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VFO, the company behind the Freedom Scientific and Optelec brands, has acquired Ai Squared, a developer of screen magnification and screen reading software.
Together, the companies offer the world’s broadest suite of assistive technology products for the visually-impaired. Each of the companies has a long history of providing innovative technology solutions that enable blind and low vision individuals to reach their full potential – to gain an education, obtain employment, succeed in professional careers, and live independently throughout their lives.
“Adding the brand, product portfolio and capabilities of Ai Squared to VFO gives us the broadest portfolio in the
IK Investment Partners’ (IK) IK Small Cap I Fund is to acquire a majority stake in OS Group AB (OpenSolution), a Nordic payment solution provider, from the company’s founder. Financial terms of the transaction have not been disclosed.
Headquartered in Gothenburg, Sweden, OpenSolution offers a full service product and software portfolio to its client base, including restaurants, casinos, arenas and other customer verticals. With its in-house development capabilities and strong focus on innovation, the Company covers the entire value chain of payment solutions, making it a single point of contact for >8,000 customers throughout Scandinavia. In 2015, OpenSolution generated revenue
Armeron recently secured funding of USD2 million from Glilot Capital Partners, a venture capital fund specialising in Enterprise Software.
Armeron's isolation platform is a drastic departure from today's filtering-based approach to web application protection such as Web Application Firewalls. These first generation approaches rely on a mix of signatures and complex rules which administrators setup and retune every time the application changes. In contrast, Armeron's isolation technology disregards any manipulation attempts on the request sent to the application, which renders all known or unknown application attacks irrelevant.
Armeron was founded by Tsion Gonen, Ron Kuper and Dan Pasternak. Prior to
PwC Legal has appointed Stephen Richards as a Senior Manager in the firm’s Corporate Group in London. Richards joins from Laytons where he was a Partner in the Corporate and Commercial Team of that firm.
Richards has nearly ten years’ experience working in corporate law. He has a broad practice, encompassing corporate reorganisations, mergers and acquisitions, equity investments and joint ventures. Stephen will add to the team’s extensive sector expertise in both wealth and asset management (where he will work alongside recent hire Oliver Williams) and technology – where he joins Thomas Colmer who has recently joined the Corporate Group
RSM has appointed James Lewis as an M&A partner in its corporate finance practice.
Lewis joins RSM from Deloitte where he jointly led the firm’s PLC M&A Advisory team. Prior to that, he held advisory and M&A positions at both Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse. In his career to date, he has completed over 45 deals worth in excess of GBP14 billion including buyside and sellside M&A transactions, public offers, debt for equity swaps and capital market mandates.
In his new role, Lewis will lead an expansion of RSM’s advisory proposition with a specific focus on M&A advisory services to
Octopus has taken a 12.3 per cent stake in European impact investment bank ClearlySo as part of a GBP1.25 million growth funding round. Octopus will become the largest single institutional investor in the firm and Octopus Co-Founder Chris Hulatt will join the ClearlySo board as a non-executive director.
The investment by Octopus comes on the heels of a series of major milestones for ClearlySo, starting the year with the largest growth capital investment in UK history for HCT Group and followed up by the crossing of the £100 million mark in total capital raised for nearly 100 clients. It also
Monroe Capital has acted as sole lead arranger and administrative agent on the funding of a senior credit facility (including an undrawn revolving credit facility) to support the acquisition of Ashley Stewart by its senior management and an affiliate of The Invus Group.
Ashley Stewart, founded in 1991 and based in Secaucus, New Jersey, is a global lifestyle brand for plus size women’s fashion. The company offers fashionable, on-trend clothing at affordable prices through its website, social media platforms, and 89 retail store locations across the United States.
CHRONEXT, a curated online marketplace for luxury watches, has closed a series C financing round of EUR11 million led by Partech Ventures and joined by new backer Octopus Ventures alongside existing investors, Capnamic Ventures, NRW.BANK and InVenture Partners.
Founded in 2013 in Switzerland, CHRONEXT is a secure marketplace where new and second-hand luxury watches can be bought, sold, or serviced at fair prices. The company operates in the multi-billion Euro market for luxury watches. Currently, online sales account for 1 to 2% of the market and represent the fastest growing segment of the industry.
CHRONEXT achieved an impressive traction and
Centaur Asset Management has appointed Rose Omundi as Corporate Counsel. This is the latest in a series of senior-level appointments across the business.
Prior to moving to the UAE, Omundi was based in Kenya and worked for one of the leading banks in Kenya as a Senior Legal Counsel and Company Secretary to two of the bank’s subsidiary companies. Over the course of her career, she has amassed practical experience in corporate, commercial law, banking sector governance, regulatory and compliance issues and procedures. She has been involved in drafting and negotiating various commercial contracts, structuring loan transactions and security arrangements.
WorldQuant Ventures, an angel investment firm focused on disruptive companies in technology, has invested in Cycle Computing, a specialist in Big Compute software.
WorldQuant Ventures’ investment allows Cycle Computing to expand access for financial services companies to flexible and affordable cloud-based computing solutions.
“We are excited to announce our investment in Cycle Computing,” says Steven Lau, Managing Director at WorldQuant Ventures. “Companies in the financial services industry are increasingly turning to computing resources to help meet business and regulatory needs. We believe Cycle Computing’s innovative cloud computing platform, along with the growing demand for computing services, provides an attractive
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