Author: Jonathan Symcox

Llanelli Town AFC has become the first Welsh football club to join Republic Europe, the platform for fan and investor ownership in professional sports. 

The move opens the door for supporters and investors across the world to purchase a minority stake in the historic club.

The deal was brokered by Glasgow-based sports agency Intermezzo Sports Ltd, led by CEO Cesare Marchetti, which said the partnership marks a ‘significant milestone in Welsh football’.

Watford FC and AFC Wimbledon have previously run such crowdfunding equity schemes on the Republic Europe – formerly Seedrs – platform. Llanelli supporters will be hoping that the deal plays out in the manner of Wimbledon’s campaign rather than that of Watford.

Author: Patrick Killeen

Digital transformation specialist ANS has acquired Sci-Net Business Solutions, an Oxford-based Microsoft business solutions partner known for its ERP, CRM and cloud infrastructure expertise.

The deal, supported financially by Inflexion and Barings, adds Sci-Net’s 65 consultants, cloud specialists and developers to the Manchester-based firm.

It will expand the company’s capacity to deliver Microsoft-based digital infrastructure upgrades across sectors including retail, e-commerce, and wholesale and distribution.

Oxfordshire-headquartered Sci-Net, which has been operating for 25 years, is recognised for its implementation of Microsoft Dynamics NAV, 365 Business Central, CRM and Microsoft Azure solutions.

Author: Patrick Killeen

A startup developing a desktop-native AI assistant that learns from users’ real workflows has raised an uncapped £940,000 pre-seed round backed by a roster of high-profile investors.

San Francisco-based Attention.inc was founded by 19-year-old Canadian Aidan Guo and 23-year-old German Julian Windeck, who graduated from the University of Cambridge.

Guo previously ran footwear resale group PremeProfits and co-founded sustainable stationery startup Fern before leaving Carnegie Mellon to build Attention in San Francisco.

Windeck brings research experience from Cambridge, MIT and Berkeley, focusing on distributed systems and computer vision.

The founding team also includes graduates from Cambridge and ETH Zurich, as well as social media creator Cole Lee.

The round gained attention and participation from several key industry figures, including Lukas Haas (DeepMind, Sequoia Scout), Marvin von Hagen and Felix Schlegal (co-founders of Interaction), Silas Alberti (founding team, Cognition), Village Global, Liquid 2 Ventures, Everyday Intelligence and Bryan Pellegrino (co-founder, LayerZero).

The company is building an AI co-pilot designed to automate repetitive, multi-app desktop tasks.

Its software observes user behaviour to anticipate actions, streamline sequences and is expected to handle certain tasks autonomously.

JMAN Group, a commercial data partner for private equity funds and their portfolio companies, has appointed Kaushik Perinkulam Ravi as chief of staff to the CTO.

Perinkulam has spent close to two decades leading enterprise-scale transformation programmes at consultancies such as Cognizant and Agilisium – an emerging life science focused data analytics firm.

More recently, he co-founded TODAC, a management consulting and advisory firm for high-growth technology-based products and professional services organisations, where he has helped businesses sharpen their investor strategy, business planning, technology roadmap, go-to-market execution and operational excellence.

At JMAN he will work closely with CTO Leo Valan to drive strategic planning and operational execution of its data and AI offerings, aligning technology goals with client needs and fostering collaboration across teams and stakeholders.

Zen Internet has appointed Paul North as managing director of its partner division.

The Rochdale company says he will bring fresh energy and focus to the channel and underlining Zen’s ambition to be the UK’s leading alt-net aggregator.

North takes over from Stephen Warburton, who has run Zen’s partner division for over 20 years, but more recently had responsibility for both Zen’s partner and consumer divisions. Warburton will now concentrate fully on the latter.

North has held senior leadership roles at Entanet, later acquired by CityFibre, before joining Giganet to help establish its channel presence. When Giganet’s wholesale arm became part of AllPoints Fibre in 2023, he is said to have played a key role in shaping the new business, building its partner programme from the ground up.

Author: Patrick Killeen

Shares in Oxford Instruments plc have dropped 9.3% today after the tech products provider reported a slowdown in first-half revenue and orders across its imaging and analysis division.

The FTSE 250 constituent, which encountered a similar scenario in June upon selling Oxford Instruments NanoScience for £60 million, has cited global economic uncertainty and the impact of tariffs for the revenue decrease.

It also said contrasting order trends between its two divisions led to a mixed performance.

Market turbulence hit order intake in imaging and analysis harder than expected, while strong demand in compound semiconductors helped drive double-digit growth in its advanced technologies unit.

At a group level, order intake rose just over 1% on an organic constant currency basis compared with the prior year, with a 3% decline in the first quarter offset by nearly 6% growth in the second.

However, first-half revenue is expected to be down around 8% organically and 10% on a reported basis.

Author: Patrick Killeen

Shares in IP Group plc have risen 14.31% in early trading on Monday after the investment firm said it could receive future revenue linked to a series of obesity drug candidates being developed by US MedTech Metsera Inc.

Metsera was recently acquired by Pfizer in a deal worth up to $7.3 billion.

The FTSE 250 constituent, which primarily backs science and technology businesses, said it has financial exposure to a number of Metsera’s obesity programmes following its 2023 acquisition of Zihipp – a former IP Group portfolio company spun out of Imperial College London.

The London-headquartered investor owns and exclusively licenses to Zihipp intellectual property relating to several of Metsera’s compounds, including its lead candidate MET-097i, as well as MET-233, MET-034 and MET-067.

Under the licensing agreement, the company is entitled to milestone payments and tiered royalties in the low-single-digit range on eventual sales of the drugs, should they reach approval and commercial launch.

Author: Conny Kalcher, chief customer officer, Zurich Insurance

Our dashboards are glowing with metrics. We track conversion funnels, analyse click-through rates, and optimise for customer lifetime value. In our pursuit of data-driven perfection, we have engineered businesses for incredible efficiency.

But in this race to automate, we risk creating a critical vulnerability in our operating system: an empathy deficit.

While we’re busy optimising the customer journey, we must remember the destination for our customers isn’t just a transaction, but also a feeling of being seen and understood. This isn’t a soft-skill issue; it’s a commercial blind spot, and it’s costing businesses more than they realise.

The future of business is not a fully automated one. It is one where technology amplifies our best human qualities. The brands that will win are not those with the smartest AI, but those that use AI to make their people smarter, more connected, and more empathetic.

In this new technological era, our humanity has become our competitive advantage.

Risers:

Big Yellow Group – +17.31%
IP Group – +12.99%
Safestore Holdings – +9.63%
Fresnillo – +7.49%
Hochschild Mining – +7.34%

Fallers:

Oxford Instruments – -10.51%
Oxford Nanopore Technologies – -3.21%
Brunner Investment Trust – -2.68%
Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust – -2.36%
Babcock International Group – -2.28%

People with mental health issues to benefit from groundbreaking research, backed by £50 million in government funding, that could deliver more effective treatments.

Poor mental health affects 1 in 4 people in England, and its impact costs the UK economy £300 billion a year.

The government says the Mental Health Goals programme will attract industry partnerships and commercial clinical trials to the UK, supporting our £100 billion life sciences sector to grow and delivering on its Plan for Change.

Bristol HealthTech Gladys has closed a £1.5m seed funding round.

Gladys was founded by barrister Georgina Robinson and Alex Sorisi, a serial HealthTech founder, to match care seekers and those with support needs to the UK’s best local carers.

The raise was led by Cornerstone VC, with participation from Exceptional Ventures, Embryo Ventures, Ufi Ventures, Houghton Street Ventures and Conduit EIS Impact Fund.

Lloyds has announced that it is putting its chief executive and all senior leaders through a six-month Cambridge artificial intelligence training bootcamp, as the bank puts its full weight behind the technology.

CEO Charlie Nunn and his executive team will be taught to reimagine the future of banking with generative AI under the training, according to the Press Association.

Around 300 senior managers across the banking group are expected to take part in the bespoke programme, created with education technology firm Cambridge Spark and designed with experts from the University of Cambridge.

More than 110 Lloyds bosses have already completed the 80-hour course, which launched in March and takes six months to do.

The entire executive committee, which includes Mr Nunn, finance chief William Chalmers and Scottish Widows boss Chirantan Barua, are expected to complete the programme by the end of 2026.

Lloyds has been accelerating its shift to online banking and shutting more of its UK branches. The bank has also announced Bristol as its ‘AI capital’ of the UK, with the largest concentration of experts on the technology in the city.

Author: Patrick Killeen

Legal & General Group plc has appointed Scott Wheway to succeed Sir John Kingman as chair of the company.

Wheway will join the board at the start of 2026 as an independent non-executive director and chair designate, and will take over formally as chair following the company’s AGM on 21st May 2026.

At that point, Kingman will step down as chair and as a director of the board after nine years of service.

Google may be forced to make changes to how its search engine operates in the UK following a landmark decision by regulator the Competition and Markets Authority.

The CMA has designated Google with ‘strategic market status’, which means it may intervene in a ‘proportionate and targeted’ way to preserve competition in the market.

It expects to begin a consultation on any possible changes this year.

Google responded with a warning and claimed that UK businesses and consumers have been amongst the first to benefit from Google’s innovations, often months before their European counterparts.

“As a result, they see significant value: Google Search contributes billions of pounds a year to the UK economy — £118 billion in 2023 alone,” it stated.

“The UK enjoys access to the latest products and services before other countries because it has so far avoided costly restrictions on popular services, such as Search. Retaining this position means avoiding unduly onerous regulations and learning from the negative results seen in other jurisdictions, which have cost businesses an estimated €114bn.

“Many of the ideas for interventions that have been raised in this process would inhibit UK innovation and growth, potentially slowing product launches at a time of profound AI-based innovation. Others pose direct harm to businesses, with some warning that they may be forced to raise prices for customers.

“Google supports the CMA’s goal to ensure the UK’s competition framework mirrors the best interests of UK consumers and businesses. We hope to see outcomes that reflect such ambitions in the crucial months ahead.”

Author: Patrick Killeen

A company looking to transform insurance claims from a chronic pain point into a competitive advantage has raised £10 million in one of the largest InsurTech seed rounds on record.

The round for ClaimSorted was led by Atomico, with participation from Eurazeo, Y Combinator, firstminute capital, Start Ventures Capital and a network of insurance veterans.

The new funding will accelerate product development, expand operations across key global markets and scale partnerships with insurers seeking a modern alternative to legacy TPAs.

Author: Patrick Killeen

Electric vehicle charge point management platform Fuuse has raised £6 million in follow-on investment as it continues its journey towards profitability.

The round, led by existing investors YFM Equity Partners and Par Equity, follows a period of strong performance from the Lancaster-based business, which has more than doubled recurring revenues since its last investment.

The business provides a software platform that helps organisations optimise and manage their EV charging infrastructure.

It has rapidly expanded its footprint, working with major partners such as Arnold Clark and Be.EV, and recently entered new international markets including Italy and Sweden.

Aptamer Group plc has reported that it has won a new contract with a top-10 pharma firm.

Aptamer is a developer of synthetic binders for the life sciences industry.

The £112,000 contract ‘represents success-based repeat business with an existing partner, focusing on the development of Optimer binders against two protein targets to support the partner’s internal biomarker research’.

It builds on the group’s recent success in delivering validated Optimer binder pairs for a top-5 pharma partner. Aptamer retains ownership supporting future licensing and royalty opportunities.

Digital banking platform Shawbrook has confirmed that it will float on the London Stock Exchange and expects to join the main market of the exchange in early November.

Shawbrook will have an anticipated valuation of around £2 billion, which would make the Pollen Street Capital-owned FinTech’s IPO one of London’s biggest in recent history. The deal is expected to raise £50 million of net proceeds.

Pollen Street will sell all of its shares in the Brentwood-based company, which also released its Q3 results this morning. Its loan book increased to £18.3bn.

The Smarter Web Company has purchased another £9m worth of Bitcoin.

The London-listed web design firm has followed the trend of US companies such as Tesla in adopting a Bitcoin treasury policy.

It has bought another 100 Bitcoin at an average purchase price of £82,857, taking its total Bitcoin holdings to 2,650 – with £220m worth purchased to date.

Birmingham firm Spica Technologies has been acquired by American company HubStar.

Spica’s digital tools connect employees with their workplace environment and simplify access to services including wayfinding, comfort controls and wellness. It has deep expertise in IoT, indoor positioning and smart building integration. 

HubStar has built tools for AI-powered employee engagement, spatial intelligence and dynamic occupancy planning. Spica’s existing network of building technology providers and enterprise clients will join HubStar’s H2O platform.