Author: Jonathan Symcox

Brave Bison’s largest shareholder has slammed the ‘hypocrisy’ of its board amid its latest offer for fellow listed MarTech firm System1.

Lord Michael Ashcroft took aim at the group – parent company of SocialChain – which earlier this week made a fourth cash-plus-shares bid of £47.5 million for marketing effectiveness research company System1 Group plc. Brave Bison is System1’s largest shareholder.

System1 said it had secured written rejection support from shareholders representing nearly 23% of its issued share capital — including Lord Ashcroft, who owns 23% of Brave Bison and 8% of System1.

Lord Ashcroft said: “I have no intention of accepting this wholly inadequate fourth offer.”

He continued: “From my own dealings with Brave Bison I have questions regarding their board and despite several requests for improved governance within their business and representation on their board, my efforts continue to fall on deaf ears. 

“The hypocrisy of how they interact with other boards in their position as a major shareholder does not escape me.”

Author: Jonathan Symcox

boohoo group plc’s selling spree has continued after it sold Nasty Gal to a New York company for $16 million (£12m).

The group, which now trades as Debenhams, acquired Los Angeles-based Nasty Gal in 2017 for $20m after it collapsed into bankruptcy.

Fast forward almost a decade and Nasty Gal is described as a “non-core” asset as Debenhams Group – which owns the boohoo, PrettyLittleThing and Karen Millen brands – transitions from pure online retailer to a marketplace-led business model.

Cambridge Cognition Holdings plc increased revenue and narrowed losses in its latest half-year.

The neuroscience technology company said that for the six-month period to 30th June 2026, revenues were £5m, up 16% (H1 2025: £4.3m). This included first revenues from the company’s new healthcare and consumer wellness pilots of £100k.

Adjusted EBITDA loss improved to £300k (H1 2025: loss £400k).

The company expects to deliver significant growth in full year revenue compared to the prior year – and this is after taking account of £700k of secure contracted revenue which has been rescheduled to next year based on its clients’ study requirements.

Finseta, a payments FinTech offering multi-currency accounts to businesses and individuals, has reported a drop in revenue while it moved into the red in its latest half-year results.

For the six months ended 30th June 2026, it reported revenue of £5.4m (H1 2025: £5.9m), which it blamed on “macroeconomic headwinds”.

Adjusted EBITDA loss was £1m (H1 2025: £300k profit).

Cash and cash equivalents at 30th June were £2.1m (31st December 2025: £1.5m), with net debt of £200k (31 December 2025: £400k).

However it grew active customers to 1,389 (H1 2025: 1,101).

Author: Chris Maguire

The Diary Of A CEO host Steven Bartlett has joined forces with Authentic Brands Group to invest up to $400m to back other creators in growing their businesses.

The Dragons’ Den star – through his holding company, Steven.com – has teamed up with billionaire Jamie Salter, founder of Authentic Brands Group, on their joint venture OBSN (Obsession).

OBSN will combine Bartlett’s expertise in building a creator business – audience growth, data, content and commercialising digital media – with Authentic’s background in retail, product, licensing, IP and global distribution.

Yorkshire County Cricket Club has agreed a new commercial partnership with the clean energy technology company UrbanChain, which will see Headingley powered by 100% renewable energy for the first time.

The agreement sees UrbanChain become Yorkshire Cricket’s exclusive energy partner, with renewable energy to be supplied from 1st January 2027.

Fast-growing clean energy technology company UrbanChain connects renewable energy generators to buyers, thereby providing users with greater choice, visibility and control over where their power comes from.

 

AcademyAI has raised £1.7 million in an oversubscribed pre-seed funding round to assess employees’ AI skills and train them for their real roles.

Most companies have given employees access to tools like ChatGPT or Copilot. Few know whether their people can use them well. 55% of AI decision makers say investment outpaces readiness.

AcademyAI assesses employees against a six-axis AI capability framework, built with the Alan Turing Institute Methodology. It identifies gaps in critical thinking, judgment, prompting, evaluating outputs and building skills, and then delivers personalised micro-learning and practical use cases built around each person’s real role.

AcademyAI is co-founded by Alex Packham and Andy Lambert – who founded ContentCal which was later acquired by Adobe for over $100m – Michael Walton and Rob Barnett, who both invested in ContentCal. Investors include Nexus Family Office and Panthera Family Office.

Regulators could block the takeover of Southern Co-operative by the Co-operative Group.

The deal, agreed in April, could ‌reduce competition in some markets, says the Competition and Markets Authority.

The companies have a week to offer legally binding undertakings to ​address its concerns.

 

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Shares in Trustpilot fell as much as 20% today despite posting fundamentally strong half-year results.

The London-listed online review platform said it was on track to deliver its full-year guidance, but that wasn’t enough for the market.

Trustpilot’s shares had risen recently as US growth and AI initiatives were anticipated to deliver upgraded guidance.

Magnitude Biosciences has secured £1.3m to scale its drug discovery platform.

The Durham University spinout is to accelerate the commercialisation of VivoScan, its pioneering in vivo high-throughput screening platform, which provides pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies with faster and more cost-effective ways to identify promising new treatments for ageing, longevity and neurodegenerative diseases.

Northstar Ventures led the round of investment, committing capital from the North East Spinout Inspire Fund, the North East Innovation Fund and the Northstar EIS Growth Fund.

Fuse Diagnostics, a developer of next-generation molecular diagnostics for point-of-need testing, has raised £1 million.

The money will accelerate commercialisation of its proprietary Flip product platform across six strategic sectors – life sciences research, bioprocessing, food safety, water quality, veterinary diagnostics and plant agriculture – and expand manufacturing capabilities at its headquarters in Cambridge.

The fundraise was led by The FSE Group and joined by existing angel investors alongside new angel investors, including Cambridge Capital Group.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

A listed bitcoin firm which counts Nigel Farage as a major shareholder has agreed a £12 million deal to buy Direct Bullion – the precious metals group which pays the Reform UK leader £22,500 an hour to promote it.

Direct Bullion’s founder and sole shareholder is Paul Withers, who is also chief strategy officer at Stack BTC.

The firm sells gold coins and bars directly to the public and to pension funds. It was included in the Financial Times FT 1000 European fastest-growing companies list in 2024.

Farage recently declared that he had been paid £270,000 by the company for 12 hours of promotional work. He has previously declared payments from the company of £91,200 and £135,000. His promotion of the company at Reform UK events has come under scrutiny from the media.

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.