The lead up to the summer is always a busy time of year for the MBM Corporate Team and this year is no exception. Investment activity across our UK client base has remained steady but we’ve seen a particular increase in exits for some of our client companies as well a dramatic increase in the number of VC funds that are now coming together.
With recent news highlighting the withdrawal of the European Investment Fund from new British VC funds, an important cornerstone investor may be seen to be withdrawing from the market but we have seen family offices becoming an increasing prevalent source of cornerstone investment. For many years the Scottish Investment Bank has been a cornerstone investor in Scottish high growth companies and many private investor groups have come to rely heavily on the SIB always being there with a 50% match. Sadly the annual budget for SIB and its investment funds has been dramatically reduced by the Scottish government from April and private investors will now need to work harder to co-invest with each other on deals where SIB’s support can no longer be guaranteed. Given this news we are delighted to see Pentech close its second venture fund of £88m and JB Equity successfully raise £10m from The British Innovation Fund for Roslin Technologies Limited, the ground breaking joint venture they established. We are working on other new fund formation deals which have a target closing of June and July, so the overall outlook remains positive.
We can’t list all of the deals we have been involved with but we hope the deals which we have set out below help highlight what we have been up to and give you a flavour for some of the work that we regularly advise on. If you would like help on a deal or would like to discuss how you might structure one for you, then please feel free to get in touch with any of our corporate partners (Kenny Mumford, Michael Arnott, Tracey Ginn and Stuart Hendry) or your usual contact within the firm: