A roundup of fund managers' thoughts on yesterday's budget.

UK-pump specialists, Hydromarque Ltd, is set for significant expansion following its acquisition by a specialist private equity backer. BCF Equity Partners has acquired Peterborough-based Hydromarque in a deal totalling £2.7m.

Continulus, the Glasgow-headquartered online video-learning platform for health professionals, has secured £0.5m of equity investment from a consortium of UK investors.  The funds will be deployed to strengthen the Continulus management team, as well as enhancing the company’s technological capacity to permit its continuing expansion and collaboration with some of the world’s most highly respected medical organisations.

US$698.7 billion worth of deals were announced globally during the first two months of 2021, 56% more than the same period last year and a year-to-date total only exceeded twice since our records began, in the years 2000 and 2018, according to Refinitiv Deals Intelligence.

The new Conduit EIS Impact Fund has been launched by industry experts, Conduit Connect, Conduit Capital and Ascension Ventures, to support and scale impact driven companies and to enable investors to build diverse portfolios, with the added benefits of EIS tax reliefs. 

Additive Manufacturing Technologies (AMT), whose equipment automates the final stage of the 3D production process, has raised £2.5m secured funding from NPIF – Mercia Equity Finance, which is managed by Mercia and part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund, Foresight Williams Technology, the government’s Future Fund, DSM Venturing, the global startup investment arm of Royal DSM and private investors.

GP Bullhound has announced a follow-on investment into wallapop, Spain’s leading classifieds marketplace app for unique and second-hand goods, as part of a Series G funding round of €157 million bringing the company’s valuation to €690 million. The round is led by Korelya Capital and backed by NAVER, Korea’s leading Internet company, with existing shareholders including Accel, Insight Venture Partners, 14W and Northzone.

GeniusU, valued at $202 million, has raised $1.4 million from 63 investors in its latest seed investment round, closing 40% up on the original target of $1 million. Part of Genius Group, the world’s largest entrepreneur education group, the Singapore based GeniusU is the digital edtech platform used to deliver the curriculum that is offered to their 1.4 million students and entrepreneurs around the world. The capital being raised would be used for continued global expansion and to grow the key leadership team.

Nyobolt, a cutting-edge battery company, defining a new category of ultra-high power technology, has secured $10 million in Series A funding, led by IQ Capital with participation from Cambridge Enterprise and Silicon Valley investors. The funding will enable Nyobolt to expand globally, building new facilities, and growing the engineering and operational teams, which work with customers to implement and integrate the unique technology into commercial applications to solve their battery challenges. 

FourJaw Manufacturing Analytics, a tech spin-out whose cloud based data capture and analysis technology is unlocking five-fold increases in manufacturing factory floor productivity in the North of England has secured a significant six-figure investment from a combined Angel and Venture Capital syndicate, valuing the company at £2m.

Just three weeks after being awarded a Business Productivity Programme grant to accelerate the development and roll out of its productivity maximising platform, Sheffield-based FourJaw Manufacturing Analytics’ has been given a major confidence boost from the combined Angel and Venture Capital investment communities.

Foresight Group has made a £2 million follow-on investment into Spektrix to support further growth opportunities and to continue the excellent work 

The British Business Bank has published Future Fund data that gives a detailed picture of the 1,140 companies that have been approved for £1.12bn (£1,124.3m) worth of Convertible Loan Agreements since the scheme was launched on 20 May. There have been 1,846 applications in total since the launch and the scheme closed to new applications on 31 January 2021.