The British Business Bank’s fourth annual Small Business Equity Tracker report reveals the UK equity finance market for smaller businesses has bounced back to record highs in 2017, following a decline in 2016.

The British Business Bank has a new £300m ENABLE guarantee to help Barclays Bank increase their provision of flexible asset finance to smaller businesses looking to invest in vehicles, equipment, plant and machinery.

HBAN (Halo Business Angel Network), has been crowned Globally Networked Organisation 2018 at the EBAN (European Business Angel Network) Awards Ceremony held in Sofia, Bulgaria, on Monday 25^th June.

Lending Works, the leading UK peer-to-peer lender, has received a £2.8 million capital injection, as it pursues an ambitious programme of growth.

Tech entrepreneurs looking for investment in their early-stage businesses need to pass the "grandma test" if they want to be successful.

Oura Health, the Finnish health technology company behind the Oura ring, has moved its total private funding to 12.5M€ after the closure of a round led by US-based Bold Capital Partners and Finnish Tesi. The funding will be used to scale US market operations and push the Oura platform forward.

The Enterprise Investment Scheme Association, representing the many companies and investors that have benefited from over £16bn of EIS investment since the scheme was created, has signed the Government's Women in Finance Charter.

Cybertonica, a fast-growth AI technology offering cross-channel real-time risk and fraud solutions, and fellow UK-based start-up Railsbank, have won offers of €100,000 venture capital investment from MiddleGame Ventures. Both companies were ranked “most ready for investment” by a group of their peers on the final day of the FinTech Europe 2018, a three-month venture development programme for European FinTech and RegTech start-ups.

Social-commerce fashion app 21Buttons has raised $17M Series B funding led by Idinvest Partners, the €8bn pan-European private equity and venture capital investor. The capital will mainly be invested in talent traction for tech and product profiles, and user acquisition.

All existing investors from the company’s $10M Series A Funding in Q3 2017 have followed on, including Kibo Ventures, Breega, Samaipata, JME VC, 360 Capital Partners and Sabadell VC.

The Q2 2018 SME Growth Tracker, published today, reports that amongst small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) the Confidence Index score for their business has deteriorated from -6 earlier this year to -8. Confidence in business conditions has remained negative for all SMEs since the UK general election in 2017, when it was at its lowest point (-11), and has not been positive since March 2017.

Trump’s escalation of the trade war is going to trigger a “chain reaction of negative events around the world,” warns the boss of one of the world’s largest independent financial advisory organisations.

Stefano Maifreni is founder and director of Eggcelerate, the business expansion experts, comments on the findings of a recent survey into SME attitudes to Brexit.