Diary of a Crowdfunder: Crowdfunding the medicines of the future March 11, 2015 Venomtech’s Steve Trim explains why he’s looking to raise £350,000 on SyndicateRoom. While working as a drug discovery scientist at a pharmaceutical company in 2009, an idea was brewing in my mind concerning a problem I was facing. The problem was how to make new drugs to cure pain which had fewer side-effects and worked [...]
Private equity executive Randy Work ordered to make £72m divorce payout to ex-wife Mandy Gray by top London court March 10, 2015 A former private equity exec has been ordered to pay his ex-wife £72m – much more than he'd been offering. Randy Work, a former exec at Lone Star, said his estranged wife Mandy Gray should receive just £5m ($7.5m) of his wealth. He said his £150m ($225m) pot was protected by a post-nuptial agreement originally signed in Texas. [...]
Born in a barn, peer-to-peer lender Zopa is about to break £1bn in loans March 7, 2015 Peer-to-peer (P2P) is all the rage, with companies like TransferWise now all but household names and the descriptively named Lending Club, the largest US P2P company, recently becoming the first to IPO. What isn’t so well known is that Zopa, one of the peer-to-peer innovators, was founded in a barn, helping to spawn an [...]
City A.M. partners with Crowdnetic to launch crowdfunding site CityAMCrowdwatch.com March 5, 2015 City A.M. has partnered with Crowdnetic for the launch of its suite of UK crowd finance data. It features information on private UK-based companies publicly raising capital online through securitiesbased crowdfunding portals. Through CityAMCrowdwatch.com, investors can track a comprehensive listing of UK private offerings from leading platforms including Property Moose, Angels Den, Crowd for Angels, Fireflock, [...]
Seedrs co-founder Jeff Lynn talks risk, investor expectations and the future of crowdfunding March 4, 2015 In 2014, the fastest growing subsector of Britain’s alternative finance market was equity-based crowdfunding, according to figures from EY and the University of Cambridge. It grew by a whopping 420 per cent, with volumes totalling €111m (£80.5m). But such fast growth makes it increasingly vital that would-be investors have access to information about the industry. [...]
Peer-to-peer lender VPC Specialty Lending Investments eyes £200m IPO on the London Stock Exchange February 25, 2015 Peer-to-peer lender VPC Specialty Lending Investments is eyeing a £200m debut on the London Stock Exchange. The company will use the cash raised to invest in opportunities in the alternative lending market, it said today. The lender, owned by US-based Victory Park Capital, is wooing investors with a dividend yield of eight per cent, and will target total [...]
Double decker deal for Exponent Private Equity as group snaps up Big Bus Tours February 24, 2015 The former owner of thetrainline, Exponent Private Equity, has added another transport-related firm to its portfolio after snapping up sightseeing company Big Bus Tours. The mid-market buyout manager, which also owns Quorn Foods, and recently floated shares in HSS Hire, will buy the group from shareholders made up of two family backed groups. The Maybury [...]
UK private equity firms Circle for Evans February 22, 2015 BRITISH private equity players ECI Partners and Graphite Capital are vying to take a controlling interest in UK bicycle store chain Evans Cycles, it emerged yesterday. Crawley-based Evans is up for sale for £100m. Both buyout firms – who declined to comment – have been invited to submit second-round bids by Evans-owner Active Private Equity.
Crowdfunding could transform healthcare through innovative disease diagnosis and new treatments February 11, 2015 Crowdfunding provides a unique opportunity for the development of innovations that might otherwise fall by the wayside – between the government and private companies, there is simply not enough money available to turn all promising ideas into a reality. The merits have already been shown across a range of industries – over the last few [...]
LendInvest IPO: P2P mortgage firm hoping to be City’s first public crowdfunding site February 2, 2015 Peer-to-peer (P2P) mortgage firm LendInvest is hoping to be the first crowdfunding business to list on the London Stock Exchange with plans afoot for its debut in the next 12 months. The group’s chief executive Christian Faes told City A.M. that while the business has yet to appoint bankers to work on it, he said [...]