Mission Mars, the North West operator behind hospitality concepts including Albert’s Schloss and Rudy’s Neapolitan Pizza, has received £10m from BGF to continue with its ambitious growth plans.

The North West BGF team has invested nearly £70m since late 2017. This includes new investments such as digital mapping company Gaist and brake manufacturer, EBS as well as additional funding for portfolio companies High Access, NWC Group and Kids Planet. This year, BGF became the first and only investor to be honoured for Innovation in the Queen’s Award for Enterprise.

Tamworth-headquartered logistics firm OnLogistics is set to expand a number of its divisions, after receiving £350k from the Midlands Engine Investment Fund (MEIF).

Re-hires make up nearly a third of all financial advisers who have this year joined deVere Group, one of the world’s largest independent financial advisory organisations, it has been revealed.

New figures published by the firm show that 31 per cent of all its advisers taken on in 2018 across its global network of 70 offices have previously worked for the company.

A UCL Technology Fund investment,  MeiraGTx Holdings plc, a vertically integrated, clinical stage gene therapy company, has raised $75 million of gross proceeds upon close of the company’s initial public offering (IPO) on June 12 2018, selling 5,000,000 shares at a public offering price of $15.00 per share.  The shares are listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market.

The UCL Technology Fund (UCLTF) is managed by Albion Capital in collaboration with UCL Business (UCLB), UCL’s commercialisation company, and is dedicated to bringing UCL’s world-class research in life and physical sciences to commercial reality. MeiraGTx is its first investment to IPO. MeiraGTx has strong roots in UCL; its rare eye diseases business was borne out of the laboratories of Professor Robin Ali, a human molecular genetics expert at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, a world leader in ocular gene therapy.

BlackFin Capital Partners has closed its BlackFin Tech 1 Fund with €180m. Top-tier institutional investors have joined the existing pool. Joining Bpifrance, Vaudoise Assurances Group, Groupama, Sogecap (Société Générale Insurance), Natixis Assurances and Swiss Life are further well-established European brands notably the German public bank KfW, Belgian insurer Securex, the groups MACIF, BNP Paribas, large family-offices from the sector as well as numerous regional entities of banking groups Crédit Agricole, Banque Populaire et Caisse d’Epargne.

A fast-growing South Wales fintech company has closed a £1.25million funding round backed by Mercia Fund Managers, Development Bank of Wales and TTI Angels.

Subsea services company, Rovco, is on track to rapidly grow its share of the global subsea market after securing angel investment. This will enable the firm to launch its cutting-edge live 3D visual subsea inspection systems, which could significantly reduce the time taken to complete subsea surveys and cut inspection costs by 80%.

PEER-TO-PEER lenders must extend their reach to businesses beyond London as the UK’s regions continue to be underserved by finance, according to the UK’s first small business commissioner.

IW Capital's Luke Davies comments on PriceWaterhouseCooper's report which states that artificial intelligence will create more jobs than those that are lost through automation.

City of London Group, the parent company of a group focused on providing finance to the SME sector and home reversion plans in the UK residential property market, and CODE Investing, the institutional marketplace for SME debt, have announced a strategic collaboration to support the growth of UK small businesses. COLG will aim to complete £50 million in UK small business loans over the next four years originated through CODE Investing.

The manager of the highly rated Draper Esprit EIS funds is expanding its team and looking to appoint a Financial Client Services Assistant.  

Draper Esprit, a leading venture capital firm investing in and developing high growth digital technology businesses, hosted its Annual General Meeting on 23rd July.