Waracle, one of the UK's largest mobile apps and digital products developers, has received a £4.8m investment from BGF, the UK and Ireland's most active investor in growing businesses, to support its long-term growth plans.

Peregrine Ventures, a leading Israeli med-tech venture capital fund, just closed its fourth fund, Peregrine 4, raising $115 million. Their partners include some of the leading institutional and private equity investors from Israel, the United States, Europe and Australia. 

Foresight Group and Williams Advanced Engineering has made a £1.6 million investment into Oxford University spin-out Mixergy Limited, which is set to revolutionise the global hot water tank market and reduce the cost of energy for consumers.

Mixergy was founded in 2014 by Peter Armstrong, CEO, and Ren Kang, Head of R&D, following the completion of their PhD research at Oxford University where the duo originally developed the idea during their doctoral research.  The team has since grown to 17 staff and built strong relationships with British Gas, a major installer of tanks.

Ada Ventures has raised a $34m (£27m) fund. At present, 92 in every 100 dollars invested in Europe goes to all male teams (1), 83% founders are white (2), 82% are university educated (3). In the UK, a quarter of investment committees saw no female founders in 2017 (4) and 72% of Venture Capital funding is invested in London alone (5).

NVM Private Equity has invested £11.6m in supporting the management buy-out of Merseyside-based Knowsley Contractors Limited, trading as King Construction, a provider of civil engineering and construction services as it embarks on the next phase of its growth strategy.

Founded in 2002, the business operates a dedicated workforce of 220 from five locations and is led by an ambitious senior management team of four; Managing Director Dave Prescott, Chief Operating Officer Campbell Crawford, Finance Director Simon Warner and Commercial Director Mike Taylor. At completion Gary Howse will be joining the King team as Non-executive Chairman.

Mid-market private equity investor Livingbridge has appointed Mihir Patel and Joseph Evans as investment managers. 

Aptus Utilities Limited, one of the UK’s leading providers of multi-utility services, has secured a £12.8m investment from private equity firm WestBridge to assist with its growth and expansion plans.

Manchester Investor and SME Advisor, Patrick Molyneux, to join trade delegation to San Francisco with The Lord Mayor of the City of London.

Invest Europe has teamed up with the European Investment Fund (EIF), the EU’s leading venture capital (VC) investor, to release new research that highlights venture capital’s positive impact on fostering innovation, growth and job creation at start-ups across Europe.

The report entitled The VC Factor: Data-driven insights about VC-backed start-ups in Europe is the result of an ambitious research collaboration between the EIF and Invest Europe, the association representing venture capital, private equity and infrastructure sectors and their investors in Europe. The ground-breaking report tracked and analysed data on almost 9,000 young companies between 2007 and 2015, as well as some €35 billion of VC investment flows, offering new insights into Europe’s burgeoning start-up scene.

Tel-Aviv based venture capital firm Crescendo Venture Partners is launching its new VC fund planned to raise $80 million-$100 million. The new fund has completed its first closing and is planning to have its final closing in the first half of 2020. The fund is managed by a group of seasoned venture capitalists with over 75 years of cumulative experience on both sides of the table, partnering with the Switzerland based Crescendo Group, which manages client assets in excess of USD 3 billions of dollars from across its eight offices in Geneva, London, Guernsey, New York, Miami, Madrid, Hong Kong, Montevideo and most recently Nassau. 

KALEAO has become Bamboo Systems, a provider of transformative ARM server architecture designed to power the next generation of sustainable data centers. With a new management team in place, Bamboo Systems is poised to introduce its radically different approach to servers in a market with rapidly evolving requirements.

Sheffield-headquartered Independent Forgings & Alloys, one of the UK’s leading independent aerospace and industrial forgers, has acquired Doncasters Precision Forgings, from Doncasters Group.

In March 2018, BGF, the UK and Ireland’s most active investor in growing businesses, invested £8.5m in IFA. DPF was identified as a strategic acquisition opportunity as part of the business’ growth ambitions to reach £50m sales.