Howard Kennedy kick off 2015/16 VCT season with £50m Octopus Titan fund raising

Law firm and regulated sponsor Howard Kennedy has opened the 2015/16 VCT season advising Octopus Titan VCT plc on the launch of its £50m prospectus – the first VCT prospectus launched this tax year.

Octopus Titan VCT is the largest Venture Capital Trust in the market, and was named ‘Best VCT’ at the 2015 annual What Investment Awards.  Octopus is a leader in early-stage investment, with over £5bn in assets under management and more than 400 staff.

Partner and Head of Capital Markets Keith Lassman and partner Stephen Heinemann led the Howard Kennedy team advising Octopus Titan VCT.  Howard Kennedy is the only English law firm able to act as both sponsor and legal adviser to VCTs.

In the 2014/15-tax year Howard Kennedy advised on 27 of the 33 VCT offers with a combined market value of £370m.

Keith Lassman said: “The Finance Bill 2015 makes some significant changes to the rules relating to VCTs which are expected to come in to force in early November 2015.  However, despite these major changes we expect our VCT pipeline to match that of last year as the industry proves how robust it is and, to their huge credit, how adaptable its managers and promoters are in support of growing UK businesses.“

Octopus Titan VCT is the first VCT to publish its prospectus this tax year, in advance of the Finance Act 2015.  Octopus is confident that despite the changes to legislation it will be able to continue to support the next generation of businesses and smaller companies across the country that are contributing to the UK’s overall economic growth.

Howard Kennedy has a dedicated team of partners and staff advising VCTs through its wholly owned FCA authorised subsidiary, Howard Kennedy Corporate Services LLP, which has been active in the market place since 1997, listing well over 200 companies over that period.




Neighbourly becomes one of the UK’s first accredited B Corporations

·         Certification confirms commitment to people, planet and profit

·         Neighbourly to join with social business pioneers in UK launch of B Corporation status

 
Neighbourly.com – the internet platform that connects local community projects with companies that want to make a difference – has backed the global B Corporation initiative by becoming one of its founding UK members. Neighbourly will join a group of British businesses in launching B Corps in the UK on Thursday, 24 September.

B Corporation status acts as a global identifier for socially responsible business. It is given to for-profit organisations that meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability and transparency. The B Corporation initiative aims to redefine success in business, and already represents over 1,400 companies in 42 countries.

“Our ambition is to become the world’s social network for social good,” said Nick Davies, Founder, Neighbourly. “A commitment to people, planet and profit is firmly rooted in our core principles, and is now validated for external scrutiny through our new B Corporation status. As business values become increasingly important to consumers and employees, we’re proud to be helping businesses play a bigger role in their communities – first and foremost as a social platform, and now also as one of the launch wave of UK B Corporations.”

Neighbourly.com enabled organisations to pledge nearly £2million and over 6,500 volunteer days to causes around the UK in its first year, and recently confirmed plans for the Netherlands to become the second ‘Neighbourly Nation’. With the business preparing to scale-up and enter new markets, technology entrepreneur Luke McKeever was recently appointed Chief Executive Officer (CEO). He adds: “Neighbourly is an ambitious business on the cusp of rapid growth – but we’re driving social change, which is no small challenge. When we launched Neighbourly in the Netherlands, we learned the importance of shared values and goals with our new business partners.”

McKeever concluded: “Having the support of a global community of like-minded organisations, each of which share our ambition to redefine the role of business in society, will be a huge asset to Neighbourly.”

Blue Jeans Network Closes $76.5 Million Investment to Fuel Global Growth and Power New Era of Video Collaboration

NEA Leads Round with Participation from Accel, Battery Ventures, Glynn Capital, Norwest Venture Partners, Quadrille Capital, and Derek Jeter

Blue Jeans Network, the global leader in cloud-based video collaboration services, today announced it has secured $76.5 million in new funding led by NEA to accelerate global growth with market expansion in Europe, Asia and Australia and support ongoing product innovation that sets the standard for visual collaboration.

The new funding arrives as Blue Jeans hits record growth across every critical business metric for the fourth straight year, including bookings (ARR), revenues, subscribers, meetings, minutes, participants and more. Blue Jeans has at least doubled, tripled, or quadrupled each of these metrics year over year, every year since it launched its service in 2011. Today the Blue Jeans Network provides over 1 billion minutes of real time video collaboration annually to over 25 million participants around the world.

"Despite all the advances in modern technology, the human face is still the most powerful tool for business," said Krish Ramakrishnan, CEO Blue Jeans Network. "We are so proud of how far we've come in a few short years, but we are not done yet. With this investment we are fueling up our tanks and preparing to step on the gas to take on and dominate the Video Collaboration market across the globe."

Blue Jeans set the industry standard for video as a service, when it first launched in 2011 and disrupted the market with its hallmark interoperability providing the first, best, and only solution that could seamlessly connect business video conference room systems like Cisco and Polycom with consumer desktop and mobile solutions like Skype and Google. With these unique capabilities, great performance, and an easy to use interface, Blue Jeans disrupted the billion dollar a year video bridging hardware (MCU) market as customers abandoned legacy hardware solutions for Blue Jeans' cloud-based offering.

"We are very excited to lead this round," said Jon Sakoda, general partner at NEA. "Blue Jeans made the right bet five years ago, predicting the ultimate convergence of cloud, video, and mobile would blow the collaboration market wide open. They've executed tremendously well delivering growth that ranks them among the fastest growing SaaS companies in history and are continuing to disrupt the market incumbents with innovative new products and services."

With participation from previous investors Accel, Battery Ventures and Norwest Venture Partners, and adding new investors Glynn Capital, Quadrille Capital, and Derek Jeter among others, this funding round brings the total overall financing for Blue Jeans to $175 million.

"As a new investor for Blue Jeans, we're truly excited. It is a fast growing, ambitious organisation, and this round of investment is core to that journey", said Jérôme Chevalier from Quadrille Capital. "Over the last couple of years, we've observed Blue Jeans growing rapidly within EMEA, and this additional funding is a key part to helping Blue Jeans achieve its continued commitment to the region through disruptive innovation."



QUBE FOREVER CHANGES THE WAY IN WHICH WE HANDLE INFORMATION
Revolutionary application combines file finding, storing, sending and sharing.
 
“Do you believe that in five years’ time we’ll still need to store documents ourselves or that we’ll still need to find and send files? Well, we don’t!” These are the words spoken by Hardy Schuerhoff, CEO of a new start-up company, Qube, challenging established brands like Google Drive, Trello, Dropbox, Slack and Evernote.
 
Qube wants to become the new standard in connecting people and businesses. In Schuerhoffs vision all of today’s possibilities are hopelessly out of date. “They just don’t serve our needs anymore.” Everyday we all receive large quantities of information. By the time we need it we go and find it and send it to whoever asks for it. Did you know that everyday people spend 45 minutes searching for things? Add to that the time needed to share information and we probably waste an hour a day.
 
In Schuerhoffs view everybody should always work with the same updated information. Different Cloud storage systems and even e-mail will not be necessary anymore. No more messy self-made directory structures. Everyone will be in control of his own information and easily gains access to the information of others. This should all be possible with one login. This idea forms the bases of Qube.
 
Qube creates your own personal (or business) environment, and you can simply give others access to (parts of) that environment. Qube comes with a pre-designed structure for households or businesses. Through your own Qube you will gain access to (parts of) Qubes of others. The part of your Qube that others have access to is always up to date. Naturally the same goes for other Qubes that you have access to. This means that you never have to log in anywhere else again. Qube makes your life well organized and simple. And in addition, it saves you a lot of time.
 
Although the software is already in development, Schuerhoff needs additional funds to complete his product. For this Qube will launch their Kickstarter on 22 September. Schuerhoff: “We think that using Kickstarter is a good way to reach our target market and at the same time involve people in what we are doing. We strongly believe that Qube will change the way in which we handle information. We hope to experience that the public agrees with us.”
 
For more information about Qube, please visit  www.Qube.org