New data reveals that 33 per cent of UK businesses say they lack the technology infrastructure to manage long-term remote working during the Covid-19 crisis. 

In December 2019 Backfinch invested c.£500,000 in London-based company Auro. Founded in 2016, Auro offers a fitness app that provides its users with tailored audio-based workouts. 

AstronauTx Ltd, a biotech company developing new medicines designed to restore the normal behaviour of astrocytes for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases, has received £1 million of investment from the UCL Technology Fund to enable the development of translatable biomarkers for their drug discovery programs.  The UCL Technology Fund is a £53.3million investment fund that is co-managed by UCL Business and AlbionVC that invests in licensing projects and spinout companies arising from the UCL knowledge base.

Global financial markets will use China’s recovery as a sentiment tracker, affirms the CEO of one of the world’s largest independent financial advisory and services organizations.

Notify Technology – the Newcastle-based health and safety software business – has completed a £370,000 investment round to drive product development and expand its team. The company has secured further funding from the North East Venture Fund (NEVF), which is supported by the European Regional Development Fund and managed by Mercia, alongside investment from its Chair, Jayne Archbold, and existing management.

Following the announcement of its dividend heroes last week, the Association of Investment Companies (AIC) has released a list of the next generation of dividend heroes. These are the investment companies that have raised their annual dividends for at least ten years but less than the 20 consecutive years needed to achieve dividend hero status.

During 2019, Tesi (Finnish Industry Investment Ltd) made new investments and commitments amount­ing to €133m. Tesi gave commitments totalling €89m to ten funds and made direct investments amounting to €43m in 25 companies.

Announced by the Chancellor at Budget 2020, the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) is open for applications and can provide facilities of up to £5m for smaller businesses across the UK who are experiencing lost or deferred revenues, leading to disruptions to their cashflow.

The Turnaround Management Association UK has appointed BTG Advisory partner Paul Davies as president of the association from January 2021.

Lord Howard Leigh of Hurley, Senior Partner at Cavendish Corporate Finance & Deputy Executive Chairman at finnCap Group plc, has told the House of Lords that more must be done to support UK SMEs through the period of uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Just under half of firms in the UK (46%) and US (45%) predict their country will go into recession in 2020, according to research by trade finance provider Stenn.

LawBite, the UK's leading legal-tech platform, looks at some of the ways in which SMEs can help themselves to weather the current storm.