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 customers already use the company’s SaaS offering and more than 20 platform partners have signed on to use the company’s API. The Currency Cloud’s Software as a Service (SaaS) offering is designed to reduce costs and transform the payments infrastructure into a frictionless process for making and receiving international, multi-currency

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 University of Aberystwyth, as a means of offering small businesses his proprietary ‘Voice over Internet Protocol’ (VoIP) system.  Now based in Bath, Gradwell has a turnover of GBP5m, a team of 60 and serves 12,000 UK Small Businesses.    The investment from Altitude Partners will enable Gradwell to significantly scale

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 2010.  Phoenix is backing a management team led by Phil Clifton, former head of Weir Group plc’s Power and Industrial division, alongside the incumbent management team.  GTE represents the platform acquisition for the development of a group providing highly engineered, safety-critical flow control products, primarily serving the energy and oil

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 combined with HD Supply’s IPVF business (IPVF), comprised of several businesses including Southwest Stainless & Alloy, J& J Alloys, Sunbelt Supply Co and Metals Inc., collectively one of the nation’s largest master and industrial distributors of stainless steel, chrome, nickel and nickel alloys, aluminium and carbon steel pipe, plate, bar,

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 in its approach and invest across Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, countries where it has already constructed a substantial investment pipeline across a variety of sectors.  The Fund’s strategy will seek to capitalise on the increasing number of consumer and industrial opportunities in Vietnam, while harnessing the agricultural and natural-resource potential

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 specialty chemicals, i.e. terpenes and their derivatives, for several industries including flavor and fragrance, food ingredients, cosmetics and other markets. The technology, based on fermentation, allows for the creation of highly pure, renewable compounds that have previously only been available from natural resources in limited quantities. "Our investment in Allylix

Business Growth Fund (BGF), established to help Britain’s fast-growing smaller and medium sized businesses, has made a GBP4.8m investment for a minority stake in Wow! Stuff, a UK toy development company behind blockbuster toys such as the Air Swimmers and My Keepon, both of which were named in Hamley’s Top 5 toys for Christmas 2011 and Toys R Us’ USA Fab 15 list for 2011.  This is BGF’s third investment in 2012 and its fifth since launch, bringing their total capital committed to fund the expansion of fast growing companies to £26m.   Wow! Stuff was founded by dynamic entrepreneur Richard

The Comvest Group, a private investment firm focused on the lower middle-market, has closed its second private equity debt fund, Comvest Capital II (CVC II), with capital commitments of USD250 million. The capital commitments in CVC II are from a diverse group of institutional investors and high net worth investors, including US and European global private equity investors. This latest Comvest Capital fund will provide direct, flexible debt capital solutions to companies in the lower middle-market across a broad range of industries, including, but not limited to, healthcare, technology, transportation, financial services, media and manufacturing. Robert O’Sullivan, Managing Partner of