Great Point, the UK’s leading independent media and investment firm, has invested in Seven Seas Films, an independent TV production company whose team has a track record of producing high-quality scripted drama and comedy that has led to a number of hit TV shows.

Great Point’s backing will combine financial investment with its unrivalled media industry expertise and contacts to help Seven Seas take advantage of the buoyant market for high-end scripted series and build a valuable slate of IP and a production hub for returning series and new formats.

Blu Wireless has raised £12.7m ($16.6m) in a growth funding round led by existing investors Arm, Calculus Capital, Kendall and MGL, and including major new investor Guinness Asset Management. The investment will be used to scale the worldwide deployment of devices exploiting Blu Wireless’s HYDRA mmWave technology across a range of 5G applications.  Blu Wireless is already working with tier-1 telecoms infrastructure providers and leading semiconductor companies in the US, Japan, the UK and mainland Europe as they look to deploy HYDRA based devices within applications demanding 5G levels of bandwidth and low latency connectivity. 

Deepbridge Capital has appointed Samantha Piddington as its new Head of Corporate Finance. Deepbridge has also added three further individuals to its investment team.

In his second article, James Murdoch considers the substantive advantages of SEIS/EIS for UK investors and whether the administrative aspects of these reduce some of the benefits or add to the risk of investing.

Calculus Capital hahs mamde a £2.5m investment in Wazoku. Wazoku’s main product is Idea Spotlight, an idea management platform used by enterprise clients including the UK Ministry of Defence, John Lewis & Partners, HSBC, and Aviva. The goal of the platform is to capture, evaluate, improve and implement ideas from across any audience, whether that’s employees, customers, partners, the general public or another group of stakeholders altogether.

Foresight Group and Williams Advanced Engineering have made a £2 million investment, as part of a £2.9 million growth round, into the disruptive technology business Synaptec Ltd. The Foresight Williams Technology EIS Fund led the round alongside £100,000 from the newly created Foresight Scottish Growth Fund financed by the Scottish Growth Scheme through a combination of Scottish Government funds and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), and £800,000 from existing shareholders, including The Scottish Investment Bank, the investment arm of Scottish Enterprise, Equity Gap and the University of Strathclyde.

Triple Point has invested nearly £1 million of funding to back the latest two companies in their Impact EIS Investment Fund. The fund targets fast-growing companies in the health, environment, youth and inequality sectors that are having a positive social impact, and are expected to generate significant capital growth.

The Impact EIS fund has invested £525,000 in GripAble, a company that has developed a digital hand grip to help rehabilitation for people living with a range of upper limb impairments, and £400,000 in We Are Digital (WaD), a digital and financial training provider, targeting the estimated 3 million people in the UK who lack digital skills to access services online.

The London based venture firm, Hambro Perks, have recently launched a Co-Investment Fund that is EIS eligible. 

Established North West capital finance advisory firm Acceleris Capital has announced a return to Greater Manchester as part of a formal spin-out from Seneca Partners Limited. The spin-out is on the back of increasing demand from regional SMEs for capital advisory services, fundraising support and post-transaction assistance.

A new British-South Asian low-cost long haul airline, flypop, has completed a Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) funding round of £80,000 with Angel Investment Network (AIN), the world’s largest online platform connecting angel investors with start-up businesses.

EMV Capital has acquired a controlling stake in Bay Area-based Vortex Biosciences, and a further investment package to accelerate the company’s development.

Great Point Media, a UK leader in entertainment development, production and distribution, announced it has invested in three UK companies from its recently launched Great Point Ventures fund.