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Lysanda has raised its second round investment of £1.3 million, following successful trials with a number of leading global mail and express distribution companies. Lysanda will use the fund for further development and commercial rollout of its pioneering vehicle emissions and wasted fuel monitoring technology. Curzon Park Capital, which manages the Sustainable Technology Fund (STF), leads the second round. Also investing alongside Curzon were VC firm LogiSpring and a number of private investors. Click here for more.
AIM listed Low Carbon Accelerator Limited (LCA) has invested a further £283K in QuantaSol, which has achieved its stated milestone by investors. QuantaSol, a third generation photovoltaic solar cells developer, has delivered a single junction cell, manufactured on a commercial production line, with efficiency of 28.3 percent. New investment also brings in a new CEO. LCA’s second tranche brings its total investment in QuantaSol to £2.4m, representing a significant equity holding. Click to find out how much.
 Mercia Technology seed fund & Finance Wales invest in Nightingale EOS
The Mercia Technology Seed Fund, a £12.8 million venture capital fund focused on the West Midlands UK and Finance Wales have teamed up to invest in Nightingale-EOS. The company uses a laser-based technology called beam profile reflectometry to measure thin coatings applied to medical implants such as cardiac stents and replacement joints. Nightingale-EOS will open an applications laboratory and sales office in Coventry University Technology Park , where the West Midlands Manufacturing Measurement Centre is also based. Click here.
Parallel computing software corporate carve out raises £400K
A corporate carve out from Concurrent Thinking Ltd has raised a syndicated venture capital funding round of £400,000. Based out of Warwick, UK, Allinea is a post-product, post-revenue, profitable specialist software tools developer for parallel computing systems. The syndicated investment round was co-led by the Mercia Technology Seed Fund and the Midven managed Advantage Growth Fund - both are publicly sponsored funds. More information here.
 DFJ Esprit to acquire 3i portfolio and launches two new funds
DFJ Esprit has launched two new funds, one a classic VC fund DFJ Esprit III with a target of €150m ($215m) that will invest in early and late stage technology companies and another Encore Ventures I, a £170m ($280m) secondary vehicle fund which will acquire portfolio companies from existing distressed VC funds who want to offload their stakes in a secondary market. The planned acquisition of 3i's European VC portfolio adds to its wide range of 60 portfolio companies. Click here for more.
A new Nordic company, There Corporation, will combine the mobile platform technology of Nokia Home Control Centre (HCC), the energy grid and smart metering products of the Comsel team and service providers in the energy and real estate segments. With an initial funding of €4.5 million from the current management team and VNT Management, the new company will focus on scaleable energy saving solutions and platforms on which more third party smart appliances will be added in the future. More here.
The European Commission has granted the Enterprise Management Incentives (EMI) schemes under state aid approval until April 2018. The EMI scheme provides a tax break when share options are exercised by SMEs.Multi-national start-ups and SMEs with operations in UK will also be eligible for the EMI tax break in the future. For FY07 , the total number of companies operating EMI was 9,110, where the total EMI tax relief amounted to £240m. For more information click here.
Ex-engineer & VC takes the helm at UKFI
Sir David Cooksey, who started his career as an engineer before forming Advent Venture Partners in 1981 - one of the first venture capital firms in the UK - has been appointed chairman of UK Financial Investments Limited (UKFI), the company set up to manage the Government’s massive bailout of banks (Northern Rock, Bradford & Bingley, Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds Group). It is hoped that with the new brush, UKFI controlled banks will start lending to businesses at competitive rates again. Click here to read more.
In a speech at Tokyo University, John Swinney, cabinet secretary for finance and sustainable growth, invited Japanese companies and universities to work with Scottish counterparts in finding new ways to help achieve renewable energy goals. Citing new opportunity, where up to 10-12GW of new offshore wind power will be deployed in Scottish waters, and the recent investment by Mitsubishi electric in its Livingston facility, where the company will begin production of its low carbon air-to-water residential heat pumps, Mr Swinney also invited more Japanese companies to take part in the £10 million Saltire Prize competition. More here.
The OION investor network based in Oxford, UK, which assists technology companies to secure funding of up to £2 million, won this year's British Business Angels Association (BBAA) 'Angel Network of the Year' award. The award was from a from a nomination shortlist that included seven other angel networks. The network raised £4.5 million for 21 deals from its members, enabling it to leverage an additional £10 million from other sources. Click here.
‘Big Green Challenge Plus’ competition receives £600k more on top of £1m
Seventeen locally based cleantech community projects in England aimed at reducing CO2 emissions and local energy sources will receive up to £20,000 funding under a new partnership between UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and NESTA. The additional funding of £600K was prompted due to the high quality of applications for the main ‘Big Green Challenge’ competition, where the winner(s) will share the prize money of £1 million. Click here.
Capital for Enterprise kicks off with two deals worth £3 million
The £75m Capital for Enterprise Fund (CFEF), a late stage growth fund compromising £50m from UK Government and £25m from high street banks (Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds TSB and RBS), made its maiden investments via two chosen fund mangers. KeTech will receive £2m and Vamosa will get £1m of equity funding. There is still a spare £15 million left in the CFEF, which is available as co-investment with any other VC fund if they care to apply for it. Click here for more information.
 Converting plastics into concrete logic: Novacem attracts new investments
Stuart Evans, the founding CEO of Plastic Logic, has joined another lab to technology deployment project, but this time it is low carbon cement. He is now founding chairman of Novacem, a spin-out of Imperial Innovations Group plc., that converts magnesium silicates into magnesium oxide using a novel process to form a new type of low carbon cement. London Technology Fund (LTF) lead a £1m syndicate investment in Novacem, which includes Imperial Innovations Group plc and the recently created “Royal Society Enterprise Fund”. Click here for more information.
115 percent low interest loans for solar projects
You can now get 115 percent loan financing deals for solar projects outside the USA, from Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank). The bank offers loans directly to project developers or project owners that will cover 85 percent of the US made product cost and up to an additional 30 percent of the cost of the product to be applied to local installation costs. Remaining project costs can be financed with separate (guaranteed) bank loans if needed. This is just one of a series of numerous US-lead initiatives that is going to raise the spectra of further protectionism and provide a further competitive advantage to US based technology vendors. More details here.
Ex-engineer & VC takes the helm at UKFI
Sir David Cooksey, who started his career as an engineer before forming Advent Venture Partners in 1981 - one of the first venture capital firms in the UK - has been appointed chairman of UK Financial Investments Limited (UKFI), the company set up to manage the Government’s massive bailout of banks (Northern Rock, Bradford & Bingley, Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds Group). It is hoped that with the new brush, UKFI controlled banks will start lending to businesses at competitive rates again. Click here to read more.
Investment network wins BBAA angel network of year award
The OION investor network based in Oxford, UK, which assists technology companies to secure funding of up to £2 million, won this year's British Business Angels Association (BBAA) 'Angel Network of the Year' award. The award was from a from a nomination shortlist that included seven other angel networks. The network raised £4.5 million for 21 deals from its members, enabling it to leverage an additional £10 million from other sources. Click here.
Scottish early-stage start-up programme delivers £900k of extra revenue in 12 months
A one-year programme to secure rapid revenue breakthroughs for early-stage businesses in a programme co-funded by Scottish Enterprise, Scotland’s enterprise, innovation and investment agency, has delivered a total of £900K in additional revenues for seven Scottish technology start-ups. Click here for more information.
Global downturn causes slump in cross-border investment, says OECD
Foreign direct investment (FDI) into 17 OECD countries, including France, Germany, Japan, the UK and the US, fell by 50 percent in the first quarter of 2009 compared with the last quarter of 2008, according to estimates by the OECD released at the OECD Forum in Paris. If this rate of decline persists through 2009, OECD economists predict total FDI into the 30 OECD countries will fall to around USD 500 billion this year from a 2008 total of USD 1.02 trillion. More information here.
Live concert network gets €3.3m for its online platform
For the vast majority of artists, live concerts now represent the most important source of income, due to declining revenues from studio recordings. Music Networx offers live acts and rights owners a seamless value chain from recording and production to on- and off-line marketing and distribution of live performances. Earlybird will invest €2.0m in this round, to join existing investors, DuMont Venture and Klaus Wecken who will invest a further €1.3m. Concert goers can for example purchase a USB stick or mobile download of the concert they have just attended. Click here.
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