Entrepreneur and investor Nick Jenkins, who founded moonpig.com and is a former star of BBC TV's "Dragon's Den", is to be the opening keynote speaker at this year's VCT & EIS Investor Forum on 21st November.

Praetura Ventures is raising money for its second Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) fund, the Praetura EIS 2020 Fund. The company plans to raise up to £10m to invest in around six to eight early-stage companies predominantly in the North of England. This comes less than six months after the VC firm’s record-breaking £15m maiden EIS fundraise.

Last week the Digital Economy Council hit headlines with what was, in many respects, a good news story. In the first seven months of the year, UK tech received a record-breaking £5.5bn of foreign investment. There is no doubt some investors will have been enticed by the cheaper pound, but even so the figures are positive and reassuring – particularly when you consider that foreign investment in the rest of the economy is actually falling.

Scottish biotech company, and the market leader in gene therapy control technologies, Synpromics, has been bought by AskBio, the American pioneer in gene therapeutics.  EIS and VCT fund manager Calculus Capital, which first invested in Synpromics in 2015 and invested £5.6m into the company in total, will receive a return on investment that significantly exceeds target returns.

Foresight Group has made a £1.5 million investment from the Foresight Williams Technology EIS Fund into INSPHERE Ltd, experts in measurement and automation using innovative value-added metrology.

INSPHERE was founded in 2013 by CEO Ben Adeline and CTO Oliver Martin, originally providing metrology consultancy, sub-contract management and training to manufacturing businesses including Rolls-Royce, Airbus and Jaguar Land Rover.

Industries such as aerospace, automotive and defence all employ highly automated manufacturing processes which rely on production lines of robots performing precise and repeatable actions.

By Tom Hopkins, Business Development Director at Parkwalk

The latest international university league table, compiled by data and research group QS and published in June, saw Oxford rising from fifth to fourth overall. This move up the global ranking coincides with increased interest in the investment opportunities presented by its spin-out companies. 

In this piece, Tom Hopkins of Parkwalk looks at how Oxford is producing world beating companies that are of strategic importance to the UK, and how investors can access the investment opportunities spinning out of one of the best universities in the world.

Triple Point's Belinda Thomas considers what alternatives there are for investors seeking income generating investments in a climate of political and economic uncertainty.

North West-focused Praetura Ventures has backed fertility startup Dr Fertility in a £1m seed round. The first investment of Praetura’s maiden EIS Fund will be used to develop Dr Fertility into a full-service digital health platform.  Founded by Dr Lucy Buckley, PhD and Kobi McCardle in June 2018, Dr Fertility was created to address the problem of conflicting, unreliable information about fertility. With patients having to wait up to two years between GP advice and the first outpatient appointment, and no central, official platform for fertility advice, Lucy and Kobi saw the need to support the 1 in 7 couples in the UK that are affected by infertility. 

Praetura Ventures today has closed its 2019 Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) fund at £15m, making it the largest-ever maiden EIS fund. It will use the money to help address the £300m venture funding gap in the North West of England. The £15m investment vehicle will back 8-10 tech-enabled early-stage businesses predominantly in the region, who will use the capital to hire key staff, invest in new technologies and, ultimately, scale.

London-based Q-Bot, an EMVC portfolio robotics company that has developed a solution to remotely apply underfloor insulation, has successfully completed a £3m Series A investment round to fund the next stage of its growth.

Q-Bot has developed a range of robotic and AI technologies that can survey, maintain and upgrade buildings. Q-Bot uses robots to apply underfloor insulation underneath suspended floors to improve their energy efficiency and comfort with much less disruption and cost than traditional methods. Q-Bot’s customers include housing associations, local authorities, private homeowners and landlords.

Dan Perkins, a Director at Great Point, the UK’s leading independent media and investment firm talks about the opportunities in film and media investment and why the sector's future looks brighter than ever. 

Calculus Capital and Stargrove Pictures have launched a new EIS fund in association with the British Film Institute (BFI) to help deliver vital funding for the UK’s most promising screen content companies.