Edinburgh-based manufacturers of powerful micro compressors, Vert Rotors, won the ‘Venture-Backed Management Team of the Year Award’ at the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (BVCA) Awards at the Balmoral Hotel last night.

InMotion Ventures, the venture capital business powered by Jaguar Land Rover, has partnered with global startup ecosystem Techstars.  InMotion will be working closely with the Techstars Mobility programme, based in Detroit. Launched in 2015, Techstars Mobility has to date invested in 22 mobility and transportation startups from all over the globe, collectively valued in excess of $100 million.

National law firm Shoosmiths has advised NVM private equity backed Kirton group on the disposal of its specialist seating division by way of sale of the entire issued share capital of The Kirton Healthcare Group Limited to Direct Healthcare Group.

A new business angel network aims to boost the North’s technology sector by bringing together early-stage companies with experienced entrepreneurs who can provide investment, mentoring and support.  Dow Schofield Watts Angels aims to provide a strong and active angel network similar to those in Scotland and Cambridge, where angels have played a key role in the growth of the tech sector. 

Angel Academe has backed Beamline Diagnostics, developers of an innovative biopsy triaging system. The company, founded by Dr. Liberty Foreman and Dr. Katherine Willetts, has closed a £650k investment round which was led by a syndicate of Angels in MedCity (AiMC) and other investors.

Draper Esprit announced this week that it has rasied a further £160 million to invest in Europe's best start-ups. The capital will be deployed over one year, rather than five, enabling Draper Esprit to realise its vision of providing long term, patient capital to help the best entrepreneurs build businesses that compete globally.

Reading University-based KYMIRA, a startup company developing energy-harvesting technology for performance enhancing sportswear and wearable devices in the medical and domestic healthcare markets, has closed its pre-seed funding round of £121k. The round was led by several members of Henley Business Angels (HBA), with participation of existing investors.

For six months, Diversity VC worked with the BVCA and Craft.co to analyse more than 1,500 senior investment professionals at 160 U.K. firms. While not exhaustive, this report is the very first of its type, and provides a valuable insight into the decision makers who are helping create the companies, jobs, cultures and products of the future.

Download the report here

The Go Beyond Investor report provides an update to the 2015 and 2016 reports on business angel portfolio strategies and performance and includes the following key findings: 

• Go Beyond Investing’s community as of December 31 2016, included 439 early stage investors. 374 have invested at least once and 291 have already invested multiple times. Members come from 33 countries across 5 continents, with the majority in Europe. 42% are women. Members interact virtually and meet in various locations throughout Europe and the US. In 2016, Go Beyond Investing began activities in Africa and the Middle East.

• Go Beyond Investing’s community have made investments in 60 companies from 14 countries through 143 investment rounds. These innovative startups come from a wide variety of sectors.

• Go Beyond Investing’s community have portfolio returns and liquidity: CHF 17.6m has been invested returning CHF 15.7m in cash, before fees, to investors up to December 2016. Of the 60 companies invested; 4 have exited positively and 51 are still active. 88% of members who made at least one investment have a break even or positive portfolio return. 37% have annualized returns >= 20%. Investors with 5 or more investments have an average portfolio annualized return of 16%.

Tim Mills of Angel CoFund explores the reasons why the angel funding sector remains robust in the face of economic uncertainty. 

Seedrs has joined a handful of leading alternative finance firms as the sole equity finance provider in an exclusive partnership with a new NatWest  programme for British SMEs called Capital Connections.

Maven Capital Partners has invested £1 million in ebb3, with the potential for an additional £0.5 million of follow-on funding.