London Business Angels Anchor £5.5m on New Syndicated Early Stage Investment
Online, March 27, 2014 (Newswire.com) - London Business Angels' (LBA) members have invested over £1m alongside co-investment of over £4.5m in 4 high growth potential SMEs in Q1 2014. The sums invested include co-investment of £600k by the Government's £100m Angel Cofund (ACF). The investments were made into technology companies across a wide range of sectors such as medical education networks, semi-conductors, life-sciences and medical devices and highlight the continued level of activity by the LBA network into the Technology Sector across the UK. Liverpool based medical leg bag specialist, Albert Medical, closed a circa £1m funding round which included a circa £300k investment by a syndicate of LBA investors.
Bristol based semi-conductors specialist, Blu Wireless Technology, closed the second tranche of over £1m of a circa £2.2m funding round including an overall £1m investment by a syndicate of LBA investors. The round was further supplemented by a £1m award from the West of England Growth Fund. Cambridge based life science specialist, Definigen, closed a circa £2.2m funding round which included a £145k investment by a syndicate of LBA investors and co-investment from a number of notable co-investors such as Cambridge Enterprise Seed Fund.
London based medical education network specialist, Meducation based in London completed a £700k funding round including a circa £100k investment by a syndicate of LBA investors. This round was supplemented by an additional £300k TSB grant.
Anthony Clarke, London Business Angels CEO, comments, "The pace of investment by LBA members has continued unabated in the first quarter of 2014 following our members investment of £3.5m with co investment of £11.5m across 22 companies in 2013. The average size of LBA's syndicated rounds closed in Q1 2014 was £1.5m which demonstrates the effectiveness of angel syndication in enabling companies to raise sufficient capital to be able to properly accelerate their growth trajectories. Our lead angels were important to completion of these funding rounds and it is encouraging that ACF were able to co-invest alongside LBA investors in a number of these deals. To date LBA has completed 11 co-investments alongside ACF and we look forward to making further syndicated co-investments following the launch of our next LBA EIS Roundtable Syndicate Fund 2014 on 6th April 2014."
