Foresight Group has announced the €17.3 million arrangement and subscription of a Project Bond issued by Pagano & Ascolillo S.p.A. and listed on Borsa Italiana, for the installation of LED street lights in six municipalities in Umbria, Molise and Campania, on behalf of the Foresight Italian Green Bond Fund.

Female start-up founders are missing out on billions of pounds of investment, new research has found.  The UK VC & Female Founders report found that for every £1 of venture capital investment in the UK, all-female founder teams get less than 1p. By comparison, all-male founder teams get 89p and mixed-gender teams get the remaining 10p.

The research, commissioned by Chancellor Philip Hammond at Budget 2017 and undertaken by the British Business Bank, together with Diversity VC and BVCA, identifies specific barriers faced by female-led firms in accessing venture capital. It will help inform ongoing government work to tackle these barriers and boost the untapped economic potential of businesses. The report will be launched during a reception for leading businesswomen and the venture capital community at No11 Downing Street and hosted by Treasury ministers.

Vala Capital, the UK venture capital firm, is looking to shake-up fees in the EIS industry with the launch of its ground-breaking EIS fund.  

'It is a great honour to announce that H.E. Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, President of Croatia, will be attending the World Business Angels Investment Forum (WBAF) 2019 World Congress of Angel Investors with a strong delegation.

Beauhurst's latest edition of The Deal 2018 shows that deal numbers dropped from 1,744 in 2017 to 1,572 in 2018, and amount invested fell from £8.6b to £7b respectively. But this figure is still well up on previous years, and the decline could be interpreted as a "correction" from the unprecedented levels seen in 2017.

Despite the overall downturn, crowdfunding platforms continue to grow with a record year in terms of deal numbers. 

Download the report here 

Foresight Group has made a £2.15 million growth capital investment into Sportlabs Technology Limited, trading as ClubSpark, the awarding-winning specialist software company serving participants, sports providers, National Governing Bodies and International Federations.

Founded in 2012 by CEO Dave Ward and CTO Nathan Flood, ClubSpark provides a comprehensive software platform which provides easy access to sports and events for participants, simple to use tools for sports providers, whilst giving National Governing Bodies and International Federations insight into participation and activity levels.

Finatext, one of Japan’s leading trading brokerages, has invested £2 million to support the launch and development of a new and educational FCA-regulated platform, designed to make trading more accessible to a new generation of users.

Maven Capital Partners, one of the UK’s most active private equity houses, has promoted Colin Anderson and Andrew Whiteley from Maven’s specialist property investment team 

NVM Private Equity has committed £2.2 million of growth capital into London-based recognition, employee reward, and ideas platform business, Mo. Formerly known as Thanksbox, Mo provides proprietary technology to help organisations achieve success by strengthening relationships, sharing ideas and building stronger cultures and giving employees greater meaning at work. NVM’s investment will be used to accelerate scale up of the business, expand the team and to deliver further technical progression in the platform.

HBAN (Halo Business Angel Network), the all-island organisation responsible for the promotion of business angel investment, and an initiative of Enterprise Ireland, InterTradeIreland and Invest Northern Ireland, has announced agritech company, Hexafly has secured a total of €2.2m after closing a recent round of €1.1m. The total investment includes €900,000 in angel funding, with Enterprise Ireland, SOS Ventures, Yield Lab and Cedas Foundation making up the rest of the two rounds. It is the largest HBAN angel investment in agritech to date and will help to fund 50 new jobs over the next two years, as well as a new larger production facility. 

Philanthropic start-up accelerator, The Seed Fund opened for entry on Friday 1 February, offering 12 places on its summer Academy run in partnership with Great Taste, the world’s most coveted food awards. With a packed schedule covering branding, funding, finance, PR, social media and more, this year’s Academy will also feature a brand new investment Pitch Day held at Piper Private Equity in Notting Hill.

In a marketplace where 90% of food and drink start-ups currently fail, The Seed Fund sets out to provide the knowledge, mentoring and opportunities to ensure that these fledgling businesses are able to survive and thrive during their early years. Supported by handpicked industry experts including Renée Elliott, founder of Planet Organic, the Guild of Fine Food’s John Farrand and Camilla Barnard from Rude Health, the Academy delivers a game-changing series of workshops, presentations and one-on-one sessions, run between May and September.

State Street Global Exchange has released the results of the State Street Investor Confidence Index® (ICI) for January  2019.