Author: Chris Maguire

Lindsey Burrow, Collette Roche, Steve Morgan, Michael Ingall, Frank Rothwell and Figen Murray were among the big winners on a glorious night at the 2025 Northern Leaders awards.

Now in their second year, Northern Leaders celebrate the leaders who make the North a better place and were inspired by the late, great Sir Howard Bernstein.

More than 130 people from across the North packed into KPMG’s Manchester office for a glorious celebration of the best of the North.

There were plenty of tears in the room as a video was played at the end of evening of Lindsey Burrow collecting the Northern Leaders Overall Award.

Her husband, rugby legend Rob Burrow, died in 2024 after a brave battle against motor neurone disease (MND).

Earlier in the day she and her three children had joined the Prince of Wales at the official opening of a specialist centre for motor neurone disease (MND) in Leeds named in her late husband’s memory.

Lindsey Burrow, who works as an NHS physiotherapist, is a published author and has helped raised millions of pounds for charity.

She was presented with her award by BusinessCloud’s executive editor Chris Maguire at the home of Leeds Rhinos.

The headline sponsor of Northern Leaders was OBI and the other sponsors were CG, Rochdale Development Agency, GM Business Growth Hub, Lockton and  J.P. Morgan Private Bank.

There were a total of 16 award categories with several regional winners.

Technology trade association techUK’s new Local Digital Index shows that while the UK tech sector continues to outperform most of the economy, growth remains uneven.

The sector contributes £101 billion in Gross Value Added (GVA) and employs 1.7 million people.

Yet growth and investment remain too heavily concentrated in London, Oxford, and Cambridge, the research finds, despite world-class potential across the whole of the UK.

Drawing on 23 economic, connectivity, and skills indicators, the Index provides local leaders, investors and policymakers with a clear picture of where and how the UK’s digital economy can grow faster and more inclusively.

Vyntelligence has secured £23 million in private equity funding to fuel its expansion in the United States.

The AI video firm has been backed by Blume Equity and Morgan Stanley Investment Management’s 1GT climate fund to assist more frontline workers with smart technology.

Frontline workers use it for jobs as diverse as in-home HVAC/ EV to fibre deployment, boiler maintenance and complex in-field energy infrastructure audits. The AI-enabled video helps engineers to simplify and speed up in-field processes and save hours of lost time in manual reporting and data-gathering. 

It calls upon data gathered over a decade and claims to enable 85% faster deployments, 90% faster customer service resolution, huge emissions savings from unnecessary visits and materials savings from re-works.

Focus Group, a provider of business technology solutions, has acquired Hertfordshire-based Chalkline.

Chalkline specialises in delivering IT managed services to SME businesses across the UK, with particular strength in the London area.

Trading since 2016, it claims to have built advanced automation tools with deep expertise in Microsoft solutions.

The UK Space Agency is investing £6.9 million in satellite technology that aims to transform connectivity and secure Britain’s place as a European space leader.

The funding will support five groundbreaking projects through the European Space Agency’s (ESA) ARTES (Advanced Research in Telecommunications Systems) programme.

The five UK-led projects span critical areas of innovation in satellite communications, from refuelling satellites to extend their lifespans, to developing 5G networks and optical links that will improve global connectivity.

Orbit Fab will deliver the Advancing Satcom Technology with Refuelling and Logistics (ASTRAL) project with a total UK funding of up to £2.9 million. The contract for the first stage of the mission, worth £1.3 million, has now been awarded by ESA. This mission will prove the capability to refuel electric propulsion satellites using UK-developed technology, ensuring satellites can remain in orbit for longer or can manoeuvre away from threats.

Goonhilly Earth Station in Cornwall will lead the AGILE: Antenna Ground Interface and LunaNet Equipment project, supported by £1.6 million in funding. Amidst the growing number of lunar missions, this project will produce an interface unit that can be installed in global antennas to communicate with spacecraft using the internationally recognised LunaNet specification. This will allow missions to seamlessly connect to ground infrastructure, improving mission success rates.

Vicinity Technologies will receive £1.19 million for its 5G NTN-based Satellite Access Networks project. The team will design and develop a versatile 5G Non-Terrestrial Network regenerative payload system and user terminals, including the entire software stack for both space and ground segments. This technology will support uninterrupted and scalable internet services globally, from hard-to-reach areas to smart cities.

Archangel Lightworks, working with the support of Eutelsat will advance optical communications through the Space Optical Link Integration Study (SOLIS) project, funded with £356,000. This study, delivered under ESA’s Sunrise programme, will investigate use cases for deploying Free Space Optical Communications technology within Eutelsat’s OneWeb LEO global network.

Finally, Inmarsat Navigation Ventures Ltd (Viasat UK) will receive £881,000 for the International Virtual Satellite Operators Network (Phase 2) project. This initiative will develop a service that enables governments to plan, procure, manage and monitor satellite communications services from Viasat and other providers, ensuring secure and coherent management of critical communications.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

London-based investor Hg has agreed the sale of Intelerad, a global leader in medical imaging software solutions, to GE HealthCare in a transaction valued at approximately $2.3 billion. 

Hg is an investor in European and transatlantic software, services. and data businesses. It will fully exit its majority shareholding in Intelerad, while TA Associates and Ardan Equity will exit minority positions in the business.

Hg partnered on the original Intelerad investment with Ardan Equity. During Hg’s ownership, Canada-based Intelerad has increased its revenue by over 3.5 times, transforming it into one of the world’s leading enterprise imaging platforms.

The business now serves 1,500+ global customers, supports over 230 million exams per year, and manages 8 billion medical images across its network.

Two former senior figures at Manchester-based AI software business Peak AI have hit the ground running with a new venture helping to fuel growth for SMEs through share option schemes.

John Fraser and Rachel Westwell were finance director and head of legal respectively at Peak, and managed the company’s sale to UiPath earlier this year.

Before that they designed and ran Peak’s share option schemes though $120m of investment rounds.

Now they have set up equiCraft, using their experience to design, implement, maintain and optimise company share option schemes.

They say these are increasingly being seen as a valuable compensation and reward tool among ambitious startups and scaleups, especially in the tech sector, as a way to attract, retain and incentivise top talent.

Digital bank Zopa Group PLC has entered the investments market.

Zopa, which has 1.6 million customers, says it is offering simple solutions for long-term financial planning.

Zopa Investments sits alongside its other products such as the Zopa Cash ISA and Biscuit Current Account.

At launch, Zopa will offer two funds, Balanced and Bold, with a track record of 4.5% and 9.3% average annual returns respectively, available in General Investment and ISA wrappers.

West Ham United has partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and AI specialist Crayon to develop what is being described as one of football’s most advanced scouting platforms. 

The Premier League club says the generative AI-powered system will overhaul how it identifies and evaluates talent across global markets.

It makes The Hammers the first in world football to deploy an end-to-end generative AI scouting tool tailored specifically for its first team and academy.

Built using AWS technologies including Amazon SageMaker and Amazon Bedrock, the platform will combine AI, machine learning and generative AI to analyse large volumes of player data. 

Novidian, a startup focused on helping early-stage tech companies scale, has been awarded a competitive grant from Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

The funding will accelerate the growth of Novidian’s flagship platform, CTO in Your Pocket, which provides flexible, on-demand technical leadership for startups navigating the critical MVP-to-scale phase.

CTO in Your Pocket was designed to solve a common founder pain point: how to access strategic technical guidance without the cost or commitment of a full-time CTO.

The platform offers tailored support across architecture, delivery, hiring, and tooling, helping founders make smarter decisions, avoid costly missteps, and build scalable systems from day one.

Swansea HealthTech Cosi Care has secured $1 million in US investment after being named one of five winners of the 43North startup competition in Buffalo, New York.

Founded by Lauren Bell in 2018, Cosi Care has developed the world’s first safe scratching medical device designed to relieve the symptoms of eczema and chronic skin irritation.

The company has already generated £3m in revenue and served over 50,000 UK customers, and now plans to use the investment to expand into the US market.

Cosi Care was the only UK company to win this year’s competition and also took home the People’s Choice Award, adding a further $25,000 to their prize.

Risers:

CMC Markets – +29.88%

Halma – +13.04%

Games Workshop Group – +11.93%

Atalaya Mining Copper – +6.49%

NCC Group – +5.93%

Fallers:

Paypoint – -17.54%

Senior – -9.68%

Dr Martens – -9.31%

Foresight Solar Fund – -7.19%

Johnson Matthey – -4.60%

Shares in CMC Markets have rocketed today as the company now expects FY2026 net operating income to be around 10% ahead of market expectations. It has also signed its largest-ever institutional deal, partnering with Westpac, Australia’s second-largest bank. Net operating income is up 5% year-on-year to £186.2 million with increases in net trading and investing revenues.

Halma is also up as the company is on for its 23rd consecutive year of record growth, whilst Paypoint has dipped after results showed that underlying profit before tax dropped 4.5% year-on-year to £25.7m.

Other notable movers are:

NCC Group – +4.94%

Pinewood Technologies Group – +4.79%

JD Sports – -2.96%

Vodafone – -2.09%

Independent payment orchestration provider BR-DGE has partnered with THG Ingenuity to deliver BR-DGE Vault – a PCI-compliant hybrid tokenisation solution.

The Manchester-based company will implement BR-DGE Vault across more than 250 online stores in an attempt to reduce PCI compliance overheads while delivering measurable gains in authorisation rates.

The solution is designed to enhance payment performance and stability during high-volume trading events such as Black Friday.

Edinburgh-founded BR-DGE’s platform processes millions of transactions each month, helping clients boost payment performance and resilience at scale.

Tracsis plc has reported its results for the year ended 31st July 2025.

The transport technology provider, headquartered in Leeds, saw revenue climb 1% to £81.9m, while profit before tax was up 60% to £1.6m.

Adjusted EBITDA was down 1% to £12.6m.

everplay group plc, an independent games developer and publisher, has appointed Mikkel Weider as group CEO and to its board.

The appointment will take effect from 1st January 2026.

In 2016 Weider founded Nordisk Games, holding the role of CEO until 2023. Under his leadership, Nordisk Games grew from zero to over 1,300 employees across Europe and the United States, delivering organic growth alongside the acquisition of a number of European based games studios.

He is currently a partner in Delphi Interactive, chair of Outlast Games, and a board member of M2 Animation and NASDAQ-listed Trophy Games.

He has held board roles at Avalanche Studios Group, Supermassive Games, Raw Fury, Starstable and Trustpilot, as well as senior roles with both Bookatable and Match.com.

Frank Sagnier, current interim executive chair, will revert to non-executive chair.

IP Group plc has completed the £20m extension to its share buyback programme.

Since commencing its buyback programme, the Group has purchased 157,968,634 shares at an average price of 47.5 pence per share for an aggregate consideration of £75m.

All shares acquired under the Buyback Programme have been, or will shortly be, cancelled.

Accountancy firm MHA has reported an increase in revenue, profits and EBITDA for the six months ended 30th September 2025.

The results are the first since admission to trading on AIM in April 2025.

Group revenue was up 13.2% to £121.3m, while adjusted EBITDA grew 10.7% to £21.8m. Adjusted profit before tax was up 8.8% to £18.5m.

Manchester University spinout Nanoco Group plc has settled its legal action with LG.

The listed Runcorn firm develops and manufactures cadmium-free quantum dots and other nanomaterials. These are used in monitors, TVs and infra-red sensors.

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. In February this year it commenced litigation against another multinational electronics corporation in LG Technologies, alleging that it has willfully infringed on a number of its patents in production of its televisions.

This morning it said the gross amount agreed to be paid by LG to Nanoco is $5m. Litigation costs incurred by Nanoco to date total $600,000.

Digital managing general agent Ripe has acquired holiday homes insurance specialist Schofields Limited.

The deal, subject to customary closing conditions, marks Ripe’s first entrance into the holiday homes space, building upon its expertise in leisure products including motorhomes, caravans, park homes, golf and boat insurance.

Established in 1984, Schofields is a family-run business, based in Bolton, offering a personalised service for specialist holiday homes insurance for properties in the UK and overseas. With over 10,000 policyholders, the company has a strong 40-year heritage in the sector.

Jonathan and Philip Schofield, who have been instrumental in driving the business over the past two decades will continue to lead the business on a day-to-day basis alongside the Ripe team. Keith Schofield will remain as a consultant to the business to support the transition of ownership.

It is Ripe’s third acquisition following private equity backing in 2021.

Emm has raised £6.8m in an oversubscribed seed funding round to bring the world’s first smart menstrual cup and connected app to market.

Emm will equip users to understand their individual menstrual baseline and track key metrics for personalised, actionable insights into their menstrual health.

The round was led by Lunar Ventures, with additional participation from the Labcorp Venture Fund, Tiny VC, BlueLion Global, Alumni Ventures (investor in Oura & Levels), and a network of high-profile angels, including Amar Shah (co-founder of Wayve), Vivek Garipalli (founder of Clover Health and Wormhole Capital), and Harpreet Rai (former CEO, Oura). Emm has also received non-dilutive funding, including grants that support innovation in women’s health technology.

Despite affecting half the global population, menstrual and women’s reproductive health remain among the most under-served areas in healthcare. 1 in 3 women will experience severe menstrual or reproductive health symptoms in their lifetime, yet both clinicians and individuals lack reliable tools for baseline measurement and tracking until now.

Emm is addressing this gap with a breakthrough wearable device that objectively measures menstrual flow volume and tracks key cycle metrics, such as duration, frequency and regularity – offering users accurate, personalised health insights for the first time, together with an absolute commitment to privacy.