Livingbridge investee company Brainlabs has made two investments in online marketing agency Distilled and US digital marketing specialist Hanapin, underlining its ambitious growth strategy. 

Tech Nation, the UK network for ambitious tech entrepreneurs, has revealed the 10 early-stage scaleup winners of its nationwide competition, Rising Stars. 

The Rising Stars competition is the only national early-stage tech scaleup competition in the UK, and is designed to showcase the most exciting companies at Seed to pre-Series A funding from all areas of the country. Tech Nation’s Rising Stars are on track to become the world leading tech companies of tomorrow - the UK is a world leader in producing successful tech companies, and is now home to 77 billion-dollar businesses, double that of Germany and almost four times as many as Israel.

The Development Bank of Wales has appointed Rhys Jones as a non-executive director. Rhys, 36, is a co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer of SportPursuit Limited, a members only, sports focussed digital retailer. 

Leicestershire-based European Thermodynamics, an SME developer and supplier of thermal management components to the electronics, medical, telecoms and industrial sectors, has signed up to the national SPRINT business support programme.

SPRINT will provide European Thermodynamics with funded access to the expertise, research and facilities from the University of Leicester. This project will enable European Thermodynamics to develop the first space-qualified, UK-produced thermoelectric generators and coolers for space applications and other extreme/challenging environments.

The Angel CoFund (ACF) has made two appointments to the team and board. Experienced investor and former Chairman of the Angel CoFund, George Whitehead has moved into the position of Partner. Alliott Cole, the current CEO of Octopus Ventures, will also be joining the fund as Non-Exec Director. 

Squire Patton Boggs has expanded its Global Corporate Practice in London, adding significantly to its international private equity (PE) team, with the appointment of former KPMG heavyweight Stephen Ball, and leading PE practitioners Charles Leeming and Ben Squires from Simpson Thacher.  All three join as partners and will work closely with Corporate and Financial Services colleagues across the firm, in the UK and Europe, the US, Middle East and Asia-Pacific.

Par Equity, the leading Scottish EIS Fund Manager, has appointed two new team members. Tom Croy joins as Investment Manager and Alastair Orr Ewing as Portfolio and Investor Relations Manager.

A new salary study, exploring C-suite compensation in high-growth tech ventures, has found that the East of England is the highest paid UK region. 

Since being appointed by the British Business Bank in 2017, to manage two debt funds on behalf of the Midlands Engine Investment Fund (MEIF) Maven has completed transactions ranging from £100,000 to £1.5 million, providing finance across a diverse variety of sectors, including retail, tech, engineering and healthcare. Typically, funding is secured to drive expansion, such as hiring new staff, purchasing machinery, increasing working capital and growing customer reach.

Informatics Ventures, which has been supporting technology entrepreneurs since 2008, has announced the cohort of 50 high-growth data-driven companies that will pitch to UK and international investors at its flagship EIE20 event on Thursday 23rd April in Edinburgh.  

BGF is to appoint Stephen Welton, founder CEO of BGF, to the new role of Executive Chairman. 

Private equity firm WestBridge has promoted Tim Whittard to partner.