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QED Investors, a global venture capital firm focused on investing in disruptive financial services companies, has hired Alexandra (Ale) Piedrahita.
Prior to joining QED, Piedrahita was a senior associate with Los Angeles-based venture firm March Capital, an early growth, B2B fund where she focused on fintech strategy, with a particular emphasis on infrastructure.
“Across the UK we are seeing significant growth in deal flow from pre-seed to growth-stage companies,” says QED Investors Co-Founder and Managing Partner Nigel Morris. “As we expand, we are delighted to have Ale on board. She brings a wealth of talent, energy and a truly global
LBO France and Haixia Capital, a subsidiary of China SDIC Gaoxin Industrial Investment Corp Ltd, one of the five private equity management firms of SDIC, are establishing a long-term partnership with, as a first step, the creation of a joint-venture to invest EUR500 million in companies with high development potential in China and Europe.
Based mainly in Beijing and Fuzhou, Haixia Capital has been one of the best-known private equity firms in China in recent years (with EUR6.9 billion in assets under management by the end of 2020).
As the EU’s leading country in foreign investments, the world’s fourth-largest exporter
LB Equity has introduced two new programmes to continue incorporating Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) initiatives into the investment firm and across its portfolio companies.
The firm has consulted a number of international frameworks and standards to develop its own roadmap for integrating ESG principles into the investment firm and portfolio companies. They have adopted the UN’s Six Principles for Responsible Investment to guide decision making within the fund and among portfolio companies. To implement these principles in a meaningful way, LB Equity has developed a proprietary scorecard and questions incorporating tools such as the GIIN and SASB frameworks
The year’s healthy level of Global VC investment showed no signs of stopping with Q3 2021, setting a record for the third-straight time with USD171.7 billion across 8,882 deals.
An incredible amount of dry powder, increasing participation by less traditional VC investors, and robust exit opportunities helped keep the VC market very healthy, according to the Q3’21 edition of Venture Pulse – a quarterly report published by KPMG Private Enterprise on VC trends globally and in key jurisdictions around the world.
A record 11 deals at, or over USD1 billion during the quarter helped propel VC investment to the new
Intelligent property search portal property.xyz has secured a seed round of angel investment of GBP268,000 from eleven, experienced investors in the fields of technology, finance and real estate.
Co-founders Robert Jones and Dr Simone Di Cola started development on property xyz in 2019, which entered a beta phase in August 2020. With the portal having been vigorously user-tested by agents, homebuilders, property investors and buy-to-let landlords the next year of the roadmap has now been announced. This includes plans to allow investors to place ‘bids’ and ‘buy now’ on properties selected by agents with both on and off-market property investments,
Honeycomb, an observability platform used by high-performance engineering teams to quickly visualise, analyse, and improve cloud application quality and performance, is expanding into Europe, led by the appointment of former Pivotal, SignalFx, and Chef Software executive Andy Hawkins, as well as the close of a USD50 million Series C round.
This latest round was led by New York-based global private equity and venture capital firm Insight Partners, with participation from existing investors Scale Venture Partners, Headline (formerly e.ventures), Storm Ventures, Industry Ventures, and NextWorld Capital. Honeycomb has raised USD96.9 million of funding to date.
This latest round of capital
Hercules Capital, a specialty financing provider to innovative venture, growth and established stage companies backed by some of the leading and top-tier venture capital and select private equity firms, has appointed Pam Randhawa to its board of directors, effective 1 November, 2021.
Randhawa is a thought leader within the life sciences sector and an experienced industry executive, with more than 20 years of experience leading public and private companies, ranging from biotech, healthcare and sustainable solutions, through their various stages of growth.
Randhawa will serve on the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee.
“Pam’s deep industry experience and executive leadership credentials
Evercore has appointed Thomas Sabatier as a Vice President in the firm’s Private Capital Advisory group (PCA). Sabatier will be based in the London office and will focus on advising limited partners on secondary market transactions and providing execution services.
Sabatier has over seven years of experience in the secondaries market across Europe, most recently as a Principal in Triago’s London office. He will be joining his former Triago colleagues David Markson, James Fish, Michael Bynarowicz and Eli Auerbach who recently joined the Evercore PCA team in New York.
Lea Lazaric Calvert, Head of PCA Europe, says: “We are delighted
Blackstone has acquired a majority stake in SPANX, Inc, a ‘mission-driven’ womenswear brand founded by Sara Blakely in 2000, at a valuation of USD1.2 billion – with Blakely maintaining a significant equity stake in the business.
Blakely, along with SPANX’s existing senior management team, will continue to oversee daily operations, and at closing, Blakely will become the Executive Chairwoman. The acquisition will enable SPANX to accelerate its already rapid digital transformation and strong online presence in the e-commerce channel, expand its global footprint, and fuel its commitment to creating innovative, ground-breaking products for its customers across even more categories. The
Agronomics, a listed company focused on the field of cellular agriculture, has led a Seed Funding Round with a USD2.2 million investment for California Cultured Inc. The financing is in the form of a SAFER (Simple Agreement for Future Equity). Global venture firm SOSV’s IndieBio also participated in the round.
The SAFER is expected to convert into Preferred Stock of California Cultured at a future equity financing round by California Cultured of at least USD4 million. Following an approximate equity ownership of 18.33 per cent on a fully diluted basis. Following the close of the round, Agronomics will have the
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