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GUEST ARTICLE
In this article, Tim Cook, manager of corporate trust national sales at UMB Bank, takes a brief look at three scenarios that show why escrow arrangements are best practice and three potential pain points to avoid.
NEWS
Technology-focused private equity firm Accel-KKR has closed its latest fund, Accel-KKR Emerging Buyout Partners LP at USD640 million, bringing Accel-KKR’s total assets under management to over USD10 billion.
“Despite the less-than-ideal conditions imposed by the pandemic, we completed a very efficient, successful fundraise almost completely during the lockdown,” Rob Palumbo, managing partner of Accel-KKR, commented on the fundraise.
Accel-KKR Emerging Buyout Partners LP Fund -which closed at its hard cap- comprised USD460 million in limited partner commitments and USD180 million in general partner commitments, and will continue Accel-KKR’s strategy of investing in software and tech-enabled services companies, with a
INVESTMENTS
EQT Ventures has led a USD 12.7 million Series A round into Amsterdam-based development startup CodeSandbox, which is used by the likes of Stripe and Shopify, from its AI platform Motherbrain.
Other participants in the round include existing investors Kleiner Perkins, Arches Capital, as well as angel investor Guillermo Rauch. They were also joined by two new angels – Andreas Blixt and Daniel Gebler.
Founded in 2017 by former Facebook developer Ives van Hoorne (CEO) and industrial designer Bas Buursma (COO),CodeSandbox enables teams to prototype, build and host web applications via its web development platform.
The duo set out
DIVERSITY
Finance industry network 100 Women in Finance will be hosting the largest ever international meeting of female investment managers and asset allocators during Global FundWomen Week in November, with the intention of facilitating capital introductions for women.
“The pandemic, coupled with technology, is acting as a great leveller in improving access to capital introduction opportunities for women managers,” said Ulrika Robertsson, co-founder and COO of Impactus Partners and Chair of 2020 Global FundWomen Week.
The virtual event will take place from 9 to 13 November, replacing previous in-person regional conferences, and will be hosted on capital introduction tech platform iConnections,
GUEST ARTICLE
You wouldn’t buy a house without looking around it, or a car without test driving it. Consumer tech such as apps are often free to download. With software being such a vital part of any financial organisation’s infrastructure, Jamie Nascimento, co-founder at alternative asset management platform LemonTree Software, asks why it should be any different.
Buying business software is all about solving problems. When a vendor offers you a trial of their software, you get to see if it does indeed solve a problem and importantly, how it is solved. You can use personalised potential scenarios, positive, negative or unique,
GUEST ARTICLE
By Joanna Kirby, Managing Director, Time Partners – Private equity relies heavily on manager skill (alpha) with a large divergence between the strongest and weakest performers in a cohort. Studies have shown that it is possible for some investors to effectively navigate this disparate market and consistently add value, through careful fund selection. Robust due diligence processes, both investment and operational, are a critical part of successful fund/manager selection, but how has this changed during the pandemic?
The most obvious impact is from travel restrictions preventing on-site, in-person due diligence meetings. Investors are aware that reviewing track records and strategy
DIVERSITY
Industry organisation Black Women in Asset Management (BWAM) has written an open letter to the asset management industry calling on investment firms to promote racial equity.
BWAM’s letter encourages senior leaders to set out actions which are aimed at leading to progress and give black women a greater voice in shaping investment decisions, by urging the investment community to go beyond the earlier solidarity statements issued during this year’s global reckoning on racism.
“Continued incidents of police brutality have sparked a global awakening for many of our colleagues in the industry. This summer you saw many firms issuing solidarity statements
DEALS
Early-stage Israeli proptech investor BuiltUp Ventures has invested in Trusstor and StructShare, two Israeli construction tech (contech) startups.
Other proptech companies BuiltUp Ventures has invested in over the last two years include data analytics tool MyTower, asset tokenisation platform SolidBlock, virtual marketing company Augmind, AI-based platform Innovesta, and Everflow.
“With Covid-19 continuing to impact the real estate market, technology solutions are becoming more essential to building owners, developers, and managers than ever before,” said Oded Eliashiv, principal and founding managing partner of BuiltUp Ventures.
BuiltUp Ventures is a Tel Aviv- and New York-based venture capital firm, with a focus on
INTERVIEW
The second quarter of this year saw two potentially worrying trends in US corporate credit: the number of public filers carrying debt of more than 7x going into Q3 had risen to 35 per cent (compared to 14 per cent in Q4 2018), while the percentage of leveraged loan defaults rose sharply from 2 per cent at the start of the year to north of 4 per cent, by March.
Those numbers, recently conveyed by S&P Global Market Intelligence and based on the S&P/LSTA Loan Index, were symptomatic of the early stages of the lockdown. It is perhaps unsurprising to
NEWS
The world’s largest online angel investment platform, the Angel Investment Network, has supported the raise of more than GBP1 million in UK-based disease screening and diagnosis startup Occuity.
Launched in London by childhood friends James Badgett and Mike Lebus, Angel Investment Network (AIN) is an online platform connecting startups with a global network of angel investors.
“Healthcare is one of the areas of biggest interest to our investor database. In the year of a global pandemic this is perhaps no surprise – but this business really did tick all the boxes for our investors,” explained Ed Stephens, global head of
Events
12 November, 2026 – 8:00 am
12 November, 2026 – 5:00 pm
