emerged as the regional biscuit category leader.
Robert Knorr, Co-Managing Partner of Mid
iwoca, one of Europe’s fastest growing small business lenders, has raised an additional GBP150 million in equity and debt capital. The investment brings iwoca’s total funding to GBP350 million.
iwoca’s most recent fundraising included a Series D equity round led by Augmentum Fintech, the specialist fintech venture capital investor. NIBC Bank and other existing investors, including Prime Ventures, also participated.
The capital raised will enable iwoca to support more small business owners across the UK, Germany and Poland. iwoca reached profitability in 2018, while doubling its revenue in each of the last three years.
iwoca built award-winning technology
Future Ventures has launched an oversubscribed fund of USD200 million to invest in frontier technologies across diverse industries including machine intelligence, sustainable mobility, the future of food, computational biology, high-performance computing, aerospace, and more.
Future Ventures is co-founded by Steve Jurvetson and Maryanna Saenko. Jurvetson is well-known as an early leader in identifying and backing industry-redefining companies like Tesla, SpaceX, Planet, Nervana, Mythic, and Memphis Meats. Saenko’s background as a research engineer and her venture capital experience from prior roles at leading firms combine to give her insight into technology business growth and a thoughtful approach to funding audacious ideas.
Mid-market advisory firm Clearwater International continues to grow, with 70 per cent of its deals in 2018 having Private Equity (PE) involvement.
Anaqua, a provider of innovation and intellectual property management solutions, has secured a significant equity investment from Astorg, a European private equity firm.
As part of this transaction, Astorg will become the controlling shareholder of Anaqua, replacing Insight Venture Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners, both of whom have been investors since 2013.
The transaction will accelerate Anaqua’s global organic growth and acquisition strategy. This announcement follows the recent launch of AQX, Anaqua’s leading-edge software platform. With the integrated AQX platform, Anaqua’s customers can seamlessly access analytics and tech-enabled services to transform their IP assets into business success.
Astorg is
The Cambridge Associates Global ex-US Developed Markets Private Equity Index returned 20.4 per cent for the year ending 30 June 2018.
Over the same period, the equivalent index for listed companies, the MSCI EAFE Index, returned just 6.9 per cent. The MSCI EAFE Index is designed to represent the performance of large and mid-cap securities across developed markets in Europe, Australasia, and the Far East.
Cambridge Associates says the strong performance of private equity funds is based on their successful allocation of capital to technology investments, which delivered the highest returns of all sectors in the first half of
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