Supporting Growth In The Creative Industries | GBI 14 | April 2019

FOR PROFESSIONAL INVESTMENT SPECIALISTS

M AGAZINE

SUPPORTING GROWTH IN THE CREATIVE INDUSTRIES

GOVERNMENT BACKED - GREAT BRITISH INVESTMENTS - EIS - SEIS - BR - SITR - VCT

JOIN US TODAY

GrowthInvest: Simplifying tax efficient investments.

Igniting the UK economy.

The tax efficient investment market has changed significantly in recent years.

With tax efficiencies being clearly directed toward growing the UK’s most promising young companies, there has never been a better time to get involved.

products, or perhaps considering them for your clients’ portfolios, contact us at GrowthInvest. We’ll show you how you can consolidate historic investments onto our platform and build a diversified portfolio from a wide range of tax efficient product providers.

However, diversification and transparency has never been more important and with this comes an administrative headache.

Through our intuitive online platform you’ll be able to offer your clients easy access to real portfolio growth, secure in the knowledge that these government-backed schemes offer unique tax efficiencies.

At GrowthInvest we provide advisers a single portal to compare, invest in and manage clients’ tax efficient portfolios, integrating seamlessly with your backoffice solutions. Whether you’re already advising on SEIS, EIS, VCT or BPR

Visit us to learn about the products, the pitfalls and how best to advise on this dynamic and evolving sector.

MAKE IT YOUR BUSINESS growthinvest.com

CONTENTS CHAPTER • 1 News

A round up of industry news

CHAPTER • 2 Enhanced Company Profiles

Taking a look into Newable and Symvan

CHAPTER • 3 Investing in the UK creative industries – a new way of thinking

GBI Magazine meet the team at Great Point Media and discuss supporting growth in the creative industries

o2h Ventures set to tap into excitement around biotech therapeutics

GBI City Editor Neil Martin talks to co-founder and CEO Sunil Shah about why now is such an exciting time in the biotech space.

VCT’s Biggest Brexit Fears

Annabel Brodie-Smith, Communications Director at the Association of Investment Companies, looks at how VCT managers are standing up to the Brexit problem

The Exiteers

Bringing you news of successful exits in the sector

All change! Take another look at UK property

The UK’s property demands are changing, and investors need to respond appropriately, says Tom Brown, Managing Director of Real Estate at Ingenious

The rise of ‘new-old’ venture capital

Kuber Ventures looks at how ‘new-old’ style of venture capital will help the UK grow post-Brexit

The New Kids on the Block

An investment showcase bringing you the newest offering from the sector

Deal flow and deployment for IFA’s considering S/EIS investment

Co-founder of Worth Capital Matthew Cushen discusses deal flow and deployment for IFA’s considering S/EIS investment in the coming weeks.

CHAPTER • 4 Open Offers

Our monthly listing of what’s currently available for subscription

Disclaimer

performance is no guarantee of future performance. The value of shares in any investee companies may go down as well as up and investors may not get back the full amount invested. Investors should not consider investing unless they can afford a total loss of their investment. Investments in unquoted shares carry higher risks than investments in quoted shares and involve a degree of risk as well as the opportunity of reward. It may be difficult to sell or realise the investment or obtain reliable information about its value. Any tax reliefs referred to in this publication are those currently applying or expected to apply. However, readers should be aware that tax reliefs and legislation can change. Their applicability and value will depend upon the individual circumstances of a given investor. Whilst the investments set out within may qualify for EIS and other tax advantageous breaks, there is no guarantee that EIS status or other tax efficient status can be maintained throughout the life of the investment. Both investee companies and investors need to comply with the requirements of the EIS legislation in order to maintain EIS Relief and non-compliance may result in the loss or partial claw-back of EIS Relief and potential interest penalties. The material in this yearbook is not to be regarded as an offer or invitation to buy or sell an investment, nor does it solicit any such offer or invitation, nor does it seek to endorse any particular investment product. Any information it contains is given in good faith, but no reliance should be placed upon the same. Applications to invest in any investment product referred to within should be made to the relevant promoter. GBI Magazine neither endorses any particular member, product or company/firm wishing to raise money under the EIS nor does it accept any liability for advice given. GBI Magazine is published by and a trademark of IFA Magazine Publications Ltd, Arcade Chambers, 8 King’s Road, Bristol BS8 4AB, Telephone 01173 258328 @2018 all rights reserved.

GBI Magazine is for professional advisers only. All material has been carefully check for accuracy but no responsibility can be accepted for inaccuracies. Wherever appropriate independent research and where necessary legal advice should be sought before acting on any information contained in this publication. The information and offers contained in this yearbook may not be suitable for all investors.

Readers should be sufficiently aware of the risks and ensure that they are of a suitable category as defined by the Financial Services and Markets Act to review and invest in any of the potential offers or funds. The information given in this publication is not to be construed as advice relating to legal, taxation or investment matters. The information contained in this yearbook does not constitute or form part of any offer to issue or sell, or any solicitation of an offer to subscribe or purchase any investment, nor shall it or the fact of its distribution form the basis of, or be relied on in connection with any contract.

This yearbook is aimed at UK Investors and is not aimed at persons who are residents of any other country, including the United States of America and South Africa where the funds referred to herein are not registered or approved for marketing and/or sale and where the dissemination of information on the funds or services is not permitted. The information provided in the yearbook is not intended for distribution to, or use by, any person or entity in any jurisdiction or country where such distribution, publication or use would be contrary to local law or regulation. The information contained herein may not be reproduced, distributed or published by any recipient for any purpose without the prior written consent of GBI Magazine. No representation, warranty, or undertaking, express or limited, is given as to the accuracy or completeness of the information or opinions contained in this publication. As such, no reliance may be placed for any purpose on the information and opinions set out within it. Past

GBI Magazine is published by IFA Magazine Publications Ltd, Arcade Chambers, 8 Kings Road, Bristol BS8 4AB

M AGAZINE

Telephone: +44 (0) 1179 089686

Commissioning Editor: Michelle McGagh

Editor-in-Chief: Michael Wilson editor@ifamagazine.com

Publishing director: Alex Sullivan alex.sullivan@ifamagazine.com

City Editor: Neil Martin neil.martin@ifamagazine.com

Design: Head of Design - Rachel Bray

Full subscription details and eligibility criteria are available at www.gbinvestments.co.uk ©2017. All rights reserved.

Full subscription details and eligibility criteria are available at www.gbinvestments.co.uk

GBI Magazine is for professional advisers only.

GBI Magazine is a trademark of IFA Magazine Publications Limited. No part of this publication may be reproduced or stored in any printed or electronic retrieval system without prior permission. All material has been carefully checked for accuracy, but no responsibility can be accepted for inaccuracies, independent research and where necessary legal advice should be sought before acting on any information contained in this publication.

What do we mean by ‘government backed’?

In the interests of clarity, any reference made by GB Investments to the point that EIS, VCTs and similar investments are government backed relates to the government’s general approval of these schemes, indicated by their having granted them highly tax advantaged status. The use of this term does not imply that government would in any way act in the capacity as a guarantor or backer of last resort in connection with such schemes.

News

Welcome And here we are again. I suspect we all hoped that the Brexit situation would be at least a bit clearer by now, but alas it seem to still be up in the air. The good news is that our friends and colleagues in the alternative investment sector are confident that whatever scenario plays out in the next few weeks or so, the demand for investment in innovative technology and knowledge-intensive areas is set to continue apace.

As regular readers of GBI Magazine, you will know that we are always pleased to showcase investment success stories. We were delighted to be invited to meet the team at Great Point Media in their Covent Garden offices recently, to chat about how they support growth in the creative industries. In addition, our City Editor has had a chance to talk to Sunil Shah, CEO at o2h Ventures about why despite all the political machinations, now is an exciting time to be in the biotech investment space.

In keeping with all things positive, Annabel Brodie-Smith, Communications Director at the Association of Investment Companies (AIC) gives us an overview of how VCT managers are working to ameliorate any problems Brexit might create. Similarly Kuber Ventures explain to us how the ‘new-old’ style of venture capital will help us through any choppy waters post-Brexit.

4

GB Investment Magazine · April 2019

Matthew Cushen, Co-founder of Worth Capital takes a considered look at deal flow and deployment for IFAs considering SEIS and EIS investment in the coming weeks. Our article from Tom Brown, Director of Real Estate at Ingenious, suggests that given UK property demands are changing investors may need to take another look at UK property.

As ever, our regular features showcase successful exits in the sector and bring you details of some of the newest offerings.

And last but certainly not least, our popular Open Offers section is brought to you in partnership with GrowthInvest. As we count down to the end of the tax year there is still just about time to research and invest in these dynamic investment opportunities and to include them as part of your clients’ balanced portfolio where appropriate Here’s to the continued success of this inventive sector and we hope you enjoy GBI 14.

Alex Alex Sullivan Managing Partner CML | GBI Magazine | IFA Magazine

News

Stellar launches industry-first ‘all inclusive’ inheritance tax service Stellar, the estate-planning specialist asset manager, has launched what it believes to be the first ‘all inclusive’ inheritance tax planning service that gives financial advisers access to a network of legal and tax advisers as well as estate administrators.

The Expert Partner Service, Stellar told GBI Magazine, is the first of its kind to be offered by an asset manager. Preferential rates have been negotiated with each partner organisation, to deliver further value to an adviser’s clients added Stellar.

Matthew Steiner, Business Development Director of Stellar, said: “Financial advisers often speak to us about their frustration with the difficulty of bringing together the range of experts their clients need, to achieve a fully integrated solution.

“By launching this service, we’re offering advisers the opportunity to plug directly into a pre-existing, robustly vetted network of partners. Advisers no longer need to struggle coordinating multiple separate bodies, our comprehensive Expert Partner Service will work swiftly and smoothly.”

The service complements the asset manager’s existing range of tax-efficient discretionary managed portfolios, each of which provide relief from inheritance tax after two years.

At launch, the Expert Partner Service members are: • Farani Taylor, a network of independent legal professionals who offer advice across a variety of specialisms, including estate planning; • Obsidian, a tax advisory service that specialises in working with HNWI and business owners.

They work with advisers and accountants to develop the right tax solutions; • Kings Court Trust, one of the largest estate administration providers in the UK. Founded in 2002, Kings Court Trust have assisted on over 35,000 estates. Their role in the service is to handle ongoing estate administration after death and to provide advice when necessary.

Tom Moore from Obsidian said: “We are delighted to be part of this new service. We have a wealth of experience at Obsidian in providing Inheritance Tax advice and advice in other areas of tax and are very excited at this opportunity to bring that experience to a wider market. We look forward to working closely with Stellar to provide the very best service to clients in this field.”

Stellar intends to add further partners including additional administrative tools and lifestyle services.

GB Investment Magazine · April 2019

5

GBI

News

Kuber Ventures adds three new funds Kuber Ventures, the alternative investment platform specialising in EIS and SEIS, has added three new funds to its tax-efficient investment platform.

The three are the Evergreen EIS Fund from EMV Capital (EMVC), Vala EIS Portfolio and Velocity SEIS Technology Fund 4.

Each fund allows investment into early stage, knowledge-intensive companies.

The new funds brings the total number of tax efficient funds available on the platform to 39.

The EMVC Evergreen EIS Fund invests in B2B businesses built on core technological innovations generating tangible economic value for the UK economy. It will leverage EMVC’s corporate network to validate the opportunities and accelerate the growth of investee companies with potential followon funding accessible through EMVC’s relationships with institutional investors, corporate venturing teams and investment vehicles. This minimises the risk of investee companies becoming ‘stranded’ by being unable to raise crucial post-seed capital.

6

GB Investment Magazine · April 2019

The Vala EIS Portfolio invests in companies managed by skilled entrepreneurs who have historically been able to build high-growth businesses. Vala’s investments are managed by a group of serial entrepreneurs who will personally invest in the same portfolio companies in order to align themselves with the success of the company.

The Velocity SEIS Technology Fund 4 seeks investments in companies that combine traditionally strong business qualities with the current digital and technological environment and have the potential to scale quickly.

Simon Harvey, Marketing Director of Kuber Ventures, said: “We are delighted to welcome these three funds on to the platform. EMVC and Vala are attractive additions. Earlier this month EMVC was named Best Newcomer at the industry-leading EISA Awards and Vala provides advisers with an interesting choice with its new performance-dependent fee structure.” GBI

Eight Members Club London presents two venues in the heart of the city. The clubs offer members a wonderful space in which to both work and of course relax while taking advantage of our wonderful restaurant and bars, with an amazing event space, pool table, cinema and over 10 beautifully appointed meeting rooms.

To discover more go to www.eightclub.co.uk.

NEWABLE PRIVATE INVESTING Email: Sanjeev.gordhan@newable.co.uk Website: www.newable.co.uk/private-investing/

COMPANY OVERVIEW

Hitesh Thakrar, Chair of the Investment committee

Newable works with businesses at the heart of the UK economy, helping them start-up and grow and giving them the confidence to explore new horizons and marketplaces. A large part of our work is focused on investment, bringing promising companies the cash injection and patient support they need to make an idea come to life. To do this, we advise, mentor and encourage entrepreneurs in Britain’s exciting technology sector. We connect them to our 500 strong group of early stage Angels and co-investment partners. We help them unlock grant funding and we invite individuals and organisations to invest in them through our scaleup fund.

KEY PERSONNEL Michael Walsh, Managing Director, Investment Advisory Committee Member and Newable CFO Michael Walsh, Managing Director

Mike provides strategic financial support across the business and previously managed over £300m of VC investment funds. Mike has worked for some 30 years in financial services and qualified as a CA from PWC. Hitesh Thakrar, Chairman of Investment Advisory Committee Venture Partner at Syncona. Previously top rated Innovation Fund Manager in global equities for Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) and New Star Asset Management. Degree in Chemistry, King’s College, London, MBA Cranfield and CFA Charterholder.

Innovation fellow at Cambridge University.

Anthony Clarke, Director and Investment Advisory Committee member

Alexander Sleigh, Investment Director

8

GB Investment Magazine · April 2019

Co-Founder/Director of £30m Seraphim Capital VC Fund and £67m Seraphim Space VC Fund. CoFounder and Past Chair of UK Business Angels Association. President Emeritus of European

Enhanced Profiles

Business Angel Network. Qualified as a Chartered Accountant and Chartered Secretary at Deloitte Haskins & Sells (now PWC).

Charles Breese, Director, Fund Manager and Investment Advisory Committee member Director at Larpent Newton. Director of Hygea VCT and developer of SmartCo investing. Previous Director at Octopus Investments. Following qualifying as a Chartered Accountant (CA), he worked for KPMG for 13 years.

Alex Sleigh, Investment Director Responsible for overseeing investments across the Fund, having been involved in over 50 Investments since joining in 2011. MA (Hons) in Economics and Modern History from University of St. Andrews and Masters in General Management from Vlerick Leuven Ghent Management School, Belgium.

‘Investor in Residence’ at King’s College, London.

Mason Sinclair, Investment Manager Mason has a degree in bio-engineering and electrical engineering. He was previously founder and CEO of the Inspiration Lab, a VC backed edtech company and has also served as a Newable innovation advisory team manager.

Sanjeev Gordhan, Commercial Director Responsible for oversight of the strategy, product offering and growing funds under management.

Previously worked at a large Wealth Management firm where he sat on the investment committee for EIS and VCT investments. Sanjeev has an MBA from Cass Business School.

proven product service but giving them the financial runway required to commercialize the venture and take it to the next level. The success of this investment philosophy is evident in our track record and exits.

USPs Newable is not just an investment house and therefore our investee companies benefit from the wider business services we can offer. Having worked with the UK SME market for over 30 years Newable has built a world class offering and subsequently an eco-system to not only invest but support these businesses through the different stages of growth.

The wider group and eco-system we have created over the years also provides us with proprietary deal flow enabling us to see the best opportunities available.

Newable Private Invest has been acclaimed at the most active Angel network within the UK. This network provides domain knowledge across different sectors and also the opportunity to place lead investors into our investee companies.

KEY SERVICES AND FUNDS Within the early-stage investment market we provide investors with a passive and active investment solution: •

Our angel network offers active investors the opportunity to pick their own early-stage opportunities through our portal and/or investment showcases

•

Our fund provides passive investors with exposure to this asset class and diversification without the need to complete their own due diligence. Our world class investment committee is made up of sector expertise with domain knowledge within the sectors we invest. This allows us to complete robust due diligence

INVESTMENT STRATEGY Newable Private Investing (formerly London Business angels) has always invested in the true spirit of EIS. This has meant we have backed genuine high-growth early-stage businesses. Our investment philosophy is driven by the convergence of the digital, physical and biological sectors thus creating new business models and efficiencies that are paving the way for the 4th industrial revolution.

.

Our fund invests between Seed and series A funding rounds this ensuring the investee companies have a

GB Investment Magazine · April 2019

9

SYMVAN CAPITAL Phone: 020 3011 5097 Email: ml@symvancapital.com Kealan Doyle, Co-Founder and CEO

Website: www.symvancapital.com

COMPANY OVERVIEW Symvan Capital focuses on dynamic early-stage technology companies with high growth potential.

Symvan was co-founded in 2013 by Kealan Doyle and Nicholas Nicolaides, building on their extensive experience with technology companies.

Nicholas Nicolaides, Co-Founder and Director

The Patient Capital Review shifted the focus onto knowledge-intensive companies with high growth potential. Rather than investing purely for a tax rebate, the new era of venture capital enhances the opportunity to invest in the type of genuine growth funds that Symvan manages. Although carrying higher levels of risk at the individual company level, the potential for returns of high multiples from the winners makes this type of investing, across a diversified portfolio, a highly attractive prospect.

Investing in emerging technology offers the ability to scale and benefit from the wealth of UK technology and managerial talent. It is now able to produce its own ‘unicorns’ and Symvan provides investors the opportunity to access some of today’s most exciting tech companies.

Rob Bird, Advisor and Member of Investment Committee

KEY PERSONNEL Kealan Kealan Doyle has worked with venture capital companies for 15 years, both in a corporate finance advisory capacity as well as a fund manager.

Company interests include big data analytics, fintech, SaaS, and network security. Prior to VC investing, Kealan led a structured equity products team at HSBC and worked at Deutsche Bank, Merrill Lynch and UBS. Kealan holds degrees from the London School of Economics and the University of Toronto.

Julian Samson, Advisor and Member of Investment Committee

10

GB Investment Magazine · April 2019

Nicholas Nicholas Nicolaides’ early capital markets experience at Paribas seeded his involvement in technology, working on numerous transactions including the

Enhanced Profiles

IPO for Autonomy Corporation Plc. He is particularly interested in high performance computing and the opportunities for disruption in the education and recruitment sectors. Nicholas worked with AiM brokers and the ECM team at Lehman Brothers, focussing on European Telecom & Media. He has also worked in the TMT Corporate Finance and European Equity Capital Markets teams at BNP Paribas. Nicholas has a BSc (Hons) in Statistics & Economics from UCL and a MBA from Imperial College Management School.

Rob Rob Bird, Adviser and Investment Committee member.

Since 2014, Rob has led the Center of Excellence in Machine Learning and Big Data product architecture at Akamai Technologies, Inc. In 2006, Rob founded Red Lambda, Inc., a Florida machine learning-based network security company. In 2004, Rob testified as an expert witness to the US House of Representatives Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection. Rob is the author of 10 issued patents in distributed systems and machine learning and sits on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Big Data.

Julian Julian Samson, Adviser and Investment Committee member, Regulatory & Compliance. Founder of Fulcrum Compliance Ltd, Julian was a registered Compliance/Money Laundering Reporting Officer for 15 years, Chairman of the CISI Compliance Forum from 2009 to 2015 and is a member of the CISI Membership Committee. He was a Member of the Steering Committee for Compliance Standards (BS 8453) at the British Standards Institute and has been published in Compliance Monitor.

Both have invested into the funds themselves, aligning their interests with their Investors’.

USPs Underpinning Symvan Capital’s strategy is our “Lifecycle Approach” to investing. Symvan Capital nurtures and sources as many EIS investee companies as possible via its SEIS funds. This enables Symvan Capital to understand and manage its investments on a far deeper level, meaning the due diligence process plays out over the evolution of the company’s developmental journey, rather than at a static point in time.

There are no upfront or ongoing charges to the investor. We charge the investee companies instead.

Therefore, investors can claim 100% of the EIS tax reliefs.

The only fee Symvan eventually charges investors is a 20% performance fee, dependent on a successful exit. Consequently, Symvan is very exit focussed.

KEY SERVICES AND FUNDS Both SEIS and EIS funds are evergreen. The EIS fund has quarterly tranched investments. The Funds concentrate on commercially viable, disruptive investments that are demonstrably scalable.

•

Target return is £2.85 per £1 invested, over an investment term of 5 to 7 years.

•

Symvan’s highly selective approach typically adds 5 to 7 companies to the portfolio per year.

.

INVESTMENT STRATEGY Symvan’s “lifecycle” philosophy of working with investee companies into which they originally invested via its SEIS funds, allows investors at the EIS level to benefit from opportunities which are extremely familiar to the investment team.

Both Kealan and Nicholas have sector-focused SME corporate finance experience with large institutions, and accordingly have significant technology, media and telecommunications (‘TMT’) transaction experience which is especially relevant in generating exits.

GB Investment Magazine · April 2019

11

invest in the growth potential of British life science & AI the o2h therapeutics EIS fund The first S/EIS tax saving fund in the UK solely focused on early stage biotech therapeutics and related AI opportunities. Large pharma companies now rely on the small innovative biotechs for new ideas in disease areas, such as cancer, genomics, anti-ageing and neurosciences, which has led to higher potential exit valuations.

To find out more or register: invest@o2h.com or text INVEST to 88802 www.o2h.com/ventures

Quarterly closings Next round closes 4th April 2019

Scan for more info

/company/o2h-ventures-limited

@o2hventures

o2h Ventures Limited is regulated and authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 812245).

Capital at risk, only suitable for high net worth and sophisticated investors.

INVESTING IN THE UK CREATIVE INDUSTRIES

A NEW WAY OF THINKING GBI Magazine speaks to the Directors of Great Point Media Dan Perkins, Jim Reeve and Kok-yee Yau at their Covent Garden office

F

or years, the great and the good of the EIS investment community have viewed the media sector as the place to go for lower risk strategies – the place to invest to preserve capital.

Whether or not this view was accurate is now largely academic given recent rule changes and the removal of capital preservation strategies from the market; however, the business case for investing into the UK creative industries remains a strong one.

As a team of 24 media-focused professionals nestled in a quiet street behind London’s bustling Covent

Garden, with decades of commercial and investment experience between us, the Great Point Group firmly believes now is the time to get behind our country’s media sector and support those entrepreneurs that will help maintain the UK’s position as a world leader in the creative industries.

Standing out from the crowd To better understand the myriad of investment opportunities available, one must first consider the construct of the UK creative industries ecosystem and acknowledge that sat at the core of every valuable media business is intellectual property, be it a script, a new piece of technology, or rights to a book, piece of music, film or television show.

While the old Bill Gates adage ‘content is king’ has never been truer, with the investment case for content creation businesses being quite clear, the opportunities that lie in businesses providing production services and facilities (such as visual effects, for which the UK is renowned worldwide), content distribution and marketing services and future media (where technologies such as virtual reality are being used to create new consumer experiences or enhance existing ones), may be less obvious.

Exceptional performance will be achieved by businesses led by experienced media entrepreneurs with proven track records of achievement. The key to identifying and unlocking this potential, for investors and advisers alike, will therefore lie in choosing to

GB Investment Magazine · April 2019

13

work alongside a team of investment professionals with a deep-rooted network of industry relationships throughout the entire content creation value chain and a rigorous investment selection process.

It is for this reason that we have launched our latest EIS offering, Great Point Ventures EIS, which focuses purely on identifying exciting equity investment opportunities across the creative industries with the goal of supporting entrepreneurial management teams with unique talents and proven track records of achievement.

With change springs opportunity We have previously commented in GBI Magazine that those cynics in our industry may have considered the implementation of the risk to capital conditions by HM Revenues & Customs (HMRC) in 2018 as the death knell for media-based investing in the UK. This speculation has been fuelled further in recent weeks by the withdrawal of a leading media investor from the market citing issues surrounding the advance assurance process becoming trickier for businesses looking to operate in the creative industries since the new tests were introduced. As you might expect, this isn’t a view we share based on our experience of working with HMRC before and after the rule changes 12 months ago.

While it is true turnaround times are still not quite where anyone would like them to be, we have seen a number of advance assurances granted for genuine,

14

GB Investment Magazine · April 2019

growth-focused businesses operating in the content creation, distribution or tech-enabled new media sub-sectors.

As an experienced EIS manager, our view has always been that if the businesses you are looking to invest in are genuinely growth focused, with plans to recruit, and the ultimate aim of delivering value to UK Plc (born out by recent evidence of HMRC’s approach to media-focused businesses) then there should be no issues applying for, and receiving, advance assurance, irrespective of the sector you are operating in.

Deal flow and deployment: hitting the ground running Launching a new fund is always a mixture of excitement and trepidation – excitement around the types of business whose growth plans you are looking to support, and trepidation as to whether the new offer will resonate with the intermediary and investor communities sufficiently for them to part with their hard-earned capital.

One of the key questions raised when discussing Great Point Ventures EIS by both intermediaries and investors is that of deal flow: how do you source it and how much of it do you have?

Our answer is a straightforward one. Since founding the business in 2013 we have always aimed to ensure the flow of potential investment opportunities outweighs the flow of inbound investor capital and as we are media specialists, our deal flow is sourced

through our extensive network of industry contacts which often results in us having a first look at deals that other managers with a more generalist approach do not have access to.

At the time of writing this article we have already seen over ÂŁ175 million of investment across more than 110 businesses which we have systematically whittled down to a select pool of companies. We aim to invest into a number of these companies in the next few weeks ensuring prompt deployment for advisers and investors that have supported us through our first couple of fundraising quarters.

A year-round opportunity Rightly or wrongly, the focus at this time of year is always 5 April, whether it be a last-minute ISA or pension contribution, or someone desperately looking for an EIS investment that can allot immediately to enable a carry back of tax reliefs to the prior year.

investment earlier in the tax year to ensure (as far as possible) those goals are met.

Who knows what the future holds?

2019 is already proving to be an interesting year in more ways than one, with no one truly being able to predict what the future may bring. That having been said, irrespective of market or political conditions, there will always be entrepreneurs with great ideas looking for capital to get them to that next level. It is the goal of Great Point Ventures EIS, with the help of our valuable investors and advisers, to ensure we keep that entrepreneurial engine running and drive the UK creative industries forward in uncertain times with a new way of thinking. GBI

The risk to capital conditions have helped shift this dynamic by ensuring that the investment case is the primary driving force behind deployment, rather than the timing of the tax break. As an investment-led business, we made a conscious decision to decouple the April quarterly close from the end of the tax year when designing Great Point Ventures EIS. Our desire is to have investors consider EIS investment opportunities throughout the year and, should the tax year in which relief is granted be a major part of an investor’s overall strategy, possibly encourage

GB Investment Magazine ¡ April 2019

15

O2H VENTURES SET TO TAP INTO EXCITEMENT AROUND

BIOTECH THERAPEUTICS Currently there is no venture capital fund solely focused on investing in early stage biotech therapeutics in the UK. This is about to change with the launch of a new fund from o2h Ventures. GBI Magazine City Editor Neil Martin talks to co-founder and Chief Executive Sunil Shah about why now is such an exciting time in the biotech space.

unprecedented era of innovation in genomics, chemical biology, biotechnology, proteomics, and epigenetics, allied with advancements in new technology that are leading to new drug therapeutics.

“The big pharmaceutical companies have learned the hard way that the most exciting research is not always found in-house and are now increasingly externalising the acquisition of research ideas from early stage companies. The demand for the most exciting companies has led to a surge in valuations.

The biotech sector indexes have recently witnessed some spectacular gains in the USA and in the UK.” Serial entrepreneur

O

2h Ventures’ therapeutics fund is raising money to invest in early stage innovations with a view to license, or sell to larger pharmaceutical companies.

The background to the fund’s launch is the dramatic shift in the way pharma companies view their drug research. They have been closing down their own research and development departments, and now look to source their innovation externally. They view biotech as a way of buying-in the innovation that they need.

“They are now buying much earlier and paying top dollar if they like the science,” says Shah (pictured above).

Shah explains further: “Humanity is entering an

16

GB Investment Magazine · April 2019

Shah describes himself as a serial entrepreneur, having begun his career in the life sciences team at PA Consulting Group and then moving on to co-found two companies in the information technology and life sciences sector. The second of these companies was acquired by Piramal Enterprises in 2011.

Shah co-founded o2h Ventures with his brother Prashant. The firm is headquartered in Hauxton, Cambridge.

Both Sunil and Prashant will lead the new fund, and are experienced entrepreneurs and investors in the biotech space. One of the fund’s strengths is in its access to pipeline based upon its grassroots working relationships. Shah believes that their business model will result in improved growth outcomes with incubation in Cambridge, leading to faster decision making allied to plug-in research capabilities from India.

“The UK has a rich scientific heritage and is home to some of the most important regional biotech clusters in Europe. Cambridge, Oxford and London are hotbeds of academic research, big pharma and experienced entrepreneurs. Says Shah “Other UK centres are in varying stages of maturity but the success and energy of the big three are inspiring Nottingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, UEA, Sheffield and Manchester to step out and step up.

“National treasures such as the NHS, Wellcome Trust, Structural Genomics Consortium, Francis Crick Institute and Cancer Research UK all serve to enrich the research ecosystem.

Investment rationale Traditionally, EIS funds have not backed therapeutics because of the perceived larger capital requirements, difficulties in assessing the technical barriers and the longer time horizons to exit. Yet now, with large pharmaceutical companies licensing innovation externally (often getting involved early in the development and in a highly competitive market for these sought after assets), and considering the tax relief that the EIS scheme offers, it makes for a highly interesting investment rationale.

The team at o2h Ventures has developed unparalleled access to the most exciting scientific ideas and talents in the UK. A clearly differentiated position has been achieved through its live working relationships fostered over many years working as a discovery services company giving it far earlier access than competitors to the most promising companies.

o2h Ventures has built a unique integrated model for early stage companies. It includes the possibility of offering companies incubation in o2h SciTech Park, Cambridge, UK and/or the option to jump-start their research activity from o2h Discovery in Ahmedabad, India.

A tight investment focus on therapeutics enables o2h Ventures to concentrate on a clear market position versus UK competitors that have a wider scope.

Shah believes their edge in the market is their deal flow, which reflects having worked with the biotech sector for the last 15 years. They have many active and live collaborations with early stage biotech companies.

Rigorous process o2h Ventures has developed a rigorous process to evaluate its seed stage investments. The team starts out by screening companies that meet simple criteria of having a clear novel transformative drug therapeutic focus. The investment evaluation committee will assess each project for its scientific tractability in conjunction with accomplished scientific advisers.

The evaluation process includes an analysis of the rationale of the preclinical target rationale, IP position, path to and through the clinic, as well as understanding of the skill and determination of the team to navigate and overcome difficult hurdles.

For anyone keen to back the biotech sector, the new fund from o2h Ventures will require attention. GBI

GB Investment Magazine · April 2019

17

VCTS BIGGEST

BREXIT FEARS Annabel Brodie-Smith, Communications Director at the Association of Investment Companies, looks at how VCT managers are standing up to the Brexit problem

A

s the Brexit negotiations rumble on and on, the only certainty is… yes more uncertainty over Brexit’s outcome.

One portfolio company has reported that they have already seen a 50% reduction in job applications from EU nationals after the 2016 referendum result.’

Despite a tough year for UK markets as Brexit worries and wider economic uncertainties took their toll, the average VCT returned 2.7% in 2018 and is up 42% and 163% over five and 10 years. VCTs’ perspectives on Brexit are thought-provoking as they are at the coalface of the UK economy, investing in small unquoted companies which could grow to become household names, generating economic growth and jobs. Are managers still finding investment opportunities today and what are the prospects for these companies? And how are the VCT rule changes bedding in?

These worries about the future of Europeans working in the UK are reinforced by John Glencross, Chief Executive of Calculus Capital, which manages Calculus VCT: ‘Where uncertainty is biting is in the status of EU nationals who work for UK companies.

Their status post-Brexit needs to be settled quickly.’

On Brexit, VCTs’ key concern is the status of Europeans working in the UK after Brexit and whether smaller companies will be able to retain and attract talent. Ian McLennan, Manager of the Triple Point VCTs, said: ‘When it comes to Brexit, the main concern we are hearing from portfolio companies is around people.

Tech-related companies in particular often have a significant number of EU nationals in their team.

18

GB Investment Magazine · April 2019

Jo Oliver, Manager of Octopus Titan VCT, summed it up: ‘Our single greatest concern when it comes to Brexit is the importance of being able to access talent and the UK continuing to be a leader in innovation and entrepreneurship.’

CONTINGENCY PLANS Brexit contingency plans are being made by companies which are exporting to EU markets. David Hall, Managing Director of YFM Equity Partners, which manages the British Smaller Companies VCTs explained: ‘What we have seen in our portfolio is those businesses who move physical goods across borders step up contingency planning, which in many cases

means finding other ways of getting their goods to overseas markets, for example offshore inspections or quality control centres or final assembly outside the UK. These are temporary measures for now but could be made permanent if needs be.’

Many companies are not so worried about exporting to the EU as they believe it has always been fairly difficult to sell to EU countries. Glencross said: ‘As I look at our portfolio, by and large, exporting to the rest of the EU is not an important market. It has always been difficult for small businesses to sell to other European countries. Even pre-Brexit, the US, Asia and Middle East were more important markets.’

Clearly, technology is helping some companies to take a global approach. Oliver said: ‘Uncertainty isn’t good for any business. However, it does create opportunity for companies that are nimble and adaptable such as early-stage businesses. Many of these are deliberately creating companies that can be global from the start, due to enabling technology such as smartphones and cloud computing.’

It’s too early to understand the long-term impact

of Brexit but usually the growth companies that attract VCT funding are global in their approach and adaptable. As Hall of YFM Equity Partners explained: ‘The ideal business to invest in is one that doesn’t move goods across borders and has a high proportion of business outside the EU. Generally, this is where many of the growth businesses focus and, in reality, trading within Europe for these businesses also comes with less regulatory hassle.’

Hall said there’s less impact on services companies.

‘It’s not quite business as usual, but there is less thought about tomorrow and more about the long term,’ he said.

BEYOND BREXIT So looking beyond Brexit, are VCT managers finding investment opportunities in these interesting times?

The encouraging response from VCT managers is the British entrepreneurial spirit is alive and kicking.

In 2017, the UK had 20 home-grown companies worth over $1 billion, whereas there were just 30 in the rest of Europe. VCTs are continuing to find attractive investments and manage diverse portfolios

GB Investment Magazine · April 2019

19

of companies in a wide range of sectors throughout the UK. Many of the companies VCTs invest in have environmental, health and social benefits and lead the way when it comes to technological innovation.

For example, Triple Point VCTs invest in several of the growing tech innovators in the UK, including Capitalon-Tap which itself uses cutting-edge technology to arrange finance for thousands of UK SMEs. It also invests in a digital health company which uses artificial intelligence to assist NHS GPs and dermatologists in the diagnosis of melanoma skin cancer.

Calculus VCT focuses on healthcare and technology, but also has investments within energy, media, consumer and industrials. It has an investment in an environmental company, Weedingtech, in West London. With increasing concerns over the health impacts of chemical herbicide use, Weedingtech has developed herbicide-free, non-toxic weed control foam. The company has grown significantly and doubled its turnover since Calculus Capital’s first investment in 2016. Users of its product include municipal authorities in New York, London, Munich,

20

GB Investment Magazine · April 2019

Barcelona and many others. Calculus VCT also invest biotechnology company, Synpromics, based in Edinburgh, which is a world leader in the technology surrounding cell and gene therapy. Its groundbreaking patentable technology provides the control mechanisms that direct the activity of cell and gene.

MOVING WITH RULE CHANGE The other interesting theme to emerge from the VCT industry is the absorption of the ‘new rules’ into VCTs’ investment strategies. This includes the 2015 age limit of investing in companies under seven years old and the ban on management buy-outs (MBOs), as well as the 2018 ‘risk to capital’ condition. While it’s true to say that these rules have pushed VCTs up the risk scale in general, many managers – especially those doing large fundraisings – believe that the effects will be minimal, because they’ve always invested in a way that would be compliant with the new rules.

For those that haven’t, perhaps because they did more MBOs or followed strategies more focused on capital preservation, the new rules have had a number of effects. Fundraisings have

generally been smaller. New hires have been made to refocus teams on earlier-stage opportunities.

And naturally, investment strategies, including the sourcing of deals, have been reassessed.

It’s important to recognise that not all of the rule changes are restrictive. For so-called ‘knowledgeintensive’ companies, the new rules are more liberal, with a looser age limit and the ability to raise more money from VCTs and EIS. VCTs’ extensive diversification, together with generous tax reliefs and the ability to access an asset class that’s unlikely to be represented otherwise in clients’ portfolios, are among the key attractions of VCTs. These attractions remain, despite the Brexit worries of attracting and retaining new talent, anxiety over the outcome and the challenges of the new VCT rules. Of course, nothing is guaranteed, and VCTs will always be high-risk. But their 23-year record has demonstrated that the evergreen closed-ended structure is absolutely the right one for this kind of investing, giving managers the maximum amount of control and long-term investors the best shot at a positive outcome. GBI

GB Investment Magazine · April 2019

21

THE EXITEERS Bringing you news of successful exits in the sector FUND: Guinness AIM EIS Fund 2015 EXIT: Gear4Music

W

HAT DOES THE COMPANY DO?

Gear4music is a UK based online retailer of musical instruments and music equipment, operating from an office, showroom, and distribution centre in York. The company offers over 1,500 products, which are sold under approximately eight brands, including Gear4music; Archer, which offers string instruments, such as violins, cellos, violas, and double bass; Redsub, which offers bass guitar amplifiers and pedals; SubZero, which offers guitars, amplifiers, mixers, speakers, and audio electronics; Minster, which offers digital pianos; Rosedale, which offers woodwind instruments, such as clarinets, flutes, oboes and piccolos; and Brass Instruments, which offers trumpets, trombones, tubas and French horns.

Gear4Music sells own-brand musical instruments and music equipment alongside premium thirdparty brands to customers ranging from beginners to musical enthusiasts and professionals, in the UK and into Europe.

Having developed its own e-commerce platform, with multilingual, multicurrency, and fully responsive design websites covering 19 countries, the group rapidly expanded its database continues to build its overseas presence while the company’s main country of operation is the UK.

The company has expanded sales from £24 million in the year to 28 February 2015 (on which it made pre-tax losses of £750,000) to £80 million in 2018 (on which it made profits of £1.4 million).

HOW MUCH WAS RAISED? Guinness AIM EIS Fund 2015 invested 5.6% of the scheme into Gear4Music in May 2015.

Gear4Music raised £8 million in a combined EIS/VCT and non-EIS fundraising round.

HOW WAS THE EXIT ACHIEVED? The shares were traded out through the market.

HOW MUCH WAS RETURNED TO INVESTORS? In June 2018 the shares were trading around £7 per share and on a price/earnings ratio of over 100x.

At that time, Guinness formed the view that the company needed to perform extremely well to retain such a high rating and could be vulnerable to any real or perceived deterioration in its trading outlook.

It therefore decided to trade the shares out through the market netting a profit of over 5x the original investment which being part of an EIS scheme and having been held for over three years is tax-free to investors and was returned to them earlier this year.

THE

WHAT OTHER BENEFITS HAS THE COMPANY PROVIDED?

The investment was part of an £8 million combined EIS/VCT and non-EIS fundraising to develop an e-commerce platform and provide growth capital to accelerate marketing initiatives including a new London showroom and to repay £4.4 million of loan notes owing to the original investors in the business.

The company now employs over 310 people (2015: 103 employees) and has successfully expanded European and rest-of-world sales to around £40 million since the 2015 funding. The company has fulfilled the ambitions and aspirations it held at the time of its initial public offering in 2015 and the growth pattern for the company remains intact.

WHAT DID MONEY IN?

22

THE

COMPANY

INVEST

GB Investment Magazine · April 2019

Gear4Music could be considered the ‘poster’ investment for Guinness AIM schemes and for the Government’s growth agenda for EIS companies. Its business plan was easy to articulate, well-timed, and achieved organically and without further recourse to capital markets. Management under Andrew Wass was relatively young and clearly energetic, and committed. It had assembled an appropriate board with an experienced chairman whom Guinness already knew. All in all there was, and remains, a lot to like in Gear4Music and it has fully repaid our confidence. Would that all such investments were as satisfactory!

In conclusion, Gear4Music is a growth story which has played out well for all stakeholders and continues to do so and it is the sort of company with a substantial insider shareholding which is using the AIM for all the right reasons and demonstrates the success of this market as a source of capital for good and ambitious companies.

HOW WILL YOU CONTINUE TO SUPPORT THE COMPANY? There have been no further capital raisings or acquisitions since the original investment

by Guinness. GBI

GB Investment Magazine · April 2019

23

ALL CHANGE! TAKE ANOTHER LOOK AT UK PROPERTY

The UK’s property demands are changing, and investors need to respond appropriately, says Tom Brown, Managing Director of Real Estate at Ingenious

F

or many years, the typical approach to property investing has been through longer-term investments in buy-to-let and equity. While this ‘bricks and mortar’ approach has worked well for many investors, a fullyvalued market in both the residential and commercial sectors means that capital appreciation opportunities are now looking limited. Instead, investors should be looking to work their property assets through shorterterm loan opportunities which are used to fund the development or redevelopment of buildings, helping to close the supply gap that exists across the market.

Why is the UK property market experiencing change?

In the residential market, changing demographics, affordability and the availability of funding are driving a widening gap between supply and demand with an average of 217,000 new homes being built each year against a demand for over 300,000 – a figure that hasn’t been achieved since the 1970s.

Other longer-term lifestyle shifts are also having a significant impact on the real estate market. The way people live and work is becoming less structured and standardised, and there appears to be less desire for people to be held down by long-term commitments.

Coinciding with the advent of the ‘gig’ economy has been rising numbers of self-employed and contract workers, suggesting a more mobile and flexible workforce.

24

GB Investment Magazine · April 2019

The effect of this can be seen in the shortening of commercial property lease lengths and the prevalence of break-clauses in new leases as tenants increasingly seek flexibility. The retail sector has been hit the hardest, given declining footfall in town centres and the shift to online retailing. Indeed, the second quarter RICS survey showed falling occupier demand in retail, a higher vacancy rate, flat to falling rental growth, and negative capital value expectations over the next twelve months.

New opportunities are emerging Despite these trends, new investment opportunities are opening as developers adjust their product offerings to meet these evolving economic conditions and lifestyles. ‘Co-living’ is an area of particular interest and future growth. These residential developments, which currently are mainly focused in London, cater for young professionals’ more mobile lifestyles. They offer the convenience of all-inclusive costs, covering rent and bills as well as services such as cleaning and gym membership. This type of living arrangement combines a ready-made community with individual privacy, features that could also be targeted to people in later life who are downsizing though not yet in care and who would welcome the dual aspects of community participation and privacy.

However, it is not just the investment potential that these types of developments hold for investors.

The instant communities provided by co-living and

other purpose-built rental developments may also hold wider economic benefits that could help the struggling UK high street by stimulating demand for service-type businesses like bars and restaurants.

This in turn may lead to potentially greater demand for existing vacant office and retail units.

How can investors take advantage?

With banks and building societies retrenching from lending in the post-financial crisis years, new opportunities have arisen as developers look to secure funding from a diverse range of sources to support the growth demands of the market. This has created a significant need for alternative lenders who provide development and bridging finance on high quality projects offering potentially attractive, assetbacked returns.

Ingenious is one such lender. Since 2013, the real estate division has provided over £350 million of loans across more than 50 projects, supporting the construction of over 2,000 residential and commercial units. This strategy is overseen by a dedicated team of real estate finance professionals with more than 100 years of collective experience in the field. The team’s vast experience and network of relationships across the sector mean it can be selective in which opportunities to support, closing on average only 5%–10% of the deals they consider.

fees by providing development and bridging finance to experienced real estate developers and secured against residential and commercial developments in locations across the UK. The Service’s objective is to provide an attractive, asset-backed return while preserving the value of an investment. Annualised growth for the quarter ending 30 September 2018 was 8.4% net of fees.

While the Service offers the potential to qualify for Business Relief and therefore be exempt from inheritance tax after two years, if shares are held for a period of three years or more then the investment should also qualify for investors’ relief, which means a reduced rate of 10% capital gains tax on the disposal of shares. Investors’ relief was introduced by the government in 2016 to encourage investment and entrepreneurial activity in the UK, particularly in areas with a shortfall of investment such as the housing market. GBI

The latest Ingenious offering, the Real Estate Growth Service, aims to deliver annual returns of 5%-8% net of

GB Investment Magazine · April 2019

25

THE RISE OF

‘NEW-OLD’ VENTURE CAPITAL

Kuber Ventures looks at how the ‘new-old’ style of venture capital will help the UK grow post-Brexit

F

or tax efficient investment, these are, in some ways, the best of times and in others what could politely be described as sub-optimal.

Those of a sunny disposition may well point to welcome changes in the fiscal environment announced at the end of 2017 which were designed to encourage investment in genuine growth companies as opposed to capital preservation schemes.

However, does that mean the tax efficient market has come to a standstill? Not at all.

While investors are wary of the political climate and delaying their decisions, interest in tax efficient investment schemes is growing strongly. Investments deferred during the latter part of last year are starting to feed through in the first quarter of 2019, as experience shows that potential investor demand can turn into actual investment very rapidly.

Cloudier by far is the political backdrop to tax efficient investing, one so overcast that Parliamentary deadlock over Brexit is actually not the worst outcome, that honour being awarded to a full-blown constitutional crisis. This has created opportunities.

In part, of course, this reflects the coming of the end of the tax year, which always tends to spur decisionmaking. Alongside this, Britain will also be departing from the European Union, which if finalised, would alleviate some of the market uncertainty Brexit has created, although whether parliament extends this deadline remains to be seen.

Small businesses adapting

Biggest opportunity

In the current climate, it is not surprising that investment of all kinds has been affected, and that this impact has perhaps been felt most keenly in terms of funding for growth businesses, because of the additional risks. In reality small businesses are often more dynamic and able to adapt to changing environments.

Perhaps the biggest opportunity is one of straightforward arithmetic – the subdued investment climate seen at the end of last year forcing companies to drop their valuations to draw investors, creating attractively-priced opportunities for those willing to move swiftly.

A lack of enthusiasm for shouldering an additional political risk is understandable, especially as the danger of stalemate in Westminster is magnified by what, at the time of writing, is a complete lack of clarity as to what will emerge at the end of the process: a no-deal Brexit, a sort Brexit, a clean Brexit or no Brexit at all.

As a result, investors have been slower to get involved in EIS and similar tax-efficient investment products.

26

GB Investment Magazine · April 2019

Furthermore, the macro-economic climate is supportive for growth businesses. In its most recent estimates, published in January, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) cut the forecast that it made in October for 2019 growth in advanced economies by 0.1% percentage points, but left the UK forecast unchanged at 1.5%.

More broadly, the new fiscal framework has bedded down and appears to be working exactly as intended, to screen out the ‘pastry cutter’ schemes designed

solely to take advantage of tax breaks and to divert investment into firms with a fighting chance of emerging as the giants of tomorrow.

Not all will succeed, of course, which is why portfolio diversification is essential, as is skilled selection of investable companies. But given the whole point of the 2017 criteria was to ensure that investors faced a real, rather than hypothetical, risk of loss, there does need to be some hazard in the market.

A new breed The criteria was designed, in the words of the Chancellor Philip Hammond, to ensure tax-efficient investment schemes were not co-opted to provide ‘a shelter for low-risk capital preservation schemes’ and instead provided backing for ‘knowledge intensive companies’.

The changed incentives have also led to a new breed of venture capitalists, although perhaps they would be better described as a ‘new-old’ type, given they have imported, mainly from the more mature US venture capital market, a traditional model of risk capitalism far more in keeping with the spirit of Hammond’s reforms than were the tax avoidance schemes that he sought to banish.

True venture capitalists create value, while the taxavoidance schemes sought merely to harvest it and this is precisely what separates investments within EIS in comparison to other types of investments – the creation of value which in turn has a positive impact on the country’s economy, due to the heavy emphasis on investing within knowledge intensive businesses.

Venture capitalists work with the businesses in which they are invested to build up long-term worth, whereas tax-avoidance specialists construct their schemes around the available fiscal breaks with the prospects for investee companies proving something of an afterthought.

Private capital stepping up It is not hard to see which approach will be of greatest benefit in the years ahead. If Britain is to stimulate small companies that have the potential to become large ones, significant amounts of capital will be needed. Institutional investors tend not to get involved in funding growth companies, believing the sector is too small to warrant attention.

That means private capital must step into the gap and that, in turn, means venture capitalists have a central role to play within the UK’s enterprise sector. Funding tomorrow’s growth businesses will be more important than ever in the period during and after Brexit. The figures speak for themselves.

On most recent data, the total population of businesses fell by 0.5% in 2017 but privatesector employment grew by 2%. According to the Federation of Small Business, the number of smaller, one-person businesses with no employees declined, but there was a 2% increase in the total of larger small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), those with employees.

It is no exaggeration to say that the post-crisis UK jobs miracle has been an SME phenomenon, and the sector currently accounts for about 60% of all private sector employment, not to mention more than half of all private-sector turnover.

In light of this, it is not surprising that, in October, the Treasury said: ‘The government is committed to supporting the UK’s fast growing and innovative firms to secure the external finance they need as the UK leaves the EU.’ It added: ‘Access to equity finance is particularly important for knowledge-intensive businesses such as those creating and developing new technologies.’

As we have seen, it was the intention of channelling investment to precisely such businesses that was at the heart of the 2017 changes to the fiscal regime and the consequent end of the low-risk, assetbacked schemes that had little or nothing to do with promoting such investment.

Interestingly, however, some former providers of capital preservation schemes have decided to follow this new trend, reinventing themselves as venture capitalists. Some may prosper, others may find it hard to make the transition.

Ultimately, there is plenty of room for everyone in what is an exciting and dynamic sector and one that will be hugely important for the country’s economic future, long after present domestic difficulties have dropped out of history’s rear-view mirror. GBI

GB Investment Magazine · April 2019

27

THE NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK An investment showcase bringing you the newest offerings from the sector INVESTMENT: Vala Capital EIS fund AIM: Generalist fund with a unique fee structure

T

ell us about the fund

Vala Capital is a UK venture capital firm founded by seasoned entrepreneurs and venture capital investors Jasper Smith, Arthur Hughes and Paddy Willis. Along with Boyd Carson of Sapphire Capital, they represent the investment committee, responsible for identifying the prospective investee companies and mentoring them through to exit.

Smith, Hughes and Willis cumulatively have a track record in venture capital investments of more than 30 exits, with an aggregated return of 3x.

The Vala EIS Fund intends to invest in a portfolio of six to 10 EIS qualifying companies and expects to deploy clients’ capital every quarter, including expecting a full deployment of capital before the end of the 2018/19 tax year (allowing full carry back of income tax relief to 2017/18).

It is anticipated that most of an investor’s capital will be invested in to companies that have previously been invested in to by the fund. Equally, it is expected that most of the capital will be in to companies that are already achieving revenues.

Vala has a unique fee structure that does not charge initial fees, annual management or administrative charges, audit contributions or custodian costs.

Instead, the company charges an initial fee of 6% of the investment to the investee company and to the investor, 20% of profitable exits.

28

GB Investment Magazine · April 2019

[Vala Capital is an appointed representative of Sapphire Capital Partners LLP, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority].

How much is being raised? £10 million in the tax year 2018/19 but with capacity to deploy more.

What types of investments are being sought?

Although the Vala EIS portfolio is a generalist fund, the investment team each brings deep sector expertise across a number of sectors, having conceptualised, started, invested, mentored and exited multiple companies in these sectors. it is expected therefore that most investments will come from: technology – in particular fintech, media and entertainment, food and beverage, and engineering.

What is the minimum investment?

There is no maximum but the minimum investment is £25,000.

What is the targeted return?

The fund is targeting a 2x return when all the companies in the client’s portfolio have exited. This is excluding tax relief but is after fees.

For a minimum investment of £25,000 (assuming no adviser fees have been facilitated), we target a return of £50,000 to the investor, excluding the £7,500 available income tax relief.

Provide details of the top three fund holdings: Arksen - a unique and innovative range of semi-autonomous explorer vessels.

Think Land Rover of the sea, with all the tech of a Tesla. This company launched the range at the Dusseldorf Boat Show in January 2019, garnering considerable interest, including 25 active customer engagements. The next phase of the business is the production of the full-size prototype.

Great British Biscotti Co - a scaled-up bakery business making a range of sweet and savoury biscotti biscuits. It is a fast-growing wholesale and food service, with customers including multiple major supermarkets. 250% revenue growth in the 2017 year and expected further rapid growth in 2018. Further funding is allowing further expansion of the production capacity to fulfil orders for the major supermarkets.

Play.Works - develops games for playing on instant messaging platforms on smartphones or through hardware such as smart TVs. Sales rose to £1.8 million in 2018, from £1.2 million in 2017 and achieved profitability. It currently has a portfolio of more than 400 games and the next investment will support the development of further games and investment across other platforms. GBI

GB Investment Magazine · April 2019

29

How does the challenge of educating consumers about electric cars for a large manufacturer lead to long term tax free income for your clients?

Unlike other traditional venture investment products, Triple Point’s Venture Fund works with its venture network to identify the challenges facing big corporates and then matching them with early stage companies which can solve them. Why? Because it helps to reduce risk and maximise growth.

And because Triple Point’s Venture Fund is a VCT, investors enjoy 30% up front income tax relief, tax free dividends and tax free growth throughout the life of their investment.

Maximising Financial Returns by Solving Corporate Challenges

As with any investment there is no guarantee that the target returns will be achieved and investors’ capital is at risk. Past performance is not a guide to future performance and may not be repeated. Tax rules and reliefs are subject to change.

020 7201 8990 contact@triplepoint.co.uk

VENTURE FUND

www.triplepoint.co.uk

This financial promotion has been issued by Triple Point Administration LLP (“TPAL”), which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the United Kingdom (with firm reference number 618187). Triple Point is the trading name for the Triple Point Group which includes the following companies and associated entities: Triple Point Investment Management LLP registered in England & Wales no. OC321250, authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority no. 456597, Triple Point Administration LLP registered in England & Wales no. OC391352 and authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority no. 618187, and TP Nominees Limited registered in England & Wales no.07839571, all of 1 King William Street, London, EC4N 7AF, UK

DEAL FLOW AND DEPLOYMENT FOR IFAS CONSIDERING S(EIS) INVESTMENT Co-founder of Worth Capital Matthew Cushen discusses deal flow and deployment for IFAs considering S(EIS) investment.

O

ur approach to EIS and SEIS investing is different to other investors. It’s been very deliberately designed by my business partner Paul Soanes and I, based on insight from 14 years of angel investing together and our experience from entrepreneurial, corporate and consulting careers in brand, marketing, retail and innovation.

We landed the insight, on a napkin in a pub, from considering where we have been successful in our investing, as well as challenging the reasoning behind backing a couple of turkeys. The insight might have been scribbled down roughly, but the innovation that we created on the back of it took several experiments and a couple of years to iterate.

It’s ended up in the creation of an EIS and SEIS fund that we invest into, managed by experienced early stage venture capital fund managers, Amersham Investment Management. We use our experience to make the commercial recommendations for the fund’s investments. Our deal flow comes from a monthly competition that is promoted by www.startups.co.uk and generally gives us over 100 businesses a month to consider, and a different deal flow to that our competitors are sharing.

It’s an approach deliberately designed for early stage investing and different to how other funds approach deal flow, distillation and growth. So far we are delighted with the businesses it’s unearthed, the valuations we negotiate and the progress being made.

However, years of helping large businesses to innovate has taught me that sometimes some valuable parts of a proposition can arrive serendipitously. We’ve ended up with three elements of our offer that we didn’t originally set out to achieve. But now financial advisers, wealth managers and direct investors are telling us these are very important to them.

Particularly, but by no means only, at this time when we approach the end of the tax year.

1. Inevitably, February and March see a flurry of late commitments being made by investors, to benefit from EIS and SEIS tax reliefs in the current tax year

After the competition closes our distillation process typically takes six weeks and culminates in us spending half a day with each of three, or four entrepreneurs to dig deep into the market, proposition, strategy, team, business model, communications plan and the valuation. Sometimes no business makes the grade, sometimes one or two will emerge. If the fund invests, either Paul or myself will become Investor Director – giving oversight for investors in the Fund, and helping the businesses to mitigate risks and accelerate their growth.

GB Investment Magazine · April 2019

31

(or taking advantage carry back against the previous year tax bill). The unintended consequence of this? Fund managers scrabbling around for deal flow to satisfy the cash coming their way. Last year we heard from an entrepreneur being offered cash after one phone conversation, on 3 April, as long as she sat with the solicitor the following day to conclude the deal. Making a mockery in that case of claims of commercial and technical due diligence.

We have come to appreciate that our process – the monthly competition and a set distillation process - saves us from the temptation to cut corners. As I write at the end of February, we are making our final commercial recommendations for the fund manager to review for completions planned by the end of March. These are based on our competitions starting in November, December and January and the regimented process of commercial and technical due diligence set off from them.

2. It frustrates us that more investors do not appreciate the benefits of EIS and SEIS investing. Not just the tax reliefs or the potential high returns (both based on the high risk), but also the satisfaction of seeing the real difference their money makes to a growing business, and to our economy’s wider ability to innovate and compete globally.

Too many IFAs and wealth managers have become reticent to recommend the asset class as they have subscribed their client’s cash to a fund but then that has not been invested and put to work quickly. We have an investor that has just committed to our fund.

He’s withdrawn his cash from elsewhere.

He’d questioned why it had not yet been invested six months after investing and was told it couldn’t after all be guaranteed to even be deployed in this tax year.

Again, the process we designed has an unintended consequence – the constant rhythm of a monthly

32

GB Investment Magazine · April 2019

competition gives us reliable and consistent highquality deal flow, helping us be confident of creating mini-portfolios of qualified investments that put investors’ cash to work quickly in closings of the fund anticipated three, or four times during the year.

3. Our personal approach to investing has always been to recycle the tax reliefs into further EIS and SEIS investments – so leveraging the benefits.

Therefore we’ve always been pleased to receive the EIS3 and SEIS3 certificates that mean we can claim the reliefs. We also hear that chasing tax certificates has often been a bugbear for IFAs and wealth mangers.

As part of working closely with our entrepreneurs, we take on the burden of funding activities where it is unproductive to have them to learn about and administer as a one-off activity. So we take the responsibility in our office for dealing with HMRC on behalf of the companies. It’s taken a little while to streamline our operation, but recently we’ve managed turnaround times of 30 days between investment and sending certificates to investors.

Whilst we’d love to claim we deliberately designed all aspects of our proposition, sometimes serendipity plays its part. In these three examples, we’re pleased it has. GBI Matthew Cushen is an innovation consultant, entrepreneur and successful angel investor.

The Start-Up Series Fund, conceived by Worth Capital and managed by Amersham Investment Management (authorised and regulated by FCA) invests in qualified winners of the Start-Up Series.

Capital at risk. Tax benefits depend on personal circumstances and are subject to change. The minimum investment is £10,000. www.worthcapital.uk

M AGAZINE

GBI OPEN OFFERS The power to invest through GrowthInvest

EIS Open

Close

Evergreen

Evergreen

Amount to be Raised: N/A Minimum Investment: £25,000

T. 01865 860 760 E. info@oxcp.com www.oxcp.com

Oxford Capital Growth EIS We will build a portfolio of shares in 12-15 companies for investors over a period of roughly 12-18 months.

We invest in early stage technology focused businesses in the UK. We aim to access the best deals, invest early and keep backing the winners. Our current portfolio includes companies in sectors such as fintech, online marketplaces, digital healthcare, AI and machine learning.

Recent investee companies include Push Doctor (online health), Moneybox (digital savings), Sn-ap (on demand travel app) and Wrisk (insurtech).

Our experienced team works closely with investee companies, typically sitting on the board, helping to accelerate commercial development with the aim of achieving a profitable exit, usually through either a trade sale or a stock market listing.

Each portfolio company should be eligible for EIS reliefs, including 30% income tax relief and tax-free gains.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE SEIS Open

Close

Nov 2017

Evergreen

Target Raise: £3m per annum Minimum investment: £10,000

Deepbridge Innovation SEIS The Deepbridge Innovation SEIS represents an opportunity for private investors to participate in a selected portfolio of innovative seed stage innovation companies, taking advantage of the tax benefits available under the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme.

Providing seed investment to emerging technology-focused companies, the Deepbridge Innovation SEIS seeks to fund selected investee companies that possess an exciting new innovative approach to meet the existing and emerging requirements and demands of both corporate and consumer markets.

The Deepbridge Investment Team has a proven track record of working with emerging companies to create value for shareholders through a hands-on investment methodology.

The Deepbridge Innovation SEIS is a manager fee-free SEIS opportunity at the point of investment for subscriptions received by a financial adviser. Upfront and ongoing manager fees are paid by the Investee Companies, potentially allowing investors to enjoy up to 100% of SEIS tax benefits. Please see costs and fees section in the Information Memorandum for full details.

T. 01244 746000 E. Enquiries@deepbridgecapital.com www.deepbridgecapital.com

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE

EIS Open

January 2013

Close

Evergreen

The availability of SEIS tax reliefs depends on individual circumstances, may be subject to change in future and depend on underlying companies invested in maintaining their qualifying status. Investment in unquoted companies carries high risks and investors could lose the total value of their investment. Investments in SEIS can be difficult to realise. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance.

This financial promotion, directed at investment professionals, has been approved by Enterprise Investment Partners LLP (“EIP”).

Deepbridge Advisers Limited (FRN: 609786) is an Appointed Representative of EIP, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN: 604439).

Deepbridge - Technology Growth EIS

Amount to be Raised: Uncapped

The Deepbridge Technology Growth EIS represents an opportunity for private investors to participate in a selected portfolio of innovative growth companies, taking advantage of the tax benefits available under the Enterprise Investment

Minimum Investment: £10,000

Scheme. The Deepbridge EIS focusses principally on three sectors: • Energy and resource innovation; • Medical technologies; • Business enterprise and other high growth IT-based technologies.

T. 01244 746000 E. Enquiries@deepbridgecapital.com www.deepbridgecapital.com

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE

34

The Deepbridge Investment Team has a proven track record of working with emerging companies to create value for shareholders through a hands-on investment methodology. The Deepbridge Technology Growth EIS is a manager fee-free EIS opportunity at the point of investment for subscriptions received by a financial adviser. Upfront and ongoing manager fees are paid by the Investee Companies, potentially allowing investors to enjoy up to 100% of EIS tax benefits. Please see costs and fees section in the Information Memorandum for full details.

The availability of EIS tax reliefs depends on individual circumstances, may be subject to change in future and depend on underlying companies invested in maintaining their qualifying status. Investment in unquoted companies carries high risks and investors could lose the total value of their investment. Investments in EIS can be difficult to realise. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance.

This financial promotion, directed at investment professionals, has been approved by Enterprise Investment Partners LLP (“EIP”).

Deepbridge Advisers Limited (FRN: 609786) is an Appointed Representative of EIP, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN: 604439).

GB Investment Magazine Open Offers GB34 Investment Magazine · October· 2018

Open Offers

SEIS Open

Close

January 2016

Evergreen

Target Raise: £3m per annum Minimum Investment: £10,000

The Deepbridge Life Sciences SEIS The Deepbridge Life Sciences SEIS represents an opportunity for private investors to participate in a selected portfolio of early stage life sciences companies, taking advantage of the tax benefits available under the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme.

Providing seed investment to emerging companies operating in the life sciences sector, the Deepbridge Life Sciences SEIS seeks to fund companies with exciting new technologies that aim to satisfy the needs of large and growing markets.

The Deepbridge Investment Team has a proven track record of working with emerging companies to create value for shareholders through a hands-on investment methodology.

T. 01244 746000 E. Enquiries@deepbridgecapital.com www.deepbridgecapital.com

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE

EIS Open

March 2017

Close

Evergreen

The Deepbridge Life Sciences SEIS is a manager fee-free SEIS opportunity at the point of investment for subscriptions received by a financial adviser. Upfront and ongoing manager fees are paid by the Investee Companies, potentially allowing investors to enjoy up to 100% of SEIS tax benefits. Please see costs and fees section in the Information Memorandum for full details.

The availability of SEIS tax reliefs depends on individual circumstances, may be subject to change in future and depend on underlying companies invested in maintaining their qualifying status. Investment in unquoted companies carries high risks and investors could lose the total value of their investment. Investments in SEIS can be difficult to realise. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance.

This financial promotion, directed at investment professionals, has been approved by Enterprise Investment Partners LLP (“EIP”). Deepbridge Advisers Limited (FRN: 609786) is an Appointed Representative of EIP, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN: 604439).

Deepbridge Life Sciences EIS

Maximum Raise: Uncapped

The Deepbridge Life Sciences EIS represents an opportunity for private investors to participate in a selected portfolio of healthcare innovation, whilst taking advantage of the tax benefits available under the Enterprise Investment Scheme.

Minimum investment: £10,000

The Deepbridge Life Sciences EIS focuses principally, but not exclusively, on three sectors: • Biopharmaceuticals • Biotechnology • Medical Technology.

The Deepbridge Investment Team has a proven track record of working with emerging companies to create value for shareholders through a hands-on investment methodology.

T. 01244 746000 E. Enquiries@deepbridgecapital.com www.deepbridgecapital.com

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE

The Deepbridge Life Sciences EIS is a manager fee-free EIS opportunity at the point of investment for subscriptions received by a financial adviser. Upfront and ongoing manager fees are paid by the Investee Companies, potentially allowing investors to enjoy up to 100% of EIS tax benefits. Please see costs and fees section in the Information Memorandum for full details.

The availability of EIS tax reliefs depends on individual circumstances, may be subject to change in future and depend on underlying companies invested in maintaining their qualifying status. Investment in unquoted companies carries high risks and investors could lose the total value of their investment. Investments in EIS can be difficult to realise. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance.

This financial promotion, directed at investment professionals, has been approved by Enterprise Investment Partners LLP (“EIP”).

Deepbridge Advisers Limited (FRN: 609786) is an Appointed Representative of EIP, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN: 604439).

GB Investment Magazine · Open Offers

35

EIS

SEIS

Open

Close

Now

N/A

Amount to be Raised: £5m Minimum Investment: £15,000

Oxford Technology Combined SEIS and EIS Fund - “The Start-up Fund” Oxford Technology invests in high risk, high reward technology start-ups, in general within an hour’s drive of Oxford, and has been doing this since 1983. The latest fund, OT(S)EIS, made its first investment in 2012. By 22nd March 2019, OT(S)EIS had made 114 investments in 36 companies.

The figures for the fund as a whole since its inception are as follows:

T. 01865 784466 E. info@oxfordtechnology.com www.oxfordtechnology.com

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE

Gross amount invested by OT(S)EIS:

£5.68m

Cash back to investors via tax reliefs:

£2.22m

Net cost of these investments after tax reliefs:

£3.46m

Cash back from exits*:

£0.24m

Fair value of remaining portfolio:

£12.36m

Total value:

£14.83m

Tax free gain:

£9.15m

*OT(S)EIS investors who made an SEIS investment in Animal Dynamics, an Oxford University spin-out at 14p per share (7p after SEIS tax relief) in Jun 2015, had the opportunity to exit in March 2019 at 97p per share (so 14x the after tax share price). About 50% of the shareholders opted to sell with 50% opting to remain – the company is doing very well.

OT(S)EIS remains open for investment at any time. We average about one or two new investmens per quarter, and investors in the fund receive their pro-rata share of these. The latest quarterly report, with a page of information on each investment is downloadable from www.oxfordtechnology.com.

EIS Open

01.09.2017

Close

Evergreen

Amount to be Raised: £40m Minimum Investment: £15,000

Oxford Technology EIS Fund - “The Development Fund” Oxford Technology has been investing in technology start-ups since 1983. The Oxford Technology EIS Fund will aim to provide each investor a diversified portfolio of 5 - 10 EIS investments in high risk, but high potential early stage technology companies near Oxford.

T. 020 7222 3475 E. info@oxfordtechnology.com www.oxfordtechnology.com

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE

36

GB Investment Magazine Open Offers GB36 Investment Magazine · October· 2018

Open Offers

EIS Open

01.10.2018

Close

Evergreen

Amount to be Raised: £20m Minimum Investment: £10,000

Great Point Ventures EIS Great Point Ventures EIS (“Fund”) presents UK tax payers with the opportunity to invest in EIS qualifying businesses operating in the booming UK creative industries.

The Fund aims to seek out high growth companies and has a broad sub-sector approach designed to offer investors a degree of diversification across content creation, content distribution & marketing, production facilities & services and new media & technology.

Investors will have a minimum of four companies in their portfolio and all companies must have received Advance Assurance from HMRC prior to funds being deployed.

Why Great Point Ventures EIS?

Unrivalled sector experience - the Great Point team have a unique blend of financial, operational, commercial and investment management expertise specific to the media sector T. 0203 873 0028 E. dperkins@greatpointmedia.com www.greatpointmedia.com

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE EIS Open

April 2017

SEIS Close

Evergreen

Amount to be Raised:

Up to £25,000,000

Minimum Investment: £10,000

T. 020 7071 3945 E. enquiries@growthinvest.com www.growthinvest.com

Strong opportunity pipeline - significant proprietary deal flow and a number of “first look” deals in place with industry players and leading educational institutions Alignment of interest - the Fund offers a competitive fee structure ensuring Great Point’s interests are aligned with those of the investor Growth focussed - the Fund’s target return is two times gross investment (excluding tax reliefs, inclusive of all costs and fees) Tax efficient - for every £1 subscribed at least 97p will be invested and therefore attract EIS tax reliefs (subject to personal circumstance)

GrowthInvest Portfolio Service A discretionary investment management service which seeks to leverage the experience and expertise of the GrowthInvest investment team to select a diversified portfolio of some of the most promising companies that have passed through GrowthInvest due diligence process.

GrowthInvest is an independent platform, which provides access to tax efficient investments to a growing network of UK financial advisers, wealth managers and investors. The platform aims to bring the advantages of early stage investing to a wider audience of investors and advisers, who are able to benefit from the potentially higher returns these companies can offer and tax efficiency via government approved schemes, such as SEIS and EIS. From our experience working with advisers on the Platform, the Fund has been designed to consist of three sub-funds, each with a separate investment policy. The first will target Investee Companies which qualify for SEIS Reliefs only. The second will target Investee Companies which qualify for EIS Reliefs only and the third will be a mixed investment policy which will target Investee Companies which qualify for SEIS Reliefs and / or EIS Reliefs. You will be able to choose how much of your subscription to allocate to each of these three sub-funds. The Fund is aiming to exit investments after three to seven years.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE

GB Investment Magazine · Open Offers

37

3

REASONS TO INVEST IN HORROR FILMS For your free copy call 020 7628 7857 or email info@ironboxcapital.com

Serious Investment Serious Entertainment www.ironboxcapital.com

Open Offers

EIS

SEIS

Open

Close

Now

Multiple

Amount to be Raised: Evergreen

Minimum Investment: £10,000

T. +44 20 3858 0847 E. mark@worthcapital.uk worthcapital.uk

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE EIS

SEIS

Open

Close

Now

29.03.19

Amount to be Raised: £3.5m Minimum Investment: £20,000

Start-Up Series Fund The Start-Up Series Fund is an evergreen EIS & SEIS service. Managed as an Alternative Investment Fund by Amersham Investment Management Limited, authorised and regulated by the FCA. The service is designed for eligible subscribers to be invested in selected winners of the Start-Up Series, a monthly competition organised by Worth Capital Limited and promoted by startsups.co.uk. The Fund invests in qualifying B2C or B2B companies with innovative products or services that can create new consumer behaviours in growth markets, with teams that demonstrate compelling marketing & communication skills and with a clear credible route to exit.

•

EIS & SEIS investments - choose EIS, SEIS or both

•

Businesses selected by real world, commercial entrepreneurs with deep brand, marketing, retail & innovation expertise – worth capital

•

A unique approach to UK EIS & SEIS fund investing – a monthly competition, around one hundred businesses considered each month

•

Ongoing oversight from experienced investor directors - skilled in helping accelerate growth & reducing risk

•

Investments in ‘mini-portfolios’ of typically 3 or 4 businesses

•

Investments qualifying for attractive EIS & SEIS tax reliefs

Any investment in the Start-Up Series Fund places your capital at risk of total loss and will not be readily realisable. Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances and is subject to change.

We recommend you take professional advice before investing.

Iron Box Capital: Alive in the Morning Ltd. Alive in the Morning Ltd. will develop, produce, finance and market a slate of unique, commercial films in the horror and thriller/horror genres. Horror is one of the most popular and pro table genres in a worldwide Filmed entertainment market that will be worth a forecasted US$104.62 billion a year by 2019. It is consistently commercially successful as people love to watch movies to be scared, whether at the cinema or at home.

Horror is also one of the most international genres, as fear is universal, transcending cultural and geographical boundaries.

Horror Films additionally can be made on low budgets and do not need star names to attract audiences, offering the potential for a significant return-on-investment.

Advance Assurance has been given.

T. 07528616752 E. raimund@ironboxcapital.com www.ironboxcapital.com

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE

EIS Open

Evergreen

Close

Evergreen

Amount to be Raised: £15m+ Minimum Investment: £25,000

T. 020 3327 4861 E. EIS@hambroperks.com www.hambroperks.com

Hambro Perks Co-Investment Fund Hambro Perks helps outstanding Founders build world-changing businesses. The provision of permanent, patient capital from our own balance sheet means we are completely aligned with the long term goals and interests of the entrepreneurs and investee companies that we support.

We aim to take early risk in businesses, investing where we can add significant value through applying and sharing the expertise our team has built over many decades’ combined experience of founding, building, internationalising and exiting companies. We believe we are the destination of choice for the very best entrepreneurs, and they actively choose us to support them as they build fast growth tech-enabled businesses. Our main areas of focus are education technology, digital health, insurance technology, digital media and fintech.

The Hambro Perks Co-Investment Fund enables individuals to co-invest alongside and on a fully aligned basis with Hambro Perks, thereby benefiting from this extraordinary access and proprietary dealflow while utilising EIS reliefs. Please get in touch for more information.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE

GB Investment Magazine · Open Offers

39

SEIS Open

Close

Evergreen – multiple close dates

Now

Amount to be Raised: £750K Minimum Investment: £10,000

Iron Box Film & TV seis channel in the Amersham SEIS fund The British Film Industry is growing, and is forecast to grow for years to come. This is fuelled by the global demand for films, through multi on-line channels, including Netflix and Amazon Prime.

Iron Box’s team of experts has specialist knowledge across development, finance, production and marketing of film & television projects. As a company they are well positioned to capitalise on this growth market.

The aim is to focus on the most profitable genres, where there is a clear target audience, and in using proven teams of people that have a track record of making profitable Film & TV shows.

The Iron Box Film & TV SEIS Channel has been designed for UK tax payers who prefer to invest in a managed portfolio of independent filmed entertainment projects, whether for traditional films or television. There are likely to be around 4 films in each portfolio. The fund will finance projects that are commercial, with strong audience appeal, and suit the international marketplace.

T. 07528616752 E. raimund@ironboxcapital.com www.ironboxcapital.com

The companies will be SEIS eligible.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE BR Open

June 2005

Close

Evergreen

Amount to be Raised: Unlimited

Minimum Investment: £25,000

Octopus AIM Inheritance Tax Service Since 2005, the Octopus AIM Inheritance Tax Service has offered a fast and flexible solution to inheritance tax planning, while providing the potential for significant capital growth through investment into a portfolio of 20-30 companies listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM).

As we only select companies which meet the requirements for Business Property Relief, the shares should become exempt from inheritance tax after just two years, provided they are still held on death.

Our highly experienced Smaller Companies team manages £1.5 billion on behalf of 11,500 investors across the service.

T. 0800 316 2295 E. clientrelations@octopusinvestments.com

octopusinvestments.com

Portfolio companies are chosen after detailed research, which involves spending time with a company’s management team, evaluating its competitors and assessing its financial strength.

Holdings are monitored on a day-to-day basis, with the team making investment decisions.

The Octopus AIM Inheritance Tax Service is also available within an ISA wrapper.

The value of an investment, and any income from it, can fall as well as rise and you may not get back the full amount invested.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE

Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances and may change in the future.

Tax relief depends on portfolio companies maintaining their BPR-qualifying status.

The shares of smaller companies could fall or rise in value more than other shares listed on the main market of the London Stock Exchange. They may also be harder to sell.

Issued by Octopus Investments Limited, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Registered office: 33 Holborn, London EC1N 2HT. Registered in England and Wales No. 03942880. We record telephone calls. Issued: September 2018. CAM07427-1809.

40

GB Investment Magazine Open Offers GB40 Investment Magazine · October· 2018

Open Offers

VCT Open

Close

13.09.2018

12.09.2019

Amount to be Raised: £120 million

Minimum Investment: £3,000

Octopus Titan VCT Octopus Titan VCT invests in tech-enabled businesses with high growth potential. It’s managed by Octopus Ventures, one of Europe’s most experienced venture capital investment teams with over 150 years combined experience. Octopus Titan VCT currently has a portfolio of around 65 early stage companies operating in a diverse range of sectors.

Over the last decade we’ve backed some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs, including the founders of Zoopla Property Group, Secret Escapes and graze.com just to name a few.

It targets a tax-free dividend of 5p per annum, plus special dividends if portfolio companies are sold at a significant profit. Investors can also claim 30% upfront income tax relief on the initial investment up to £200,000 and any capital growth is tax-free.

T. 0800 316 2295 E. clientrelations@octopusinvestments.com

octopusinvestments.com

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE

EIS Open

Evergreen

Close

Evergreen

Amount to be Raised: Evergreen Minimum Investment: £15,000

The value of an investment, and any income from it, can fall as well as rise and you may not get back the full amount invested.

Tax reliefs available depend on individual circumstances and may change in the future. Tax reliefs also depend on the VCT maintaining its VCT-qualifying status.

VCT shares could fall or rise in value more than other shares listed on the main market of the London Stock Exchange. They may also be harder to sell.

Please be aware that this advertisement is not a prospectus, and investors should only subscribe for shares based on information in the prospectus or Key Information Document (KID), which can be obtained from octopusinvestments.com/titan. Issued by Octopus Investments Limited, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Registered office: 33 Holborn, London EC1N 2HT. Registered in England and Wales No. 03942880. We record telephone calls. Issued: September 2018. CAM07411-1809

Downing Ventures EIS Downing Ventures EIS invests in high risk, high potential return investment opportunities with a principal focus on early-stage UK technology companies, while also providing access to attractive EIS tax reliefs.

The team invests across a variety of sectors, with focus on enterprise SaaS, large consumer markets, healthcare tech and special situations tech.

Each of these young, growing businesses will be high risk with a significant chance of failure.

However, the following factors should help to manage risk: • Diversification: subscriptions estimated to be spread across approximately 10 - 15 growth businesses.

T. 020 7630 3319 E. sales@downing.co.uk www.downing.co.uk

• Due diligence: a high number of opportunities will be investigated before each investment is made. In 2017, the team reviewed around 100 companies a month.

It’s anticipated that investors will be given the opportunity to exit their investments between four and eight years from subscription.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE IHT Open

Evergreen

BR Close

Evergreen

Amount to be Raised: Evergreen Minimum Investment: £25,000

Downing Estate Planning Service DEPS aims to preserve investors’ capital by focusing on two sectors: businesses trading from freehold premises and/or energy infrastructure businesses. We believe these are lower risk than other tax-efficient sectors. DEPS is designed to offer full IHT relief on subscriptions after two years, by investing in a portfolio of businesses that qualify for business relief.

The service has been designed with the following key features: • To target capital growth of 4% per annum over the medium term (this is a target and is not guaranteed).

T. 020 7630 3319 E. sales@downing.co.uk www.downing.co.uk

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE

• Create an option to receive distributions (paid quarterly, six-monthly or annually at a level set by the investor).

• Offer monthly access to capital with no penalties on exit (subject to liquidity).

Additionally, we offer two insurance policies for this service: • Downside protection cover (at no additional cost): insurance policy that covers the first two years (before the investment obtains IHT relief). The policy covers 20% of any net loss in value on death under the ages of 90 years.

• Life cover (optional – at an additional cost): mitigates the effect of IHT for the first two years before IHT relief begins. It covers 40% of the original gross investment (which would be payable to HMRC) upon death within the first two years.

GB Investment Magazine · Open Offers

41

IHT Open

Close

March 2012

Evergreen

Amount to be Raised: Evergreen Minimum Investment:

£100,000

Downing AIM Estate Planning Service (DAEPS) DAEPS enables investors to own a portfolio of AIM-listed shares and is designed to offer full IHT relief on subscriptions after two years, by investing in companies that qualify for business relief.

We aim to manage risk by spreading funds across at least 20 companies from different sectors on the AIM market.

Other key features:

T. 020 7630 3319 E. sales@downing.co.uk www.downing.co.uk

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE IHT Open

Close

March 2014

Open ended

Amount to be Raised: Evergreen Minimum Investment:

£100,000

• Downside protection cover (at no additional cost): insurance policy that covers the first two years (before the investment obtains IHT relief). The policy covers 20% of any net loss in value on death under the ages of 90 years.

• Ownership and control: allow investors to retain full ownership of the investments.

• Capital growth: companies will be selected based on analysis on operational business, longevity of earning and alignment between management and equity shareholders.

• Access: enable investors to withdraw capital from their portfolio at any time, subject to liquidity and 10 days’ notice.

Downing AIM ISA (DISA) DISA gives investors the opportunity to invest in a portfolio of at least 20 AIM-quoted companies, combining IHT relief (after two years) with ISA tax benefits, by investing in companies that qualify for business relief.

We aim to manage risk by spreading funds across at least 20 companies from different sectors.

Other key features: • Downside protection cover (at no additional cost): insurance policy that covers the first two years (before the investment obtains IHT relief). The policy covers 20% of any net loss in value on death under the ages of 90 years.

T. 020 7630 3319 E. sales@downing.co.uk www.downing.co.uk

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE EIS Open

Evergreen

Close

Evergreen

Amount to be Raised: Uncapped Minimum Investment: £20,000

• Ownership and control: allows investors to retain full ownership of the investments.

• Capital growth: generate capital growth from the portfolio of investments. Companies are selected based on analysis of their operational business, longevity of earnings and alignment between management and equity shareholders.

• Access: to enable investors to withdraw capital from their portfolio at any time, subject to liquidity.

Symvan Capital Symvan Capital has an established and award-winning track record of growth-oriented investing. We invest in scalable and disruptive technology businesses – companies that seek to impact and change established business models or industries. We look for businesses with a unique proposition and the potential to deliver ten times our investment.

Symvan scours the market to find founders with strong teams who have vision, drive and flexibility to deliver results within reasonable time frames. We fund, mentor and support them through to exit. We provide both management and expert advice from our own team and from our network.

T. 020 3011 5097 E. ml@symvancapital.com www.symvancapital.com

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE

42

There are zero upfront or ongoing charges to the investor. We charge the investee companies instead. Therefore, investors can claim 100% of the EIS tax reliefs.

The only fee Symvan eventually charges investors is a 20% performance fee, which is dependent on a successful exit. Consequently, Symvan is very exit focussed.

We typically add no more than five to seven new companies to the portfolio per year, in line with our “deeper not wider” investment philosophy.

GB Investment Magazine Open Offers GB42 Investment Magazine · October· 2018

Open Offers

EIS Open

Nexus Investments’ Scale-Up Fund

Close

Now

Evergreen

Amount to be Raised: £10m Minimum Investment: £25,000

The Nexus Investments’ Scale-Up Fund provides each investor a diversified portfolio of 8 – 10+ EIS investments in high risk, but high potential early-stage entrepreneur-led businesses. These businesses will be in one or more of the data, digital, education and health sectors, the areas of greatest potential for UK companies to make an impact in the coming 10-20 years.

As well as the Fund, Nexus Investments serves a large and active business angel co-investor group.

The Fund Manager, Nexus Investments, has been arranging, advising and co-investing in these areas since 2014, having developed a promising track record and a distinctive investment model.

Returns are expected to take the form of outright sales of portfolio companies, with an average holding period of 5 - 8 years.

T. 0207 104 5595 E. info@nexusgroup.co.uk www.scaleupfund.co.uk

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE EIS Open

Close

Now

Evergreen

EMVC Evergreen EIS

Maximum Raise:

Targeting £2-5m p.a

EMV Capital Ltd (EMVC), a London-based investor supporting the growth of high-potential technology SMEs with core technological innovation, is serving as Investment Adviser to the EMVC Evergreen EIS Fund, which is managed by Sapphire Capital Partners, an award-winning specialist fund manager focused on EIS and SEIS schemes.

Minimum investment: £10,000

The EMVC Evergreen EIS Fund strategy is built on three key pillars: 1. Real businesses, real innovation, real value The Fund will only invest in B2B businesses built on core technological innovation, generating tangible economic value for the industrial sectors in the real economy.

2. Strong corporate links and relationships

T. +44 (0) 203 761 6138 E. investors@emvcapital.com www.emvcapital.com/eis_fund

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE EIS Open

Jan 1st, 2019

Amount

to

Raised:

3. Follow on capital and co-investment The Fund will benefit from EMVC’s access to follow-on funding, such as through EMVC’s contacts with institutional investors, corporate venturing teams and investment vehicles.

Focused on Seed and Series A/B EIS-eligible investment opportunities the Fund will look to invest in companies within the following technology areas: Industry Sectors: Industrial High-Tech; Energy; Resource Efficiency & Circular Economy; Smart Cities & Connected Transport Technology Horizontals: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics; Internet of Things; Electronics; Advanced Engineering; Industrial Chemistry; B2B tech enterprise software; Environmental technology

StoryFirst Ltd.

Close

April 5th , 2019

be

The Fund will seek to leverage EMVC’s network of corporate relationships both to validate the opportunities and to accelerate the growth of the Investee Companies.

£5m

Minimum Investment: £25,000

T. 0207 186 9933 E. julian.wheeler@shardcapital.com storyfirst.media

StoryFirst is an integrated media company focused on the origination, development, production, distribution and financing of high-quality television series. StoryFirst was created to take advantage of the current market shift from linear to digital and On Demand TV and the resultant boost in content demand coming from such acquirers as Netflix, Amazon, Apple and Hulu as well as traditional broadcasters and cable channels, among others.

StoryFirst differentiates itself from other production companies by maintaining its independence from output or distribution deals, financing our own overhead and development (the company has 35 projects in development) and focusing on innovative deal-making and investments to retain as much profit participation as possible in each series.

Michael Grade is the Chairman of StoryFirst and Ivan Dunleavy (previously CEO of the Pinewood Group) is also on the board.

Recent productions include “A Child in Time” starring Benedict Cumberbatch.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE

GB Investment Magazine · Open Offers

43

BR Open

Close

03.09.2018

Open ended

Amount to be Raised: Open ended

Minimum Investment: £25,000

Guinness Sustainable Infrastructure Service Subscriptions made to the The Guinness Sustainable Infrastructure Service will be invested into shares of one or more companies that qualify for Business Relief with no initial fee for advised clients.

Investee companies will own and operate Sustainable Energy projects, such as roof mounted solar. These projects have strong visibility of revenues that are usually index-linked which helps to achieve capital preservation.

Target Return to investors is in excess of 5% p.a. net of fees which is aided by fixed capital costs, low operating costs and predictable revenue streams with low annual variability.

T. 020 7222 3475 E. shane.gallwey@guinnessfunds.com www.guinnessfunds.com/iht

Inflation-linked long term (20 year plus) Power Purchase Agreements are able to benefit from government subsidies where available.

Clients are able to benefit from access to their capital by redemption of shares on a regular or ad hoc basis.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE BR Open

January 2018

Close

Evergreen

Amount to be Raised: Open ended

Minimum Investment: £40,000 (£20,000 for additional investment)

Guinness Best of AIM Service The Guinness Best of AIM Service is a discretionary managed service investing in AIM-quoted companies that qualify for Business Relief with the potential for capital growth.

The rigorous quantitative portfolio selection approach has been adapted from the process used in Guinness Asset Management’s successful range of global equity funds. The detailed screening process is underpinned by the quality, value and conviction of each eligible AIMquoted stock.

The service consists of a high-conviction concentrated portfolio of 20 companies across a range of sectors that have persistently generated a real return on invested capital. We target a low portfolio turnover to minimise dealing costs whilst maintaining a competitive fee structure.

T. 020 7222 3475 E. shane.gallwey@guinnessfunds.com www.guinnessfunds.com/iht

Clients are able to access their capital, without exit penalties, enabling them to retain control of their assets.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE Investment Trust Open

January 2018

Close

n/a

Amount to be Raised:

Authorised up to £50m

Minimum Investment:

No minimum, subject to ongoing placing program

Sure Ventures PLC Listed investment fund Sure Ventures PLC is an entrepreneur-led Venture Capital Fund, listed on the London Stock Exchange (Ticker: SURE). It targets high growth tech companies where there is a proven concept and revenue generation, in the following sectors: - Augmented Reality (AR) & Virtual Reality (VR) - Internet of Things (IoT) - Emerging areas of Fintech (e.g. Blockchain/AI) With a highly experienced, sector-specialist investment team and a rigorous origination and selection process, it offers investors access to early stage technology companies.

FUND OVERVIEW - Focuses on areas of significant growth potential over the next 5-10 years (AR/VR in particular is expected to be a $108 billion market by 2022)

T. 020 3931 7000 E. info@sureventuresplc.com www.sureventuresplc.com

- Target portfolio of 30 diverse high growth companies - Target of 30% Gross IRR return across portfolio - May pay dividends to maintain status as an investment trust and/or purchase its own shares - Over 10 years Venture Capital Investment Management experience

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE

44

- Backed by one of London’s leading specialist investment managers, Shard Capital, which manages and advises over £1 billion.

GB Investment Magazine Open Offers GB44 Investment Magazine · October· 2018

Open Offers

EIS Open

Close Evergreen with quarterly tranche closures

19.09.2016

Amount

to

be

Raised:

£50m

Minimum Investment: £20,000

Guinness EIS The Guinness EIS seeks to invest in at least five investee companies to create a portfolio of investments across a range of sectors.

Characteristics favoured by the investment management team are asfollows: • Businesses with experienced management teams - Many entrepreneurs are serial entrepreneurs. They have successfully builtand sold companies and we look at their sector specific successes when they are looking for investment in new/ existing ventures • Businesses with good visibility on future growth - Maturing companies and businesses with clearly defined growth paths

T. 020 7222 3475 E. shane.gallwey@guinnessfunds.com www.guinnessfunds.com/eis

• Businesses with expanding working capital requirements - Successful businesses often require additional funds to expand their working capital to fund stock and debtor growth.

The Guinness EIS is an evergreen service with tranche closures at the end of each quarter. All subscriptions received in the current tranche will be invested in the 2018/19 tax year.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE EIS Open

Close

03.09.2018 Amount

to

06.04.2019 be

Raised:

£10m

Minimum Investment: £20,000

T. 020 7222 3475 E. shane.gallwey@guinnessfunds.com www.guinnessfunds.com/eis

Guinness AIM EIS 2019 The Guinness AIM EIS seeks to invest in at least 10 investee companies to create a portfolio of investments across a range of sectors. It targets AIM quoted companies withe the flexibility to invest up to 20% in the NEX growth market and pre-IPO. The AIM EIS closes annually on 6th April for investment in the subsequent 12 months in newly issued AIM stocks that have EIS Advance Assurance in place and targets a return of £1.30 per £1.00 invested net of all fees. Subscriptions received by 6th April 2019 will be invested in the 2019/20 tax year which will allow for carry back of income tax relief to 2018/19.

The Guinness AIM EIS is an HMRC approved fund so that investors receive one EIS 5 certificate for all holdings once the portfolio is invested. The AIM market is relatively liquid and provides a natural exit route with the intention to exit shares held soon after the EIS 3 year holding period.

For this service, Guinness will defer all fees until exit, which maximises the amount on which investors can claim EIS tax reliefs.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE EIS/SEIS Open Now

Close Evergreen with quarterly close

Amount to be Raised: £10m Target

Minimum Investment: £25,000

o2h Ventures Therapeutics Fund o2h Ventures Limited has launched the first fund in the UK solely focused on early stage biotech therapeutic and related AI opportunities in the UK. The geographic scope shall be UK wide but will target the growing Cambridge biotech cluster.

The fund is headquartered in the o2h SciTech Park, Cambridge, where it can provide the incubation and support as part of a community to the companies it has invested in to help them achieve a critical value inflexion point. The team at o2h have access to some of the most exciting ideas through its live grass roots working relationships fostered with entrepreneurs and scientists over many years.

A shift in focus of the large pharmaceutical companies from developing innovation in-house to acquiring innovation externally increased demand for the best science providing earlier exit options.

The fund is structured to be S/EIS compliant providing generous income, inheritance and capital gains tax breaks for UK tax payers. We plan to build a portfolio of 5-12 unquoted per investor.

E. invest@o2h.com www.o2h.com/ventures

Investors may download the Information Memorandum at www.o2h.com/ventures.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE

GB Investment Magazine · Open Offers

45

EIS Open

Close

July 2018

28 June 2019

Amount to be Raised: £20m Minimum Investment: £50,000

Calculus Capital EIS Fund Pioneers of tax efficient investing, Calculus Capital created the UK’s first approved EIS Fund in 1999.

Our 19 year track record of investing in growing UK companies assures investors of our ability to make sensible investments capable of delivering excellent returns at every stage of the economic cycle.

Calculus has won multiple awards, including the EIS Association’s ‘Fund Manager of the Year’ in February 2017, the fifth time the firm has been awarded the accolade and more recently was awarded Best EIS Investment Manager at the Growth Investor Awards in November 2018.

Calculus are recognised as having an incredibly robust investment process and an active portfolio management style - which has led to an impressive track record of successful exits.

The Calculus Capital EIS Fund focuses on established companies with growth potential, across a diverse range of sectors. An investor can expect a portfolio of 6-10 companies with the following characteristics: • The ability to achieve our target IRR of 20% • Experienced management teams

T. 020 7493 4940 E. madeleine@calculuscapital.com www.calculuscapital.com

• Successful sales of proven products or services • Profits or a clear path to profitability • Clear route to exit

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE

VCT Open

September 2018

Close 30 August 2019

(2019/20 tax year)

Amount to be Raised: £10m Minimum Investment: £5,000

Calculus’ investment strategy is exit led, with a key focus on delivering strong returns to investors.

The 18 month investment programme commences after relevant closing date.

Calculus value their reputation for client service as much as their investment record, and are focused on building long standing relationships with both clients and advisors. Please get in touch to find out more on 020 7493 4940 or info@calculuscapital.com

Calculus Capital VCT Pioneers of tax efficient investing, Calculus Capital have a strong track record for investing in established, unquoted SMEs. Our experienced investment team and thorough investment process have produced impressive dividend performance and exit returns for investors. By co-investing in selected established companies through both VCT and EIS, we are able to choose larger companies and bigger deals – reducing the risk profile of the investment. The Calculus VCT has the following characteristics: • Targets an annual dividend of 4.5% of NAV • Income tax relief of 30%, tax-free capital gains and dividends • Diversified portfolio, targeting 30 qualifying companies • Share certificates issued 10 days after allotment • Allotments available in both 2018/19 and 2019/20 tax years • Monthly standing order option available • Target 5% discount in respect to share buyback after 2020

T. 020 7493 4940 E. madeleine@calculuscapital.com www.calculuscapital.com

The top up offer will be used to both invest in new companies with growth potential and provide further funding to a number of portfolio companies.

Calculus value their reputation for personal service as much as their investment record, and are focused on providing an excellent client experience. Please get in touch to find out more on 020 7493 4940 or info@calculuscapital.com

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE

46

GB Investment Magazine Open Offers GB46 Investment Magazine · October· 2018

Open Offers

EIS

SEIS

Open

Open

Evergreen: Next close 27th March 2019

May 2018

Amount to be Raised: £5m Minimum Investment: £10,000

Jenson SEIS & EIS Fund 2018-19 Applying a very structured sector agnostic investment approach, the Fund targets exciting, innovative and disruptive technologies which qualify for SEIS investments, where we typically invest the full allowable amount of £150,000 per company.

These investee companies are then nurtured via the Investee support programme, which provides financial and operational assistance to enhance returns, a key differentiator between Jenson and other SEIS and EIS providers.

The EIS element of the fund is used to provide follow-on funding to fully exploit commercialisation of a proven business model. Specifically, the EIS fund will concentrate on the best of the Funds existing portfolio but will always be benchmarked relative to new external company opportunities.

Having access to an extensive and existing SEIS portfolio enables follow on funding at a fair price.

T. 020 7788 7539 E. seis@jensonsolutions.com www.jensonfundingpartners.com

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE EIS Open

Now

Close

29th March 2019

Amount to be Raised: £5m - £10m Minimum Investment: £25,000

Jenson Funding Partners has been investing since 2012 and has made just under 100 investments.

To date the SEIS has invested circa £12 million and the EIS, combined with the syndicated investors, has invested over £5 million and raised over £5million of debt facilities.

The combined SEIS and EIS structure enables an individual to choose whether to invest in earlier start-up companies within SEIS or later stage companies under EIS, invest solely via SEIS or EIS or split funds across both. The 1st tranche for 2018/19 has closed and deployment commenced, the 2nd tranche will close on 27th March with a planned deployment within this tax year.

Mariana Growth EIS Fund 2018/19 Tax Year Deadline: 29th March 2019 (cheque deadline 15th March) The Mariana Growth EIS Fund offers investors the opportunity to invest into a portfolio of EIS qualifying companies across multiple sectors. The fund is targeting a return of £2.00 per £1.00 invested and will only invest into companies with HMRC Advance Assurance. The Fund will favour companies with a demonstrable demand for their product/service, a clearly defined capital expenditure plan and an experienced management team.

Our current preferred sectors include;

T. 0207 065 6699 E. ukinvestments@marianainvestments.com www.marianainvestments.com

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE EIS Open

Evergreen

SEIS Close

Evergreen

Amount to be Raised: N/A Minimum Investment: £5,000

• Hydroponics • Waste Management • UK Construction 100% of investors subscription (net of adviser fees) will be invested into EIS qualifying companies.

Founded in 2009, Mariana was established as an institutional brokerage firm. In addition to our well-established institutional presence, we offer a range of Structured Products, Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and Business Relief (BR) qualifying investments.

GrowthInvest - The Tax Efficient Platform for Advisers GrowthInvest is a unique, independent platform which provides access to tax efficient investments to a growing network of UK financial advisers, wealth managers and investors. Originally founded by financial advisers in 2012 as the Seed EIS Platform, we rebranded as GrowthInvest in October 2016 to better reflect the wider range of products and services available: We permit investment into a range of single company offers, as well as Managed EIS Portfolio Services and funds, giving clients a number of different investment options.

• We offer a simplified asset transfer process which allows advisers to place all of their clients’ tax efficient investments onto the platform.

• We provide intuitive online reporting tools, allowing advisers to monitor, analyse, and provide consolidated performance updates and quarterly reports to their clients.

T. 020 7071 3945 E. enquiries@growthinvest.com www.growthinvest.com

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE

• All investable companies go through one of 3 defined due diligence tiers, giving added peaceof-mind to the adviser.

• A single, secure online environment for all clients to review and build their tax efficient investment portfolios.

We’ve placed the adviser at the heart of everything we do, making it straightforward for advisers to improve the service they offer to their clients in the tax efficient investment arena. Please visit us at growthinvest.com for more details about our current open investment opportunities.

GB Investment Magazine · Open Offers

47

EIS Open

Close

Now

1st April 2019

Amount to be Raised: N/A Minimum Investment: £10,000

Fund Twenty8 EIS Fund Twenty8 follows the decisions of sophisticated private and professional investors to automatically build you a diversified portfolio of no fewer than 28 EIS-qualifying startups.

The fund’s strategy is based on extensive research conducted by NESTA and Intelligent Partnership, which asked the question: how many startup investments should I have?

The magic number appears to be: no fewer than 28. With this many startups in your portfolio, the study suggests a 95% chance of at least one giving you a return of 10X or more. With this in mind, the fund is targeting a return of over 20% IRR, including up to 30% EIS tax relief.

Now in its fourth fund, Fund Twenty8 has attracted over 400 investors, with an average investment of £21,000 (ranging from £10,000 to over £300,000 for advised clients). The fund has invested into more than 50 companies to date.

T. 01223 478558 E. fundtwenty8@syndicateroom.com www.syndicateroom.com/funds/ fund-twenty8

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE

EIS Open

31st January 2019

Close

Evergreen

Amount to be Raised: Target £10m Minimum Investment: £20,000

or £5,000 under the future investors scheme

T. 0785 091 5378 E. sanjeev.gordhan@newable.co.uk www.newable.co.uk

Risk warning: Investing in early-stage businesses involves risks, including illiquidity, lack of dividends, loss of investment and dilution, and it should be done only as part of a diversified portfolio. SyndicateRoom is targeted exclusively at sophisticated investors who understand these risks and make their own investment decisions. Tax relief depends on an individual’s circumstances and may change in the future. In addition, the availability of tax relief depends on the company invested in maintaining its qualifying status. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance. You should not rely on any past performance as a guarantee of future investment performance. This message has been approved as a financial promotion

by Syndicate Room Ltd, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (No. 613021).

Newable EIS Scale-up Fund The Fund seeks to leverage Newable’s unique corporate infrastructure and the extensive eco-system built by Newable and London Business Angels over the last 35 years. Bringing together the best entrepreneurs, partners and investors to invest in and help scale high-growth businesses.

We target the funding gap that exists for businesses which have de-risked their technology, developed traction with customers and now seek funding to scale their commercial operations.

The Fund aims to provide investors with a diversified portfolio of 7-10 EIS qualifying investments per subscription across our key sectors; SpaceTech, Life Sciences, Automation and Electronics.

The Newable Investment Committee has over 100 years of combined investment experience with a track record of making successful investments across the Innovation and Technology space. Our EIS funds to date have an average of 29% IRR with a failure rate of 21%

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE

48

GB Investment Magazine Open Offers GB48 Investment Magazine · October· 2018

Open Offers

EIS Open

February 2019

Close

Evergreen

BLACKFINCH Ventures EIS Portfolio “Investing across sectors, our strategic focus is always on disruptive, innovative businesses capable of substantial growth, that can deliver for investors.” DAVID CRAVEN

Amount to be Raised: £20m

BLACKFINCH VENTURES, MANAGING DIRECTOR

Minimum Investment: £10k

Our strategy is to identify and support early-stage companies with products that address real-world needs. In particular we target innovators with digital and technological potential, investing in disruptive businesses with strong founding teams. We seek entrepreneurs that can demonstrate established and proven concepts, visibility of profit and cash generation, and are looking to take the first steps in their development phase. We focus on significant growth opportunities, often with a predicted return of ten times (10x) on investment, operating in addressable market size of at least £100 million. Our strategy gives us a competitive edge, yet our ability to remain flexible means we can to apply these criteria to multiple sectors.

T. 01452 717070 E. enquiries@blackfinch.com https://blackfinch.com

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE

VCT Open

Close

11 January 2019 31 May 2019 Amount to be Raised:

£7 million

Minimum Investment: £6,000

T. 0207 831 5088 E. william@elderstreet.com www.elderstreet.com

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE

Draper Esprit VCT Draper Esprit VCT plc is an established technology focused VCT managed by Elderstreet in close association with Draper Esprit plc, the award winning and successful technology investment manager.

Draper Esprit is a highly regarded venture capital investor in the UK and European technology sector, floated on the AIM market in June 2016 and at the time of writing has a market capitalisation of over £500 million.

In association with Draper Esprit, the VCT has committed to fourteen new technology investments totalling £11.25 million since April 2017. The VCT has an unaudited net asset value of £41.6 million and is now invested in 24 trading companies (Sep 2018 interim accounts).

Draper Esprit target a portfolio return of 20% per annum, and the VCT targets a 3p annual dividend giving a potential equivalent tax free yield of 6% to 7% per annum (see the Offer document for details).

Investors can also claim 30% upfront income tax relief on the initial investment up to £200,000 and any capital growth is tax-free.

The value of an investment, and any income from it, can fall as well as rise and you may not get back the full amount invested.Tax reliefs available depend on individual circumstances and may change in the future. Tax reliefs also depend on the VCT maintaining its VCT-qualifying status. VCT shares could fall or rise in value more than other shares listed on the main market of the London Stock Exchange.

They may also be harder to sell.

Please be aware that this advertisement is not a Prospectus or Offer Document, and investors should only subscribe for shares based on information in the Offer Document or Key Information Document (KID), which can be obtained from www.elderstreet.com. Approved by Elderstreet Investments Limited, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Registered office: 20 Garrick Street, London WC2E 9BT Registered in England and Wales No. 01825358

GB Investment Magazine · Open Offers

49

EIS Open

Close

Evergreen

Amount to be Raised:

£20 million

Minimum Investment:

£20,000 (£15k if both spouses)

T. 0207 927 7465 E. Enquiries@endven.com www.endven.com

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE

EIS Open

Evergreen

Close

Evergreen

Amount to be Raised:

c. £30m

Minimum Investment:

£25,000

Endeavour Ventures Managed Portfolio Service Building on our successful track record in growth EIS investing since 2005, Endeavour’s new Portfolio Service has been designed to provide many of the advantages of a managed EIS fund, but with better flexibility and no initial or annual fees for investors. Total fees are kept low, and clients receive 100% EIS relief on the money we invest.

Endeavour builds each client a diversified portfolio of companies across technology sectors that we know and understand. We focus on enterprise software, property and legal technology related platforms, cloud-based software delivery, workforce management and optimisation, data management platforms, and we have developed expertise in payments, FX and in fintech. We also diversify across stages of development, we seek out companies that are showing increasing customer traction, and many of our investments are into maturing businesses wishing to expand. The number of investments held by a client increases over several years tax years to give optimum diversification.

The objective is to enable clients to consistently benefit from EIS reliefs against tight deadlines while providing a base case return on capital of 1.6x to 2x over a 5 year period. This is against Endeavour’s 12 year audited cash to cash track record of 6.1x cost.

Our investment team understands growth investment complexities and timeframes. We have the right combination of skills for due diligence, investing, assisting and monitoring portfolio companies, and for exiting investments. We know that growth investing requires resilience over a number of years, and therefore forge strong partnerships between management teams and our own team members, that endures throughout the course of the investment cycle and on to exit. The most recent portfolio exit was Blue Prism Group Plc, providing Endeavour’s investors with a return of 150x and securing the EISA’s 2017 Best Exit of the Year.

MMC Ventures EIS Fund Invest in the UK’s fastest growing technology companies • Performance: In the last 24 months, MMC has delivered five positive exits returning an average of 2.7x to investors.

• Experience: MMC has been backing the UK’s fastest growing tech companies for 19 years, making them one of the most experienced managers in the EIS space.

• Commitment: More than £11 million has been invested by the MMC founders and team alongside its investors, on the same terms.

T. 0207 361 0212 E. invest@mmcventures.com www.mmcventures.com

Investors in MMC’s EIS Fund can expect deployment over a 12-18 month period in a diversified portfolio of c. 10 companies. The Fund targets a 2-3x return over a 4-8 year holding period.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CLICK HERE

50

GB Investment Magazine Open Offers GB50 Investment Magazine · October· 2018

M AGAZINE

It’s your time.

Invest it wisely.

Only read what’s worth reading.

www.ifamagazine.com www.gbinvestments.co.uk www.robopromedia.com www.mvpromedia.com

THE GROWTHINVEST PORTFOLIO SERVICE.

OPEN FOR BUSINESS.

The GrowthInvest Portfolio Service allows Advisers to introduce their clients to the best of our SEIS and EIS qualifying investment opportunities in a single discretionary managed fund.

If you or your clients are interested in a diversified portfolio of tax-efficient investments,

then contact us to find out more. We are helping UK small businesses to realise their full potential, whilst giving Advisers the tools to introduce their clients to this exciting investment category.

For more information contact us now at growthinvest.com

MAKE IT YOUR BUSINESS