Crowd investors who invested in Revolut, Britain’s first digital banking unicorn, via Crowdcube, the world’s first and largest crowdfunding platform, have now realised returns of ~19x on their original investments.

Crowd investors took the opportunity in July 2016 to invest as little as £10 or as much as £5000 via Crowdcube’s platform into Revolut, at the time a promising early-stage fintech company. In April this year, Revolut received a $250m investment led by DST Global, setting a valuation for the company of ~£1.2 billion, making it one of the first crowdfunded unicorns.

Ocean Polymers, a British recycling technology company, has announced 

Calculus Capital, the award-winning Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and Venture Capital Trust (VCT) specialist, has invested £2m in Oxford BioTherapeutics (OBT), a clinical-stage oncology company that is developing next-generation cancer treatments. OBT has a strong pipeline of ‘immune-oncology’ (IO) therapies that are intended to provide more targeted, specialised treatment strategies for patients by recruiting the body’s immune system to recognise and attack cancer cells. 

FloodFlash, an insurtech startup that offers a new way for customers to insure previously uninsurable flood risk, has raised £1.9m in seed funding from LocalGlobe, Pentech Ventures and InsurTech Gateway.

UK holiday park operator Coppergreen has acquired Kenwick Park Golf Hotel and Spa and Lodge Park in Lincolnshire and Clumber Park in Nottinghamshire, doubling the size of its portfolio.

The UK’s largest online car repair marketplace, WhoCanFixMyCar.com, has secured £4 million from investors including Shell Ventures, Sir Trevor Chinn, Active Partners and Venrex Investment Management. The marketplace currently has 11,500 garages registered to the site, has processed over 1 million repair requests from UK drivers and receives 60,000 new job requests every month from drivers.

YFM Equity Partners has backed the MBO of DSP Database Managed Services, a leading provider of database and data platform managed services. One of the fastest growing implementation partners for Oracle Database Cloud, with a similar pedigree in Microsoft Azure, DSP is one of the UK’s leading suppliers of Data Platform support & consulting services, whether on-premise, in-the-cloud or hybrid.

High-growth Miss Group, a web hosting company, has received a £6.4m investment from BGF to accelerate its international expansion strategy. 

Foresight portfolio company, The Naked Deli, has opened its world-first airport outlet at Newcastle International Airport.

Funds managed by Foresight Group LLP have provided an additional £10 million extension to bolster the original £40 million secured loan note facility which was agreed in September 2017 for Reward Finance Finance Group Limited.

Free snacks, flexible working hours and paid-for fitness memberships have been named as three of the most realistic job perks business owners can introduce to keep staff happy.  New research by office experts at LondonOffices.com has revealed the nine work benefits employers could realistically offer which would have the biggest impact on employee morale.

Bowmark Capital, the mid-market private equity firm, has sold Nexus Vehicle Rental (Nexus), the UK’s leading corporate vehicle rental provider, to Phoenix Equity Partners for £142m.  The investment generated a return for Bowmark-managed funds of over 3x cost. Established in 1999, Nexus connects vehicle rental companies with corporate customers via a proprietary online booking and rental management system.