Independent full-service marketing agency CNS Media has relocated its Manchester operations to a new office at Colony, Piccadilly as the business continues its growth across media, digital and creative services.

The move places the agency in the heart of Manchester city centre, just minutes from Piccadilly train station, providing improved access to clients, recruitment opportunities and collaborative working facilities.

Founded in Chesterfield in 2006, CNS Media now operates across Chesterfield, Manchester and Birmingham with a team of more than 43 specialists.

The new Manchester office comes following a period of sustained growth for the business, including recent promotions and new hires.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

IQE plc has raised £81 million, including substantial strategic investment from a US semiconductor firm, as revenue falls and losses deepen.

The Cardiff-based company is a supplier of compound semiconductor wafer products and advanced material solutions.

Following the conclusion of a strategic review, IQE announced a £45m strategic investment from MACOM Technology Solutions Inc. in the form of £30m of equity and £15m in new non-interest bearing convertible loan notes. 

Concurrently, IQE and MACOM also entered into long-term supply agreements while the latter’s COO Robert Dennehy and vice president David O’Carroll will be appointed as non-executive directors of IQE. 

The remainder of the fundraise comprised a £23m redemption and reinvestment of convertible loan notes by existing noteholders, as well as a £13m placing and retail offer.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Computacenter plc, an independent technology and services provider headquartered in Hertfordshire, has acquired Government Acquisitions Inc for an enterprise value of up to $92 million (£69m).

The acquired company is an IT solutions reseller focused on the US federal government market and the transaction has been cleared by the US Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.

It is expected to close on 1st June 2026.

Bristol-based Symmetry has reported a strong financial performance for the 2025/26 financial year, completing its first year of employee ownership with turnover of almost £3m and profit of £449k.

The SaaS business, which operates the bluQube cloud-based accountancy platform, said revenue was supported by a stable revenue base, strong customer retention and continued demand from both new and existing customers.

Monument Bank, ‘the bank for the mass affluent’, has appointed Xavier De Pauw as director of lending.

De Pauw joins from Kennek, a VC-backed FinTech that he co-founded to build private credit infrastructure connecting non-bank lenders with institutional capital.

The platform onboarded approximately 30 lenders managing £1 billion in loans, specialising in UK bridging and development finance.

Earlier in his career, De Pauw co-founded MeDirect Bank, a PE-backed, ECB-regulated challenger bank focused on mass-affluent clients, deploying €6 billion across asset-backed structures, residential mortgages, leveraged finance loans and covered bonds.

As CEO of MeDirect Bank Belgium, he built the lending, credit investment business and digital mass-affluent savings & investment businesses while contributing to growing the group to 250 employees across three countries. He grew MeDirect Bank Belgium from zero to €1.5 billion in client deposits and investments over four years.

Friends, family and former colleagues of Abi Godfrey will today (May 28th) complete the Yorkshire Three Peaks Challenge in her memory. Godfrey, a director of Grant Thornton’s North West corporate finance business, died in February just two weeks after giving birth to her first baby, Leo. A £500,000 campaign has been launched to support Leo and his family. It currently stands at £83,000. You can donate here 

London has reclaimed its position as Europe’s leading tech ecosystem, overtaking Paris in the latest Dealroom Global Tech Ecosystem Index 2026 . 

Ranked fourth globally, the city remains one of the world’s top hubs as competition intensifies in the race to lead the next wave of AI and deep tech innovation.

The UK capital’s return to the top spot is driven by stronger venture capital investment, continued unicorn creation and its depth across sectors, reinforcing its position as Europe’s most established startup ecosystem. 

Mykor, a biotechnology company transforming industrial and agricultural waste into scalable low-carbon construction products, has secured £4 million in funding.

The round was led by Clean Growth Fund, with participation from the British Business Bank’s South Investment Fund via The FSE Group, Green Angel Ventures, and support from Innovate UK’s investor partnership programme. 

The latest raise brings total funding secured by the Bristol company to £7.5m, including £5.5m in equity investment and £2m in grant funding.

Go Swag, a tech-powered platform modernising corporate gifting, has raised £3.75 million in a funding round led by Mercia Ventures.

Go Swag enables global brands to deliver premium, on-brand gifts worldwide, and works with over 1,000 companies, including Meta, Apple, ElevenLabs, Netflix and n8n. With a 30-person team based in Glasgow, Go Swag has achieved five consecutive years of triple-digit compound annual growth (112% CAGR) and is now expanding into the United States.

Techstart Ventures and strategic angel investors joined the round, which brings its total funding to $6.2m.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Mia Drennan is representing the UK in the 2026 EY World Entrepreneur of the Year finals in Monaco this week.

Drennan, founder and CEO of GLAS, is among finalists from 46 countries.

Before GLAS, she built BNY Mellon’s EMEA Trustee and Agency business and held senior finance roles throughout the industry.

“Entrepreneurship has given me freedom, confidence and the ability to believe I can do anything I put my mind to and overcome any challenge that comes my way. It has helped me discover how resilient I am,” she said.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Pure Data Centres Group has secured £2 billion in financing.

The London firm is one of the fastest-growing hyperscale cloud and AI infrastructure platforms across Europe and the Middle East.

The financing includes a £1.6bn facility secured against Pure DC’s Dublin and Amsterdam campuses, alongside an increase in its corporate-level financing to around £410m. 

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Shares in Manchester spinout company Nanoco have dropped 55% in trading today after it said this morning that it is looking to delist from the main market of the London Stock Exchange.

Nanoco Group plc, headquartered in Runcorn, develops and manufactures cadmium-free quantum dots and other nanomaterials. These are used in monitors, TVs and infra-red sensors.

In 2024 it began cutting jobs in an attempt to preserve cash as it explored a sale via financial advisor CDX Advisors. However in January this year it said it had terminated that process and it said this morning it would seek shareholder approval to delist.

Thorntons has advised Hosel, an innovative golf comparison marketplace platform described as ‘Skyscanner for golf’, on a successful £500,000 fundraising round.

The round was led by London-based venture capital firm Ascension Ventures.

The transaction was supported by Thorntons’ Ventures and Innovations team, who provided strategic legal advice throughout the fundraising process.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Pets at Home has seen its shares rise 8% in trading today despite reporting a big drop in profits in its latest annual results.

New CEO James Bailey painted a positive picture. A former boss at Waitrose, he was appointed to lead a turnaround following the sudden departure of McGowan, a former McKinsey consultant and Sky executive with no retail experience.

He has been in post for just a few weeks. Sarah Pollard, formerly of PZ Cussons, has also taken over the CFO role from the retiring Mike Iddon this month.

Digital bank Tide has reached 200,000 female–led businesses on its platform – representing 25% of its total UK membership – a milestone it set itself to reach by the end of 2027.

To mark the moment and double down on its commitment to female founders, Tide is returning as headline partner of the 2026 Tide everywoman Entrepreneur Awards, extending a programme it has championed since last year.

The milestone is the result of sustained, deliberate investment in female entrepreneurship. Through its Women in Business programme, Tide has provided practical tips, expert insights, masterclasses and events specifically designed to help female founders start, scale and succeed.

Caudal Energy, a baseload energy company developing a new class of predictable renewable power systems, has raised £4.3 million in funding led by Oxford Science Enterprises (OSE) and Empirical Ventures, with participation from others including existing investors Zero Carbon Capital and Creator Fund.

The investment will support the next phase of development and full-scale testing of Caudal Energy’s breakthrough fin-based tidal technology at Strangford Lough, Northern Ireland. First commercial deployment is targeted for 2028.

The Caudal Generator is designed to deliver predictable, reliable and scalable renewable power from a significantly broader range of tidal sites than traditional systems, at costs competitive with established technologies such as offshore wind. At a system level, tidal energy enhances energy security and significantly reduces grid system costs by providing a consistent source of baseload energy.

John Kennedy, CEO of Caudal Energy, said: “The future energy system needs renewable power that is not only clean, but dependable and built to scale. We founded Caudal to challenge the assumption that tidal energy has to remain complex, costly and niche.”

Andy Straiton, Investment Lead at Oxford Science Enterprises, commented: “The combination of simpler deployment, lower operational complexity and access to a far broader range of viable sites can make tidal energy cost competitive with established renewables such as solar and wind.”

Johnathan Matlock, General Partner at Empirical Ventures added: “As energy systems evolve, solutions that combine predictability, operational practicality and cost competitiveness will become increasingly valuable.”

Author: Chris Maguire

An AI-native platform that aims to transform the deal origination sector has raised £1.7m in pre-seed funding.

London-based Handshaik is the brainchild of Gen Z founder Joshua Port, who came up with the idea while working in M&A at KPMG.

The 26-year-old, who is the son of serial entrepreneur and BigChange founder Martin Port, realised that AI and workflow automation could streamline the process of identifying potential targets.

After building in stealth for 15 months, he launched Handshaik to the market earlier this year and has already compiled 5.5 million company profiles and attracted hundreds of users to the platform.

The startup recently closed a £1.7m pre-seed fundraise from more than 20 angel investors.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Physiomics plc has won multiple contracts following a boardroom coup.

Physiomics is a mathematical modelling, data science and biometrics company which supports the development of new therapeutics and personalised medicine solutions.

Activist investor Mike Whitlow was appointed executive director of the listed firm recently after more than three-quarters of shareholders voted to remove former chair Dr Jim Millen as part of a wholesale replacement of the board.

The fight for control of Physiomics had turned nasty, with Dr Millen accused of “personally derailing” the boardroom coup led by Whitlow – who accused the corporate leadership of value erosion for shareholders – and of “throwing his fellow directors under the bus at every opportunity to cling to control”.

Now matters are somewhat calmer after it secured multiple new contract awards this month with a combined value of over £345,000.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Pets at Home has reported a big drop in profits in its latest annual results – but new CEO James Bailey painted a positive picture.

In the Cheshire-based company’s first full-year results announcement since the departure of former CEO Lyssa McGowan in September 2025, revenue fell 0.8% and remains just under £1.5 billion. However profit before tax was £86.5m, representing a 28.3% drop.

Bailey, a former boss at Waitrose, was appointed to lead a turnaround following the sudden departure of McGowan, a former McKinsey consultant and Sky executive with no retail experience.

He has been in post for just a few weeks. Sarah Pollard, formerly of PZ Cussons, has also taken over the CFO role from the retiring Mike Iddon this month.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Manchester spinout company Nanoco is looking to delist from the main market of the London Stock Exchange after failing to find a buyer.

Nanoco Group plc, headquartered in Runcorn, develops and manufactures cadmium-free quantum dots and other nanomaterials. These are used in monitors, TVs and infra-red sensors.

In 2024 it began cutting jobs in an attempt to preserve cash as it explored a sale via financial advisor CDX Advisors. However in January this year it said it had terminated that process and it said this morning it would seek shareholder approval to delist.

Last year Nanoco – which currently has around 40 staff and a cash balance of £10.1 million – settled a legal case with South Korean multinational electronics corporation LG Technologies over alleged patent infringements. However it ended legal action against Shoei Chemical Inc. and Shoei Electronic Materials, Inc with no payments made.

In 2023 it won $150m in a legal dispute with Samsung, settling on a no fault basis for the alleged infringement of the group’s intellectual property.