Recognise Bank has appointed Ronelle Arbib as its new chief revenue & operations officer.

In the newly created role, Arbib will bring together Recognise Bank’s lending and savings, operations, product and marketing functions.

The new structure is designed to enable Recognise Bank to identify and respond to market opportunities more quickly, from developing new products and entering new markets and channels through to origination, completion and ongoing customer management.

Arbib has been with Recognise Bank for six years and has played a key role in its development from its early stages through to profitability. She joined as head of customer experience in 2020 before becoming COO in 2022.

Premier Payment Solutions Ltd has entered liquidation.

The firm, which traded as PPS Money and MTBS, provided money-remittance services, primarily supporting money service businesses in making cross-border payments.

It claimed to have 12,000 monthly active users and utilised a network of agents – registered with the Financial Conduct Authority – which were businesses or individuals providing payment services on its behalf.

Vytal Ventures, an athlete-backed, founder-led venture studio for health, fitness and wellbeing, has announced its first cohort.

Vytal Ventures launched in April 2026, bringing together Jack Malin and Dave Rushton, former founders of global fitness platform Membr, alongside Inner Circle, the founder-first investment platform backed by a global network of entrepreneurs, athletes and investors, represented by founding members Peter Crouch and James Cox. 

Four founder-led businesses – PHYT, Precision Coaching, vessa and Open Wellness – are joining the studio.

 

The second cohort for a female accelerator programme in Leeds has been unveiled.

Built to Rise, delivered by The Whole Point, is a growth accelerator for women-led businesses in West Yorkshire. 

Applications are encouraged from organisations employing 10 or more people, with £1+ million turnover in the last 12 months.

There are over 8,000 women-led businesses in Leeds, but fewer than 100 exceed £2 million in annual revenue.

The Built to Rise programme is designed by female leaders who have ‘been there, done that’ and aims to give female leaders the tools, connections, and confidence required to grow their business, secure funding, and increase revenue.

A new business phone and communications platform for UK small and medium sized businesses is being launched today by a Southampton company that spent years reselling other vendors’ systems before building its own.

Olatti is the work of telecoms entrepreneur Axel Molist, founder of business telecoms specialist circle.cloud, which he bootstrapped 11 years ago from a spare bedroom in Southampton.

The companies he founded and owns now employ more than 150 people between them and serve more than 10,000 users.

For most of that time circle.cloud, like almost every provider its size, supplied a large vendor’s platform under licence.

Axel decided to build his own instead – first the infrastructure and the network, then the software, which his team began writing in late 2021.

Almost five years later, and without any external funding, it launches today as Olatti.

Intrepid Growth Partners, a specialist growth investor dedicated to AI, has launched a longside the final close of its inaugural $525 million fund.

Intrepid was founded in 2023 by Mark Machin, former president & CEO of Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), Mark Shulgan, former head of growth equity at OMERS, and Ajay Agrawal, Professor at the University of Toronto and a leading AI economist.

Their shared vision has been to position Intrepid as a specialist AI-focused growth investor dedicated to backing the next generation of AI leaders.

Intrepid’s first fund is backed by more than 80 global Limited Partners, including multiple institutional investors and sovereign wealth funds – notably Temasek, Abu Dhabi Investment Council, British Business Bank, Export Development Canada (EDC), and Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) – alongside US and global institutions and leading family offices.

First Table, a restaurant booking platform, has raised $12m NZD to fuel its next phase of growth, with the UK now its fastest-growing market globally.

The platform offers diners 50% off their food bill when they book off-peak.

UK bookings are up 150% year-on-year, with London now its busiest city worldwide. The platform has also expanded to 22 UK and Irish cities, with 2,000+ restaurant partners across the region.

The funding will support further UK and Ireland expansion, with Europe also on the horizon.

The business has appointed former Uber and Deliveroo executive Alex Cappy as CEO.

A US and UK tech initiative designed to accelerate access for UK firms to the US has partnered with Nexus and the University of Leeds to bring US insurance technology experts to Leeds on 5th October.

Launched in 2022, the InsurTech Corridor is a non-profit collaboration between the UK and Connecticut, which has already assisted more than 20 scaling UK InsurTech, FinTech, ClimateTech and LegalTech ventures connect into the US insurance and financial services ecosystem.

Yorkshire tech firms will be able to meet the Hartford, Connecticut and Boston-based team at a free event from 2pm on October 5th that includes presentations on entering the US technology and insurance markets, as well as hearing from UK and US tech leaders about their experiences growing their businesses in North America.

The event will run from 12.30pm to 3.30pm at the University of Leeds Nexus innovation centre on Woodhouse Lane.

An Australian startup is launching in Britain with a simple proposition: learner drivers should not only ask whether they have driven enough, but whether they have experienced enough different driving.

Waylo is a free app designed for learner drivers and the family members or supervising drivers who practise with them between professional lessons.

Rather than focusing primarily on test routes, lesson management or a simple total of hours behind the wheel, Waylo builds a picture of the learner’s real-world driving experience across different road types, conditions, traffic levels and situations.

The app can automatically capture practice drives, show learners where their experience is broadening and where gaps remain, and suggest routes intended to add useful new experience.

Luca Bocchio has been appointed as a partner at Balderton, where he will focus on early-stage investments.

Bocchio joins the firm after more than a decade as an investor in the European technology ecosystem, most recently as a partner at Accel, where he focused on a broad range of industries from FinTech and consumer to, more recently, AI applications, defence and energy.

He has backed a number of category-defining European businesses including Trade Republic, SumUp, Vinted and Fuse Energy.

Prior to becoming an investor, her advised technology and consumer companies at Bain & Co. across Europe and Asia.

Entrepreneurs across Wolverhampton and the Black Country are set to benefit from a new NatWest Accelerator launched at the University of Wolverhampton.

The programme is designed to help people start, grow and scale businesses by connecting them with expert coaching, peer networks, investor connections and specialist support through NatWest’s community of more than 30,000 entrepreneurs across the UK.

The new hub gives ambitious founders access to support on their doorstep, helping turn local ideas into thriving businesses and creating new opportunities for growth across the region.

The launch was marked by a live pitch competition, where founders competed for a share of £100,000 to help accelerate their businesses. Among the winners was Rebecca Bognold, founder of Midlands-based Fibraxis, which is developing treatments for people living with lung damage caused by asthma.

Author: Chris Maguire

A new independent awards programme dedicated to recognising outstanding women across the North East has officially opened for entries and nominations today (September 14).

The North East Women of Excellence Awards will celebrate women creating impact through business, leadership, innovation and community across the whole of the North East.

The awards are the brainchild of Sophie Milliken MBE, who was included in BusinessCloud’s 2026 Northern Leaders list.

The awards have been created to fill a clear gap in the region, with no other independent North East-wide awards programme dedicated solely to recognising the achievements and contribution of women.

Entries and nominations are now open across 15 award categories spanning founders, leadership and workplaces, public service, mentoring, community impact, equality, diversity and inclusion, and wider role models.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Brave Bison has upped its takeover offer for fellow listed firm System1 to £47.5 million despite seeming opposition from the former’s biggest shareholder.

Last month marketing effectiveness research company System1 Group plc rejected a third offer of £43.1m from Brave Bison, which is its largest shareholder.

The first approach from Brave Bison, parent company of SocialChain, was an all-share affair, while the second contained a cash component. The third increased the cash component but not the value of the offer.

However it transpired last week that Lord Michael Ashcroft, who owns 23% of Brave Bison, had provided written support to System1 in its defence against the attempted hostile takeover – suggesting that he’s not in support of the move. Whether he would support the new improved fourth bid is unknown.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Big Technologies plc has ended settlement talks with its founder Sara Murray OBE.

The company is currently suing Murray for hundreds of millions of pounds after accusing her of forgery and deliberate falsification of documents to push through the company’s £577m IPO in 2021. 

Murray was dismissed as CEO in March 2025 over the accusations, and her assets have been frozen amid the subsequent and ongoing £320m High Court battle.

The company – trading as Buddi – is a provider of electronic monitoring solutions.

“The company’s preferred outcome for the SM proceedings remains for a settlement, whether mediated or otherwise. However, in the absence of meaningful settlement discussions, the company will continue to litigate the SM proceedings,” it stated this morning.

Murray continues to hold 25% of the voting rights in the firm and was recently successful in removing Camilla Macun as a non-executive director at its AGM. She and her supporters however failed to remove three other directors.

Following that, at the end of July, Ian Johnson retired from the board and as CEO. He had only joined the company 16 months before. Charles Lewinton was named acting CEO as it searches for a replacement.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Vanquis Banking Group plc has announced that Ian McLaughlin will step down as CEO for personal reasons by no later than the end of the year.

John Natalizia, currently deputy CEO and CEO of its subsidiary Snoop, will be appointed as interim CEO when Ian steps down, subject to regulatory approval.

In the meantime, the company’s board will initiate an internal and external executive search process to identify a successor to lead the group.

Natalizia joined Vanquis following the acquisition of FinTech Snoop in July 2023 and has been a member of the group executive committee since then. He was appointed deputy CEO in April 2026. 

 

Author: Jonathan Symcox

A Nasdaq-listed company is eyeing a takeover of London-listed SThree.

SThree is a global STEM workforce consultancy with £1.3 billion revenues led by Timo Lehne.

This morning Circle8 confirmed the offer after media reports of a mooted approach caused a spike in SThree’s share price yesterday. Its market cap is £377 million at the time of writing.

Trainline plc is to commence a share repurchase programme of its ordinary shares of 1p each up to a maximum consideration of £100 million.

The programme will be executed over 12 months and is expected to commence following the completion of the current £150m share repurchase programme today.

It comes as the transport ticketing platform reports that total group revenue for the six months to the end of August dropped 1% to £233m compared with the prior year.

Universal Music Group and ElevenLabs, the London-headquartered AI audio research and product company, have announced a multi–year licensing agreement and wider strategic collaboration to launch a new AI-powered music platform for fans as well as to jointly develop AI audio products for artists and songwriters.

The agreement – ElevenLabs’ first with a major label – encompasses licensing and product development. It reflects the companies’ shared commitment to the principles that AI-enabled music innovation should be built responsibly, respect human artistry, and enable artists and songwriters to share in the value created.

The ElevenLabs-UMG relationship will begin with a new AI-powered music creation platform built on licensed music and artist participation.

Now in development, the platform will give fans new ways to co-create with music from participating artists and songwriters, including through remixes and mashups, new track interpretations, and personalized vocal experiences. The agreement also includes the development of additional products and fan experiences in the months and years to come.

HelmGuard, an agentic firm co-founded by a former Palantir executive, has raised a £5.4 million seed round of funding.

The London firm is building AI agents to assess and verify how organisations manage their security and compliance. These collect and assess risk signals directly from source systems, cutting assessment cycles from weeks to hours. 

The round was co-led by Infinity Ventures and Frontline, with participation from FinTech Collective, Stage 2 Capital and Entrepreneurs First. 

The funding will support continued expansion in the US market, including a New York and San Francisco presence alongside HelmGuard’s London headquarters.

John Daley, co-founder and CEO of HelmGuard, spent eight years as an executive at Palantir.

deepmirror, an AI startup building the foundation model for drug design, has been awarded a Phase 2 Sovereign AI grant as part of Innovate UK’s support for British businesses building world-leading AI technologies.

The grant will fund deepmirror’s data acquisition strategy in which it selects the experiments most likely to improve its molecular property models, expanding its proprietary dataset that helps chemists apply AI effectively to drug design. deepmirror has been awarded a 70% grant rate on its project, which is valued at roughly £1M.

Following completion of a successful Phase 1 project in November 2025, this second grant will enable deepmirror to further its data acquisition as it builds the most comprehensive data set of molecular properties for its foundational drug design model.