Symvan Capital's Kealan Doyle explains why EIS investments should generate ‘alpha’ in your investment portfolio and why fund management fees resemble carbon monoxide.

Praetura Ventures, the Manchester-based investor that backs early-stage businesses in high-value sectors, has successfully closed its second EIS fund at £7m in a move that brings the total raised by the firm to £22m in less than 12 months.

The £7m Praetura EIS 2020 Fund will enable the firm to continue to support the growth ambitions of high-quality scale-up businesses across the region and will now be deployed alongside the strategic support and guidance of the 25-strong team at Praetura Ventures.

Par Equity, the leading Scottish EIS Fund Manager, has appointed two new team members. Tom Croy joins as Investment Manager and Alastair Orr Ewing as Portfolio and Investor Relations Manager.

Ingenious has invested in TeraView, the pioneer and leader in terahertz technology and solutions, as part of a $6m A-series investment round. 

Symvan Capital has completed the first tranche of an up to £1 million investment in Custodiex, who have developed and pioneered a digital asset storage solution that is completely resistant to cyber-attacks.

Blackfinch has invested c.£650,000 in Oxford-based company Cyance, founded in 2007. Cyance helps business-to-business (B2B) clients forecast customer buying behaviour through its predictive analytics software.

Cyance’s pioneering behaviour-based marketing technology platform ‘Nexus’ is an Artificial Intelligence-powered platform for intent marketing. It enables businesses to target their customers with laser focus. Nexus can interpret and understand the behaviour of users browsing over 50,000 partner websites. It detects the digital footprints that businesses are leaving online, allowing clients to accelerate their sales along with their marketing return on investment (ROI).

Foresight Group and Williams Advanced Engineering have made a £1.5 million investment into enterprise collaboration and virtual reality /augmented reality software company Masters of Pie Ltd.  The Foresight Williams Technology EIS Fund led the funding round, which included Robert Bosch Venture Capital, and follow-on funding from existing investor Downing Ventures.  The Masters of Pie technology allows VR and AR to be more efficiently used by professionals working in immersive design, production, review and training, across multiple enterprise verticals.

Foresight Group is supporting the MBO of Signature Private Finance Holdings Limited from private equity firm, Cabot Square Capital, with an investment of £16.8 million to secure a majority stake in the Company.  Foresight will also provide an initial £5 million revolving credit facility for the specialist property lender.  Signature has also updated its brand, becoming Signature Property Finance, to better reflect its market offering.

Ingenious's Infrastructure Ventures EIS Service has led a £2.3m A-series investment round in 3D Repo, the pioneers of cloud-based design collaboration in Building Information Modelling (‘BIM’).  The investment represents another major vote of confidence and a financial boost for 3D Repo’s digital construction services business.

Kuber Ventures is holding its next Manager Showcase event for advisers on 6th February 2020 in London.

Now in its fourth year, the Kuber Manager Showcase is the ideal event for Advisers to start their due diligence by actually talking to the Managers.

This year’s Showcase will take place at a new venue the Farmers & Fletchers Livery Hall, 3 Cloth St, Barbican,London  EC1A 7LD.

Investment manager Downing LLP has sold Nightjar Sustainable Power Limited and Guillemot Green Energy Limited, the final exits by its EIS funds from a series of seven hydro investments based in Scotland.

Foresight Group has invested £3.9 million investment into disruptive subsea surveying company Rovco Ltd.  The investment comprises £2.0 million from the Foresight Williams Technology EIS Fund and £1.9 million from Foresight VCTs. The investment was part of a larger round totalling £5 million which included funds from existing shareholders.