Stamp Free Limited, a digital postage company, has raised £600k in an oversubscribed funding round led by existing investors Silicon Valley-based R42 Group and Cambridge Angels along with other technology angel investors from the UK, US and Australia. This latest investment round gives Stamp Free a pre-investment valuation of £4 million – double the £2 million pre-investment valuation of the company’s Seed One funding round in September 2021. This increase reflects the significant progress made by the company in recent months, with its solution now being trialled by postal carriers, retailers and locker providers in different geographic locations around the

RO Capital Partners (ROCP), the RO Group’s venture capital arm, has led an investment round in InferSens alongside the Oxford Innovation Fund, and Bruce Melizan, the former MD of Interserve’s support services division. ROCP’s contribution comprises £309,000 of the total £870,000 raised, which will be used as growth capital and to bring the product to market.   InferSens is an AI and machine learning liquid sensor business which generates meaningful, live, and easily accessible data.  It can non-invasively monitor the flow of any liquid in pipes and has made large strides in bringing down the cost of such technology. The

Cypher Capital, a venture capital firm located in the UAE, is allocating $5 million to invest in Ocean Protocol projects. Ocean Protocol is a platform for data exchange and monetisation that builds on Ethereum and other EVM-compatible blockchains. The open-source protocol facilitates the exchange and monetisation of data and data-based services, allowing people to buy and share information securely while preserving privacy. Ocean Protocol makes use of “datatokens” to give businesses and individuals access to data, where tokens can be redeemed to access information. Ocean Protocol aims to build a new Data Economy powered by a dynamic group of builders and

Global alternative investment firm Värde Partners has agreed to sell its 31.7% stake in Lamda Malls to the company’s majority shareholder, Lamda Development, for €109 million. Lamda Malls owns two major shopping centres in Greece, the Golden Hall in Athens and Mediterranean Cosmos in Thessaloniki.   Värde Partners initially bought its stake in 2017 for €61.3 million. Since that time, the company has executed a series of value creation initiatives, including securing a long-term extension of Mediterranean Cosmos’ ground lease and completing a substantial redevelopment of Golden Hall’s western wing to add approximately 11,500 square meters of gross leasable area.

Pivotal Growth has agreed to acquire The Loan Partnership Limited (TLP), a specialist second charge mortgage and bridging finance broker based in Hemel Hempstead.

Phatisa, together with a consortium of leading development finance institutions (DFIs), has acquired a significant minority stake in South Africa-based citrus and fresh-produce exporter, Lona Group (Lona), for an undisclosed sum. The investment will be used as expansion capital.   The DFI co-investors are British International Investment (BII – formerly known as CDC Group), Norfund, and Finnfund – all of whom are also investors in Phatisa Food Fund 2, raised last year.    The investment – led by Phatisa’s US$143 million Food Fund 2 – comes a week after Phatisa announced its successful exit from Côte d’Ivoire bottler Continental Beverage Company,

Palamon Capital Partners (Palamon) are to sell DD Group (DD), formerly branded Dental Directory, a UK and Ireland-focused dental and medical aesthetics distributor and service provider, to an affiliate of Sun European Partners. The terms of the private transaction, which is expected to complete in June, have not been disclosed. The sale concludes phase one of Palamon’s investment plan to return IDH to a pure-play dental services company, following the Firm’s reported £700 million deal, in partnership with the management team of IDH, to acquire The Carlyle Group’s majority position in August 2021.  The proceeds from the divestment will significantly

Foursan Group, a Middle Eastern private equity firm, has acquired a 21% stake in software development house MenaITech.