Business angel group HBAN Ulster, as part of the Halo Business Angel Network (HBAN), announced today its members have invested £8.5m into 38 early-stage companies in Northern Ireland in less than three years and urged more businesspeople to join its ranks.

A new investment initiative has been launched by ACE Entrepreneurs to support and fund early-stage black-owned businesses. The ACE Entrepreneurs Investment Program has been launched to tackle a funding gap for black-owned businesses. The program is led by businesswoman and entrepreneur Nadine Campbell, Founder of ACE Entrepreneurs, a community for diverse entrepreneurs and Kevin Edwards, who is the ACE Entrepreneurs Investment Partner and BTIG Managing Director - European Credit Sales & Trading.

The AI Accelerator is back! Applications are open until 8th of August so there’s still time to apply. Based at the University of Edinburgh’s world-leading innovation hub - the Bayes Centre - the Accelerator gives data driven scaleups the opportunity to harness the power of AI and bring about transformative change. To reach a wider UK scaleup community, we are delivering the Accelerator in partnership with London-based community Scale Space and welcoming Nile’s strategic design support.

Edison Group has announced the appointment of Paul Miller as CTO and Kelly Perry as Head of ESG Client Services, 

Bowmark Capital has further strengthened its investment, portfolio and origination teams with six new appointments.

Claire Alvarez has been promoted to Partner by Foresight Group, the leading listed infrastructure and private equity investment manager.

Greenbackers Investment Capital has revealed the identity of 26 climate technology start-ups 

MSDUK, an organisation that champions the inclusion of ethnic minority businesses (EMBs) and founders in corporate supply chains, has partnered with Unilever, WPP, Google and Dow to launch the UK’s first accelerator programme focused on helping 300 EMBs to become supply chain ready.

Private equity house WestBridge has promoted Peter Barkley to director. Barkley joined WestBridge in August 2019 to head the firm’s newly opened Manchester office and establish the firm in the north west, north east and Yorkshire markets.

BGF, the UK & Ireland’s most active investor, has announced the creation of a specialist advisory board to accelerate its investment activity in companies engaged in carbon reduction and the energy transition. The advisory board will be chaired by Baroness Brown of Cambridge, one of the UK’s leading specialists in the field of climate change and carbon reduction.

Fast-growing private equity house YFM Equity Partners (YFM), which has an expanding network of regional offices across the UK, is strengthening its presence in the Thames Valley with the opening of a new office in Reading to be closer to businesses and professional advisers in the region and build its reach across the South West where it has undertaken a raft of recent investments.

Diversity VC has announced that Ladi Greenstreet and Daisy Onubogu have taken over the leadership, as CEO and COO respectively.