Sapinda Holding B.V. has announced today that it has appointed Pascal Perrier as the group chief executive of La Perla, the global luxury-fashion brand.

Roomex, an ambitious global travel software business headquartered in Dublin, today announces it has raised €8 million series A funding, led by Draper Esprit.

Co-founded by Jack Donaghy (CEO) and Karl Glennon (CTO), Roomex allows businesses to book hotel rooms globally through its platform, enabling its clients to save time and money by centralising all bookings and invoices in one account. Focused initially on Ireland, Roomex has now grown to cover global travel markets and customers now include Musgraves, Dairygold, Kepak, Mitsubishi and Muller.

Littleblackdress.co.uk, the fashion business of Alesha Dixon has has closed a fourth funding round and has now raised a total of £2.5m. The latest cash injection will be used for job creation and further expansion.

Bowmark Capital, the mid-market private equity firm, has sold Nexus Vehicle Rental (Nexus), the UK’s leading corporate vehicle rental provider, to Phoenix Equity Partners for £142m.  The investment generated a return for Bowmark-managed funds of over 3x cost. Established in 1999, Nexus connects vehicle rental companies with corporate customers via a proprietary online booking and rental management system.

SaleCycle, a high-growth behavioural marketing business whose clients include Tommy Hilfiger and Nike, has received an £11.5m investment from BGF to further scale its operations.

Founded in 2011 by Dominic Edmunds, SaleCycle helps online retailers to increase conversion rates, recover abandoned sales, gain visitor insights and drive customer loyalty through its sophisticated software platform and email remarketing service. Since its inception the business has grown rapidly, delivering £15m in sales to a global blue-chip customer base across Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific.

Social-commerce fashion app 21Buttons has raised $17M Series B funding led by Idinvest Partners, the €8bn pan-European private equity and venture capital investor. The capital will mainly be invested in talent traction for tech and product profiles, and user acquisition.

All existing investors from the company’s $10M Series A Funding in Q3 2017 have followed on, including Kibo Ventures, Breega, Samaipata, JME VC, 360 Capital Partners and Sabadell VC.

Having introduced £15.3m of equity between 2010-2018, this represents a return of £42,686,301 for 50 members of the ENVESTORS private network and two introduced Funds.

easyCoffee’s plan to roll out 800 vending machines nationally in the next year have been given a boost following a £10 million investment by Stellar Asset Management. The UK’s only value coffee chain - part of the ‘easy’ family of brands that includes easyJet - has enjoyed rapid growth since it launched in 2016 and recently installed its 50^th vending machine in the market, matched by serving its millionth cup of coffee in its eight coffee stores.

Seneca provided a cornerstone growth capital investment to support the Gear4music IPO in June 2015. Since investment the company has experienced significant growth, providing a 5.2x return to investors.  Since IPO, York headquartered Gear4music – the largest UK based online retailer of musical instruments and equipment – has experienced growth in the UK and overseas, particularly across Europe and Scandinavia. Gear4music has enjoyed annual revenue increases from £24m to over £80m in 3 years as well as growing its market capitalisation to more than £150m.

The round was led by Insight Venture Partners, a New York-based venture capital and private equity firm. Felix Capital, the London-based venture firm who led YOOBIC’s Series A in November 2016, also participated.

Louis Poulsen has developed strongly under Polaris’ ownership since 2014, generating considerable revenue and earnings growth. The development has been driven by significant investments in the Group’s brand, product development and sales as well as organizational and operational improvements. Polaris has today entered into an agreement to divest its majority shareholding to Investindustrial Group Holdings SA, which is an investment subsidiary of Investindustrial VI L.P.

Triptease, a travel SaaS startup which helps hotels to get more direct bookings and bring hospitality online, has raised  $4m of additional funding from its investors BGF and Notion Capital, taking the total amount raised since last year to $13m.

Triptease provides a data-driven software platform to hotels looking to increase their online conversion rate in the face of intense competition from online travel agencies (OTAs). Hotels around the world are anxious to avoid the large commissions paid to OTAs but need tools to make sure that travellers complete bookings through their website.