Independently owned corporate finance adviser, Castle Corporate Finance, is a proud sponsor of the Scale-Up category at the Lloyds National Business Awards. 

Co-founders Julien Sevaux and Tarek AbuZayyad have launched Eighteen48 Partners, a research-led private investment office addressing the needs of professional investors, sophisticated families and institutions. 

The new firm has already secured over $600m in assets under management from its founders and a group of prominent strategic investors, many of whom are shareholders, clients and advisors of the firm.  As advisors they provide specific asset class, industry and geographic expertise and contribute directly to the sourcing and evaluation of investment opportunities.  John Singer, former Managing Partner of private equity firm Advent International, is representing strategic shareholders on the Eighteen48 board.

Startup Funding Club has led a £250,000 seed round into fintech company Ember. The accounting software startup strives to make business simpler for contractors and SMEs by automating the entirety of the business administration and tax process.

Ember believes in an economy powered by small business and is creating a future where independent workers and companies can thrive without the need for an accountant. Its software helps businesses manage their financial obligations by automating the entire accounting process from bank transaction through to tax submission. Ember allows its users to see all the relevant numbers in one central feed – and even replaces technical terms for language that is easy to understand.

Capitolis, the innovative FinTech company reimagining and reshaping how the global capital markets operate, has announced the successful completion of its Series B round of $40 million, led by Spark Capital and SVB Capital. Existing investors, Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital and S Capital also participated in the round, bringing the total capital raised to date to $70 million. The investment will support Capitolis’ next phase of rapid growth, including the expansion of its technology platform, functionality and product offering. 

Envestors has announced that the banking giant Santander has acquired a 50.1% controlling stake in Ebury for £350m. This has provided several members of the Envestors private network huge returns on their original investments and placed Ebury firmly on the path to becoming the first Envestors unicorn portfolio company.

Santander has bought a majority stake in UK-based Fintech company Ebury for £350m. The bank now holds 50.1 percent in Ebury, a trade and foreign exchange facilitator for small and medium-sized companies. The Angel CoFund first invested in Ebury in its seed round in 2012 and has invested £1.3m in total across four funding rounds. The firm retains a shareholding of Ebury.

New data from leading global insights platform, Atheneum, has revealed that only one in four (25 percent) global finance experts expect consumer confidence in their countries to improve over the next six months, with UK experts highlighting the continuing uncertainty around Brexit as a key factor.

A total of £1.28 billion was raised in October through secondary fundraisings by investment companies, marking an all-time record for the investment company industry.

Fundraisings by existing investment companies reached £1.28b in October 2019, the highest level of secondary fundraising ever seen in a single calendar month according to new data from the Association of Investment Companies (AIC). The second-highest month for fundraising by existing investment companies was in June this year (£1.18b).

British Business Investments (BBI), a commercial subsidiary of the British Business Bank, has announced a new £15m Tier 2 capital facility to specialist bank, PCF Bank.

TotallyMoney has announced new growth funding from Silicon Valley Bank that will provide the credit experts with an additional £5 million to accelerate customer acquisition, recruitment, and develop its award-winning and market-leading technology platform.  The latest funding follows a substantial £29 million investment from Scottish Equity Partners (SEP) and Elliott Advisors (UK) Limited (Elliott), announced in December 2018.

Aston Lark has acquired Lloyd's broker Protean Risk, a specialist Lloyd’s insurance broker focusing on the investment industry, financial services, fintech and technology sectors with clients ranging from start-ups to international organisations. Protean is the first acquisition that has completed for Aston Lark after an investment by Goldman Sachs in September.