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By Deborah Ruff, Head of US & International Arbitration, Julia Kalinina Belcher, Counsel, and Charles H Golsong, Counsel, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP – On 22 May 2020, the Tribunal de Commerce of Paris ordered the insurance giant AXA France IARD SA to pay Maison Rostang, a Michelin-starred Parisian restaurant, EUR 45,000 for two months’ worth of revenue lost due to the Covid-19 pandemic. A simple case of Covid-19 losses? Not quite.
NEWS
AlbionVC managed UCL Technology Fund, in collaboration with UCL Business, has held the first close of Fund 2, with a GBP100 million target.
ACQUISITIONS
KKR has agreed to acquire a majority stake in MasterD, a vocational training company in Spain.
Luis Gomez, MasterDs’s founder, and management team will reinvest alongside KKR. The investment in MasterD is the second in Europe by the KKR Global Impact fund, following its investment in UK recycling and responsible waste management company Viridor.
The investment in MasterD also follows KKR’s investment in Burning Glass last year, a labor market analytics provider which analyses supply and demand in the job market to inform hiring patterns.
KKR’s Global Impact strategy focuses on generating risk-adjusted returns by investing in companies that contribute
Q&A
Jan Pensaert is the founder and managing partner of Valiance, a global life sciences investor focused on addressing the unmet needs of a growing and ageing population. Valiance makes an impact through investments in medtech, with an additional focus on digital and nutritional health.
RESULTS
BGF’s total H1 investment stands at GBP177 million, including GBP128 million into new portfolio companies and GBP49 million into existing portfolio companies.
BGF backed 24 new companies in the first half of 2020, while completing eight exits. Some of its latest deals include British ceramics manufacturing company Emma Bridgewater, Bayfield and AIM-listed The City Pub Group in London.
“Covid-19 is already having a dramatic impact on the economy with growing unemployment and real concern about rising insolvencies as furlough ends and recessionary conditions hold sway,” said Stephen Welton, executive chairman at BGF.
“BGF as a business has maintained full employment
NEWS
PROfounders Capital and Calm/Storm Ventures have invested GBP1 million into sex therapy app Blueheart.
The fresh capital will be used to expand the available suite of therapy sessions and advance therapeutic research, as well as improving the app’s AI capabilities.
The app provides sex and relationship therapy based on the latest scientific research via sessions designed by sex therapist Dr Katherine Hertlein, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Couple and Relationship Therapy. Dr Hertlein is joining Blueheart as their expert advisor.
The Blueheart app deals with three main areas: thought sessions that focus on sexual fears and anxieties; body sessions,
NEWS
The Untitled Ventures, a seed and pre-seed stage VC investor that focuses on breakthrough technologies from Eastern Europe, is raising a new fund which will invest in early growth stage tech companies in the CEE region.
The firm has offices in London, Moscow and Riga, acting as a venture capital bridge between Eastern and Western Europe.
Untitled Ventures has invested into 26 companies to date. Its portfolio includes Portuguese dating app Pure, Sizolution, and Fixar, which was granted a license to operate in Canadian skies just a few days ago. In 15 percent of those, women are among the founders
FUND LAUNCHES
Pan-European asset manager Tikehau Capital’s subsidiary Ace Management has held a EUR630 million first close of Ace Aero Partenaires, a fund focused on helping companies in the aviation industry that have been severely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The initiative was first announced last June by Bruno Le Maire, Minister of Economy, Finance and Recovery in France. Airbus, Safran, Thales and Dassault Aviation launched a call for tenders and selected the Tikehau fund and its subsidiary ACE in order to form the fund.
Contributions from the French government, main contractors and Tikehau Capital, the fund manager, will enable the fund
NEWS
Eurazeo has completed a EUR80 million investment from its China Acceleration Fund in DORC (Dutch Ophthalmic Research Center), a specialist in the area of vitreoretinal surgery.
NEWS
Advent France Biotechnology and Invivo Ventures have invested EUR4.25 million into Valencia-based Arthex Biotech, a pre-clinical stage life sciences company focused on the development of next generation antisense RNA therapies.
The latest round follows on from an initial seed round of EUR2.7 million by Invivo and CDTI-Innvierte in December 2019, and in June 2020 respectively. The total amount raised by Arthex since inception now stands at EUR6.95 million. The fresh capital will enable Arthex to complete its first-in-human trial by 2022.
“Arthex Biotech represents a unique combination of world-class science and entrepreneurial skills, translating great discoveries into potential breakthrough therapeutic
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