Catherine Lewis La Torre has been appointed Interim CEO of the Government-owned British Business Bank and will take up the role from 1 September. 

Daisy Onubogu, Head of Networks & Communities, Backed VC and Anu Adebajo, Investment Manager, British Patient Capital, spoke at CogX, about how those in the start-up and VC ecosystem can take real action to support black founders and improve diversity in the sector.

One in seven small business owners (14%) say they are transitioning towards becoming fully or mainly online enterprises since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK, according to new research from Hitachi Capital Business Finance.

Redwigwam, the UK’s leading provider of flexible workers, has secured investment from the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund to fuel the next phase of its expansion.

The Liverpool-based company received the funding from NPIF – Maven Equity Finance, managed by Maven and part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund.

Redwigwam was founded four years ago by serial entrepreneur Lorna Davidson, who had previously founded and sold Tactical Solutions, one of the UK’s leading field sales and marketing companies, for £29million.

Enterprise Software as a Service (SaaS) vendor, My Digital Accounts, has appointed Nic Scott, former CEO and co-founder of Fairsail, as its chairman with immediate effect.

A £250,000 loan for the Welsh Mountain Zoo will help to safeguard 140 different species of animals and jobs for 39 people as Covid-19 forces the continued closure of the popular tourist attraction.

An overwhelming majority (92%) of private equity fund managers expect to see a rise in the volume of distressed fund transaction activity over the next 12 months. Says Intertrust's Global Private Equity Outlook Report 2020. Due to the impact of COVID-19, almost half (46%) of respondents believe that mismatches in valuation expectations between buyers and sellers will restrict deal flow.

Duncan Grierson, Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Clim8 and Andrew J Scott, Founding Partner at 7percent Ventures, make the case for equity crowdfunding for startups.

Qkine, a specialist developer and manufacturer of proteins for stem cell, organoid and regenerative medicine applications, has closed a £1.5 million series A investment round to accelerate the global scale-up of its commercial operations and make key hires to its leadership team. The funding round attracted support from a wealth of leading life science funds and angel investors, including Parkwalk, a London-based firm that backs world-changing technologies emerging from the UK’s leading universities, who led the round; Jonathan Milner, serial entrepreneur and founder of Abcam; Martlet Capital, a Cambridge-based investor with a growing portfolio of innovative life science companies; and the fast-growing o2h ventures Human Health EIS fund.

SilviBio, a company developing a ‘survival capsule’ that will improve the survival of tree seedlings by 40 per cent in drought conditions, is the overall winner of the GROW 2020 agri-tech business plan competition. The result was announced by Calum Murray of Innovate UK, one of the judges.

Dr Belinda Clarke, Director of Agri-TechE, also announced that SilviBio had been the audience choice. The announcement came at the end of an exciting final in which four early-stage agri-tech companies pitched their business plans to the judges via Zoom.

Maven Capital Partners, one of the UKs most active private equity managers, has invested an undisclosed amount in Zing Dev Limited, a technology services business.  Zing is a specialist implementation partner for Twilio, a market-leading cloud communication platform. As one of a small number of accredited implementation partners across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Zing offers consultancy and managed services for Twilio’s fully programmable cloud-based contact centre software.

RiskIQ, the world leader in attack surface management, has announced an investment from National Grid Partners (NGP), the venture and innovation arm of British multinational utility company National Grid plc. This funding will enable RiskIQ to bring its attack surface management, threat detection, and unique threat hunting capabilities to critical infrastructure industries, which face a host of unique security challenges entering the new decade.