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NEWS
London-based growth investor SFC Capital has led a GBP 500,000 seed round for biotechnology startup Novai, a product of University College London.
Founded by Professor Francesca Cordeiro from UCL and Imperial College London and headquartered in London, Novai was created through Wellcome Trust funding.
The fresh capital will be used to develop Novai’s AI technology that helps standard medical imaging equipment identify eye disease at a cellular level up to 18 months earlier than current gold-standard processes.
Novai appointed Gordon Bethwaite as acting CEO and added three new senior board members in connection with the investment. Bethwaite has worked in
SURVEY
Central Europe’s private equity markets are feeling the impact of Covid-19 – but there is more optimism than during the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, suggesting the experience the region’s deal-doers have accumulated may buoy investments and create a basis for new deals, according to the latest Deloitte Central Europe Private Equity Confidence Survey.
NEWS
RedBird Capital Partners has entered into a definitive agreement with Toulouse FC to acquire an 85 per cent majority stake in the French Ligue 2 football club.
Toulouse FC was relegated, along with Amiens, from the top tier of French football in April when clubs voted to end the season early due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Founded by Gerald Cardinale, RedBird has over USD4 billion of equity under management. Its investment partners have included the New York Yankees, the Dallas Cowboys and the United States Women’s National Soccer Team.
Toulouse owner Olivier Sadran has stepped down as majority owner and President, but will retain
CoroNAVIRUS
Vital Capital has partnered up with the US Government’s Kenya Investment Mechanism to provide funding to Kenyan agri-businesses that have been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Vital Capital is an impact investment private equity fund focused on companies in sub-Saharan Africa. “We are excited to launch this major collaboration to support Kenyan agribusinesses in what is an incredibly challenging economic environment,” said Nimrod Gerber, managing partner of Vital Capital.
KIM is a five-year program funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to unlock financing to businesses that have been hit by the global pandemic.
Vital Capital and
SURVEY
London-based financial firms appear to be in no rush to have the majority of their staff back in the office, according to new research by Theta Financial Reporting.
Only 800 of Goldman Sachs’s 6,000 London staff have returned, while fewer than 2,000 of the 12,000 at JP Morgan are back in the office, the consulting firm’s new study revealed.
Almost one third of Brits say their company’s finance teams will not be returning to the office with other employees in July and will now work at home most of the time.
It also emerged that 70 per cent of City-based workers do not
NEWS
British Patient Capital has invested USD65 million in SV Health Investors’s USD265 million fund, SV7 Impact Medicine Fund (IMF), which is dedicated to investing in biotech companies.
The IMF is SV’s first biotech fund. It will aim to turn scientific breakthroughs into biotech companies producing high impact precision medicine drugs for poorly treated diseases.
So far the fund has invested in UK-based Alchemab, which develops antibody therapies for diseases including cancers, infectious diseases, and neurodegenerative conditions.
Cancer Research UK launched a partnership with SV Health Investors in June 2019 to focus on speeding up the translation of the organisation’s research
NEWS
CommerzVentures has made a USD6 million investment into Concirrus, a speciality analytics insurtech company.
This latest investment by CommerzVentures follows a recent announcement which saw London-based VC firm AlbionVC lead on a USD 20 million series B funding round, which included participation from current investors IQ Capital and EOS Venture Partners, as well as several angel investors.
Royal Park Partners acted as exclusive financial advisors to Concirrus and its board of directors on the deal.
With many new clients added to its customer portfolio in the last quarter, Concirrus continues to demonstrate and reinforce its strong credentials with some of
NEWS
NeueCapital, Math Capital, TTCER Partners, Kathaka, the Rupert family office, and Coparion have invested USD42 million in a series C round in customer intelligence platform Zeotap.
Half of the capital was secured this year; the remainder was raised last year from existing investors. Eric Roza, former leader of Datalogix and Oracle Data Cloud, has joined Zeotap’s board of directors as part of the deal. Existing investors that participated include New Science Ventures, Capnamic Ventures, Iris Capital, HERE, Innov8 (Singte), and IONIQ.
The round also attracted business angels including Eric Roza, Taylor Barada, former VP of corporate development, strategy and strategic
DEALS
European private equity deal volume dipped in Q2 2020 to its lowest quarterly figure since Q3 2013 driven by the uncertainty caused by Covid-19, Pitchbook’s Q2 report shows.
The Q2 European Private Equity Breakdown report, published by Pitchbook, demonstrates that 650 transactions closed in the second quarter of the year for a total of EUR9.8 billion – representing a year on year decrease of 31.5 per cent and 18.7 per cent, respectively.
Pitchbook is a data company providing research and data on venture capital, private equity, M&A, and public companies. The company believes that deal activity will pick up in
NEWS
Sumeru Equity Partners has led a USD100 million investment in SocialChorus, a workforce communications SaaS company, along with existing investors.
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