News
Divvy Homes — a startup that is out to help more people realize that dream by buying a house and renting it back to them while they build equity — has just closed on $110 million in Series C funding. Tiger Global Management led the round, which also saw participation from a slew of other investors, including GGV Capital, Moore Specialty Credit, JAWS Ventures and existing backers such as a16z. The latest financing brings Divvy’s total debt and equity raised since its 2017 inception to over $500 million, with about one-third of that raised in equity and two-thirds in debt.
The startup last raised $43 million in Series B funding from the likes of Affirm CEO Max Levchin and homebuilder Lennar (via its venture arm), among others. In fact, Divvy — which was co-founded by Adena Hefets, Nick Clark and Alex Klarfeld — was incubated in Levchin’s startup studio HVF.
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Buy-now-pay-later products are rapidly increasing in popularity, with the volume of transactions tripling in 2020 as the pandemic drove online shopping, and there is now a significant risk that these agreements could cause harm to consumers.
By announcing plans to legislate to bring interest-free buy-now-pay-later into regulation, the government is acting swiftly to ensure people can continue to benefit from these products with the right protections.
The announcement comes as a review of the unsecured credit market, led by Christopher Woolard, recommends bringing interest-free buy-now-pay-later into FCA supervision.
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Thousands of jobs remain at risk after online fashion retailer Asos struck a £295m deal to buy four brands from failed retail group Arcadia.
Asos is buying the Topshop, Topman, Miss Selfridge and HIIT brands, but not the shops.
Sir Philip Green's Arcadia group fell into administration in November last year, casting doubt over the future of its brands and 13,000 jobs.
Asos is paying £265m for the brands and a further £30m for the stock.
About 300 people currently employed by the brands in design, buying and retail partnerships will transfer to Asos, but a question mark hangs over thousands more jobs.
About 70 stores with 2,500 employees are expected to close.
Within the past few weeks 50 stores have already closed, with the loss of about 2,000 jobs.
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InPost SA soared in Amsterdam trading after its shareholders raised 2.8 billion euros ($3.4 billion) in Europe’s biggest initial public offering since 2018 amid an online shopping boom that’s driving up demand for the Polish company’s automated parcel lockers.
Stockholders including Advent International, Templeton Strategic Emerging Markets Fund and PZU Fundusz sold 175 million existing shares at 16 euros each, the top end of an initial range, the company said. The IPO of the 35% stake values InPost, which didn’t raise any money in the offering, at 8 billion euros. InPost jumped 26% to 20.22 euros at 10:08 a.m. in Amsterdam.
InPost is joining other beneficiaries of stay-home orders in going public. Online retailers THG Plc and Allegro.eu SA listed in the U.K. and Poland, respectively, last year, while virtual greeting-card company Moonpig Group Plc is taking orders for its London IPO.
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HR and finance software provider Workday has acquired Denmark-based SaaS company and ’employee success platform’ provider Peakon for roughly $700 million in cash.
Workday said that with Peakon, it will “provide organizations with a continuous listening platform, including real-time visibility into employee experience, sentiment, and productivity”, in an effort to help drive employee engagement and improve organisational performance in a world that has been profoundly changed by the coronavirus pandemic.
“Bringing Peakon into the Workday family will be very compelling to our customers – especially following an extraordinary past year that has magnified the importance of having a constant pulse on employee sentiment in order to keep people engaged and productive,” said Aneel Bhusri, co-founder and co-CEO of Workday.
Originally launched back in 2016, Peakon was backed by the likes of Atomico, EQT Ventures, IDInvest Partners, Balderton Capital, and Sunstone/Heartcore, raising about $68 million along the way.
The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of Workday’s fiscal year 2022, ending April 30, 2021, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions.
University of Leeds spin-out, Slingshot Simulations, which claims to be a global pioneer in the digital twin sector, secured £1.5M investment. This investment comes after the first round that it raised in 2019 as a part of a £750,000 round that included funds from the university.
The investment round was led by existing investor NPIF – Mercia Equity Finance managed by Mercia and is a part of NPIF (Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund) and the UK government’s Future Fund. With the funds, Slingshot Simulations will be able to scale its operations and rollout its system to its first commercial customers.
Notably, The Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund project is financially backed by the European Union using funding from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014-2020 and the European Investment Bank.
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Boohoo, a Manchester-based online fashion giant quite popular in the UK, has acquired London-based retailer Debenhams’ brand and other business assets including, all the in-house brands and websites in recent development. The company has paid a cash consideration of £55 million to acquire the global rights to Debenhams brands and its websites.
However, this is not the first time Boohoo bought a company that’s out of administration. Back in 2019, Boohoo bought online businesses of Karen Millen and Coast for £18.2 million.
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Feelunique has recorded strong sales growth across its retail and marketplace channels during the Christmas period.
For the 12-week period to January 3, 2021, Feelunique saw its overall sales grow 39 per cent to £28 million, while active customers over the period rose 41 per cent to 1.3 million.
Sales of skincare products boosted the overall company’s growth, with sales up 57 per cent, while sales through Feelunique’s third-party marketplace channel increased tenfold year on year.
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Octopus Ventures, one of the largest and most active VCs in Europe, is looking to launch a new £100 million institutional global fund to take advantage of the health tech market opportunity, in particular the opportunity to transform public healthcare systems across Europe and the emerging markets.
With this Joe Stringer, Dr Pooja Sikka and Shamik Parekh from TenX Health have joined Octopus Ventures bringing their diverse experience in the digital healthcare space. Joe and Pooja were former founding members of EY Ventures, which leads the health and social care portfolio.
The news follows swiftly on the heels of Emma Davies joining Octopus Ventures as Co-CEO this month, bringing over 20 years of institutional fund management expertise, and Octopus’ announcement in October that it had scaled its portfolio team by 45% with nine new hires, as well as launching a new specialist consumer team.
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The UK government has been thrust into a software skills crisis with more than a quarter of development positions, 28%, unfilled across various key departments.
The number of software developers employed across a dozen central government departments amounted to 808, while there were 317 unfilled vacancies, according to Freedom of Information (FOI) data obtained by Acquia.
The data was collated from departments including the Cabinet Office, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) and the Treasury, among others, and the information was accurate as of September 2020.
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