BGF has provided £6m funding to One Media iP Group plc, a digital media content provider that primarily exploits music intellectual property rights. The AIM listed company, which is based in Pinewood Studios, will use the funding to support the acquisition of music catalogues as part of its buy and build growth strategy.

BGF’s funding follows the Board appointments earlier this year of Ivan Dunleavy, former CEO of Pinewood Studios and current non-executive chair of BGF-backed Milk Visual Effects, and Lord Michael Grade, formerly Chair of BBC, executive chair of ITV and CEO of Channel 4. The company employs a team of 15 including full-time creative technicians.

Maven Capital Partners has led the £20 million management buyout of UAP Limited, a leading UK supplier and distributor of high specification door and window hardware. The transaction represents Maven’s second investment from its new buyout fund, having earlier this year led an investment in Sc

Foresight Group has invested £2.5 million to support the partial buy-out of Bolton-based community healthcare and wellbeing provider ABL Health Limited.

ABL is a provider of community healthcare and wellbeing services across the North of England. The Company was founded in 2009 by Denise Leslie and Dr Sheena Bedi, as a means of providing a range of innovative, evidence based, healthy lifestyle, behavioural change and wellbeing programmes including weight management, nutrition support and smoking cessation. The business has helped approximately 12,000 clients record weight loss in the North-West region, mainly in Manchester, St Helens, Wigan and Blackpool, and over 5,000 clients have significantly improved their mental health. On the Wirral, over 3,000 people have stopped smoking as a direct response to the ABL program in the last two years.

ghd and Cambridge Wireless have announced a partnership that brings a new form of accelerator to the technology start-up scene. The ghd Innovation Hive will contribute to the design of the next era of beauty and hair electronics, and the call for start-ups, scale-ups and SMEs to enter is now open.

“ghd is the best known hair styling brand in the world whose successful entrepreneurial heritage led to an acquisition by the third largest global beauty company, Coty,” says Abhi Naha, Chief Commercial Officer at CW. “Now, with the support of the CW community and the upcoming generation of technology entrepreneurs, ghd is entering the connected devices market, and they are offering an unmissable opportunity for start-ups to contribute to the next stage of a massively successful product line.”

Countingup, a revolutionary mobile app, allowing small businesses to do their banking, bookkeeping and stay on top of their taxes, has received the backing of leading fintech investors.  The London-based fintech startup has raised a £2.3m seed round led by Forward Partners with participation from Frontline Ventures and JamJar Investments. The investors are backing the company’s vision to be the financial platform for 1m small businesses. Today, Countingup boasts more than four thousand customers.

Phrasee, the London-headquartered marketing technology company that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to generate optimised marketing copy, has closed a $4m Series A funding round. The investment will fuel Phrasee’s international growth plans, including scaling up its new US operation in San Francisco and the recently announced expansion of its UK team. Albion Capital Group LLP led the round, with follow-on funds from existing investors including global digital communications business Next Fifteen PLC (Next 15) and angel syndicate Galvanise Capital. Next 15 and Galvanise announced their initial investments in 2016.

Chevler, the UK’s leading manufacturer of baking cases, tulip muffin wraps, and a major printer of greaseproof paper has secured a six-figure funding package from the Development Bank of Wales.

Newport based communications company Talkative, is pleased to announce it has completed a Series A funding round, raising in excess of £350,000. Talkative is headquartered at the Wesley Clover Innovation Centre.  

The Danish/Swedish private equity firm Polaris and Falck have signed an agreement whereby Polaris will acquire 100% of the shares in Falck Safety Services Holding A/S and take over all Safety Services activities in Falck.

Falck Safety Services is the world's largest provider of specialist safety training for the offshore, maritime and renewables industries, operating from over 30 training centres in 21 countries. Each year, Falck Safety Services provides the most realistic and valuable training to thousands of employees from the energy and shipping industries.

The divestment of Falck Safety Services is in line with Falck’s overall strategy to focus on its core business. 

Readly, the global digital magazine newsstand, has raised €10m in additional funding to drive the next stage of its growth. The latest round of funding comes from new investor Swedish fund Swedbank Robur and London based Zouk Capital. The company will use the funds to further its international expansion and support growth in its existing markets.

Spotinst has raised $35 million in a Series-B funding round for its AI based workload management platform, which helps companies to manage and optimize their cloud computing spend across several cloud providers.

The funding round was led by Highland, with participation from existing investors Leaders Fund, Intel Capital, and Vertex Ventures. Spotinst has now raised approximately $52m since launch.

Founded by Amiram Shachar, Liran Polak and Aharon Twizer in 2015, Spotinst helps businesses to manage their compute infrastructure across different cloud providers, while also achieving savings of 80% on average on regular cloud computing costs, by tapping into excess compute capacity in data centres operated by Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

Apperio, the UK-based legal tech start-up transforming the way companies analyse their legal spend, today announces that it has raised $10 million (£7.5 million) in a Series A round, led by Draper Esprit and supported by existing investors Notion, IQ Capital and angels.

Apperio provides companies and their in-house legal teams with complete visibility of legal spend. It allows them to track both billed and unbilled hours, in real-time, run analytics and monitor law firm performance. The technology helps in-house teams to effectively manage budgets, while at the same time helping them to demonstrate value.