Livingbridge has appointed Andy Harrington, Robyn Smith and Tom Smith as investment managers, alongside two further hires in the business. 

BGF has successfully exited its investment in landscaping and grounds maintenance company, TCL Group. TCL has been acquired by idverde to create the UK’s largest provider of outdoor green services.

Livingbridge, one of the UK’s leading mid-market private equity investors, has made a £15 million investment in Nationwide Hire, an aggregator of equipment rental and hire services.

Quantum machine learning company Rahko has raised a £1.3m (USD1.6) seed round led by Balderton Capital, Europe’s leading Series A tech investor. Balderton usually invests at Series A but makes rare seed investments when it discovers exceptional teams like that at Rahko. Balderton is joined in the funding round by venture firm AI Seed and angel investors Charles Songhurst (former Microsoft Head of Corporate Strategy), Tom McInerney (Founder, TGM Ventures), John Spindler (CEO, Capital Enterprise) and James Field (CEO, LabGenius). 

Browne Jacobson’s corporate finance team has advised Impala on its successful $11 million investment round.

Codacy, the Lisbon-based startup whose platform automates and standardizes software quality to increase the efficiency of developers and enterprise development teams, announces raising $7.7M in funding. This round is led by Join Capital, with participation from EQT Ventures, Armilar Venture Partners, Faber Ventures, and Caixa Capital.

A report from the Female Founders Forum – with a foreword from Rt Hon Liz Truss MP – reveals that while the percentage of deals to female-led teams slightly dipped in 2018, female-led businesses represent a growing share of investment activity and receive similar rates of follow-on funding.

• Female-founded startups are receiving a growing share of investment. In 2011, 11% of startups that raised equity investment were female founded. By 2018, this figure had nearly doubled to 21%. 
• Of the 6,147 investment deals made in 2018, 17.9% went to companies with at least one female founder, down from 18.2% in 2017.
• Nonetheless the total amount invested in businesses with at least one female founder in 2018, as a percentage, was 11.4%, up from 9.9% in 2017.

BGF, the UK and Ireland’s most active investor in growing businesses, has appointed Hannah Waters as an investor in its Cardiff office.

Moorgate Benchmarks, the index company driving change, has closed its Series A funding round, securing a significant investment from ETFS Capital.  The investment will enable Moorgate Benchmarks to accelerate growth by building out its full-service offering to capitalise on a range of near-term opportunities. 

Par Equity has concluded an £800k investment in Kibosh Ltd, designer of the world’s fastest leaking-pipe repair kit. 

The innovative Kibosh equipment enables DIY enthusiasts, professional plumbers and trades people to mend leaking pipes simply and quickly without having to turn off the water supply to water and central heating systems. 

On the first birthday of the Great Point Ventures (EIS) Fund, we spoke to Dan Perkins, Managing Director at Great Point about the fund, its investments and where the exciting investment opportunities lie in the media sector in the next 12 months.

Inflexion Private Equity has agreed to acquire Pharmaspectra, a leading global provider of medical affairs data to the pharmaceutical and biotech industry. The investment is being made by Inflexion Enterprise Fund IV, Inflexion’s dedicated lower mid?market fund.

Founded in 2005, Pharmaspectra is the leader in providing scientific dissemination data and analytics to the pharmaceutical industry. Pharmaspectra’s data is utilised by 7 of the world’s top 10 pharmaceutical companies. The firm has offices in the UK, US, Switzerland, and India.