NewNet Investor Profile of Andrew Oldfield Head of Clean Tech at Mercia Fund Management (subscription required) - http://www.newenergyworldnetwork.com/investor-news/clean-energy-investor-profiles/newnet-investor-profile-andrew-oldfield-mercia-fund-management.html

Ben Samuel from NewNetEnergyNetwork spoke to Andrew Oldfield to discover Mercia Fund Management's plans to invest in cleantech companies, which are looking for moderate capital needs and are focused on efficiency.

In the interview Andrew highlights portfolio company Concurrent Thinking, which combines cleantech with IT to create more efficient mechanisms for running data centres, while also giving an overview of Molecular Solar.

Andrew also reveals the funds investment style which includes active investment, and gives information on Mercia Fund Management's Growth EIS fund.

Opportunities in energy storage and the Green Deal also feature in the profile.

Mercia Fund Management interview with AltAssets

STORM is a reusable surgical device that is used in the operating theatre to provide the surgeon with a simple but innovative approach to reducing challenging unstable lower limb fractures prior to fixation.  STORM provides precise and controllable axial traction; a simple lock wheel system allows large and fine adjustments to correct rotation and the unique translation arms correct angulation and translation.  

The risks of radiation exposure to medical staff are well documented.  It has been reported that orthopaedic surgical assistants are generally at greater risk than the lead surgeon23 therefore it is desirable to employ methods and systems that minimise the exposure to radiation for all.  Using STORM enables the surgeon to accurately control the six degrees of freedom and at each stage of the fracture reduction process the STORM device holds the fragments securely minimising the need to take additional x-ray images to check the position.  The STORM device then holds the reduction while the chosen method of fixation is applied minimising the need for the surgical assistant to assist in maintaining the reduction.   

STORM is used to reduce fractures throughout the tibia including the plateau, shaft and pilon. As well as being used to reduce fresh fractures, STORM has also proven to be a valuable tool to reduce fractures where treatment has been delayed.  

“We are delighted that this independent study involving eight centres has supported and reinforced earlier studies showing that using STORM not only assists the surgeon to achieve anatomical reductions of challenging tibial fractures but that it also saves time”, commented Susan Hartman, Chief Executive Officer, Intelligent Orthopaedics Limited, the designers and manufacturers of STORM. “As we prepare to build on our current customer base to introduce STORM and its benefits to more surgeons, confirmation of the savings both to the budgets and the health and safety risks will be of interest to those affected”.

Mark Payton, Mercia Fund Management, a key investor in Intelligent Orthopaedics added: “Healthcare economics is not a nice to have but an essential pre-requisite of any medical device, on a global basis. STORM, and its associated consumables, through its accurate fracture reduction both improves patient outcome as well as providing a marked reduction in time in surgery. This is translating to the rapid evaluation and adoption of this robust and innovative device in clinics across Europe and now in the US. This independent report is a testament to the innovative product portfolio Intelligent Orthopaedics has introduced to clinicians across Europe and the US.”

-ENDS-

1. Presented at Skills Workshop, Ortho Trauma OP Update, 15 and 16 September 2011, MHH, Hannover
2. Arch Ortho Trauma Surg, 2003 June.  Tasbas etal.  Which one is at risk in intraoperative fluoroscopy? Assistant surgeon or orthopaedic surgeon?
3. Journal of Orthopaedic Trauma, 1997 August.  Mehlman etal. Radiation Exposure to the Orthopaedic Surgical Team

About Intelligent Orthopaedics

Intelligent Orthopaedics Ltd (IO) specialises in the design, development, manufacture and distribution of orthopaedic trauma devices specifically for the treatment of long bone fractures. Its core patented product "STORM" (Staffordshire Orthopaedic Reduction Machine) is a reusable device that is used to realign fractures of the tibia prior to surgical fixation.  STORM is currently in use in hospitals in the UK, Europe and the USA. 

Based in Staffordshire, UK, the company has ISO13485 certification; all products are CE marked and have FDA clearance to market.

The company was spun out of Staffordshire and Keele Universities and the University Hospital of North Staffordshire in 2005 and is supported by venture capital funding, where the major investors is Mercia Fund Management. 

For more information, please visit http://www.intelligent-orthopaedics.com/, call + 44 (0)844 8004405 or email info@io-uk.com

For the USA only:

STORM FDA Listing Number: E337519

Capital growth is seen as a key element for economic recovery and the coalition government has boosted schemes such as the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and Seed EIS (SEIS) to unprecedented levels. What is required, however, is some clarity on what the benefits of EIS investing are, direct investing or via a fund, approved or unapproved funds and breaking down some of the barriers in regard to what offers are available to the investor seeking tax efficient investment structures.

Read the full article here: Enterprise Investment Schemes (EIS schemes) in 2012

Over the last week, Mercia Fund Management has provided guest articles on the merits of investing in the technology sector with a focus on EIS investing.

In an article for Wealthbriefing, a website that serves the global wealth management sector, Mark Payton highlights the upturn in the technology sector and the characteristics of a successful fund and sectors to watch. The full article is here: As Facebook prepares for IPO, are tech valuations attractive? [registration required after first visit].

For myfinances.co.uk, Mercia Fund Management, explains the attractive tax incentives introduced by the Chancellor in December 2011 where the new EIS initiative will provide investors up to 50% income tax relief for investing in small to medium sized businesses employing less than 250 people. This increase in tax relief (from 20%) and the widening of the eligibility rules makes EIS investments into high growth technology businesses very attractive, particularly given the low levels of interest currently available on savings.

The article also highlights technology companies to watch and how Mercia Fund Management works with its portfolio companies. The full article is here:   Is now the time to invest in technology funds?

20 January 2012. Warwick Technology Park's Allinea Software (www.allinea.com) - the world leader in tools for parallel software has been recognised by Red Herring as a Global 100 winner, the award that honours the fastest growing private companies from North America, Europe, and Asia.

Allinea's unique software tools allow software developers and scientists to take full advantage of the latest and most powerful computers (supercomputers) - making hard-to-write parallel software work 'right first time'.

Allinea is recognised by suppliers and buyers as the world leader and innovator in this market - used on 35 of the top 100 supercomputers worldwide. Its products include the world's first petascale *debugger - enabling users to fully debug programs running on the world's largest supercomputers. As mainstream computing moves toward parallel architectures, Allinea's tools are also increasingly being used in multi-core and embedded applications by leading processor chip manufacturers.

Red Herring's Global 100 list has become a mark of distinction for identifying promising companies and entrepreneurs. Red Herring editors were among the first to recognise that companies such as Google, Skype, Baidu, Salesforce.com, YouTube, eBay and many others would change the way we live and work.

"This is a fantastic endorsement - not just of Allinea's technology leadership - but also of our market position and business model", said Mike

Fish, CEO at Allinea, "After winning the Red Herring Europe 100 earlier this year, this Global award reflects both the depth of Allinea?s presence in the US and Europe, and our recent successes in Japan, China and Taiwan."

Dr Everard Mascarenhas of Mercia Fund Management (a major Allinea investor), commented, "It was clear to us that Allinea has a world class technology and we congratulate the management team and employees on receiving this prestigious award." Allinea adds to the pool of award winners backed by Mercia Fund Management: another recent award win for a Mercia Fund Management backed company was Molecular Solar's Innovation in Development award win at the recent Lord Stafford Awards.

Alex Vieux, Chairman of Red Herring on choosing the winners: "After rigorous contemplation and discussion, we narrowed down our list from 1,100 potential companies to 100 winners. It was an extremely difficult process. Allinea Software should be extremely proud of its achievement; the competition for the Top 100 was fierce. The Top 100 Global are truly the best of the best."

The assessment of potential is complemented by a review of the track record and standing of start-ups relative to their sector peers, allowing Red Herring to see past the ?buzz? and make the list an invaluable instrument of discovery and advocacy for the greatest business opportunities from around the world.

Red Herring's editorial staff evaluated the companies on both quantitative and qualitative criteria, such as financial performance, technology innovation, management quality, strategy, and market penetration.

* Note: 'Petascale' computers operate at speeds measured in petaflops (ie 1015 calculations per second) and the "Race to Petascale" is currently under way by leading national labs around the world.

ENDS

Notes to editors

About Allinea Software

We're recognized as the leading vendor of tools for parallel software development and High Performance Computing (HPC). One of the fastest growing companies in HPC, we were recently honored as a Red Herring Top 100 company.

We have offices in the San Jose, USA and in the UK, as well as network of resellers and partners in most parts of the world, including Bull, Cray, HP, IBM, SGI and NVIDIA.

Our products are used on 35 of the top 100 supercomputers worldwide. Our customers include:

• Multinational projects at the cutting edge of petascale and exascale computing
• National laboratories hosting computation-based research projects
• Weather and climate departments
• Commercial and industrial users in Aerospace, Automotive, Electronics and Manufacturing, Oil & Energy, Bioinformatics and Financial services 
• Scientific and academic users

We have forged partnerships with major research organisations round the world including Argonne National Laboratory, CEA, Lawrence Livermore National laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

About Mercia Fund Management

Mercia Fund Management is a venture capital fund manager with two funds (Mercia 1 and 2) totalling £12.8 million under management. Mercia Fund Management focuses on UK technology companies and benefits from a mixture of public- and private-sector fund investors .

Mercia Fund Management also offers the Mercia Growth EIS Fund, which presents an opportunity for private investors to invest in a balanced portfolio of high growth technology companies which take advantage of a range of tax reliefs.

Mercia Fund Management provides venture capital for technology-based companies operating across 4 key technology sectors:

• Clean Technology
• Medtech
• Telecoms, Electronics and Software Technologies
• Data Centre Management, Cloud Computing and Related Software

Headquartered in central Birmingham, and with strong links to Oxford and London, the Fund is regulated by the Financial Services Authority. The company is also a member of the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association.

For more press information contact Rosie Evans, press@allinea.com, 07801 526211

For more information on Allinea Software go to www.allinea.com.

For more information on Mercia Fund Management go to www.merciafund.co.uk.

London, UK, 20 January 2012 – PolyTherics Limited (“PolyTherics”), a provider of solutions to biopharmaceutical companies for the improvement of protein and peptide based drugs, is pleased to announce the acquisition of Warwick Effect Polymers (“WEP”), a provider of specialty biopolymers for the modification of biological products.

London – 17 January, 2011 – PsiOxus Therapeutics, Ltd. (PsiOxus) has appointed Dr Paolo Paoletti, President of GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSK) Global Oncology Business as a non-executive board director, and added Dr Terry Hermiston, Vice President of Biologics Research at Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals, to its Scientific Advisory Board. 

Dr Paoletti brings invaluable expertise in the discovery, development and commercialisation of new oncology products to the Board of Psioxus. As the first President of GSK’s Global Oncology Business, Dr Paoletti has P&L accountability for the overall Oncology Business within GSK. In his role, Dr Paoletti champions an organisation of more than 800 professionals around the world dedicated to fighting the causes and impacts of cancer.  As the leader of the newly formed business unit, Dr Paoletti oversees all the activities within GSK Oncology spanning from early drug discovery through clinical development, as well as, product positioning, launch and life cycle management. Under Dr Paoletti’s leadership, GSK Oncology has achieved an almost unprecedented level of success in bringing forth important advances to cancer care.  Previously, he was Vice President Oncology at Eli-Lilly.

Dr Hermiston will advise Psioxus on the development of ColoAd1 and the pipeline of follow-on viral therapeutics and vaccines. Dr Hermiston is the inventor of the ColoAd1 oncolytic virus, which Psioxus Therapeutics will take into a phase I clinical trial in 2012. Dr Hermiston brings invaluable expertise in the discovery and development of novel biologics in general and oncolytic viruses in particular. Before joining Bayer (previously Berlex), Dr Hermiston was Associate Director of Oncolytic Virus Research at Onyx Pharmaceuticals. He is broadly published in the field of viral therapeutics and is the author of nine granted patents within the field. Dr Hermiston also currently serves as the Site Head of the Bayer Innovation Center in San Francisco. 

“I am delighted to welcome these two outstanding individuals to Psioxus Therapeutics, each of them bring such impressive and relevant track records to our programs,” said Dr John Beadle, CEO of PsiOxus. “Dr Hermiston's specific expertise and knowledge of ColoAd1 and oncolytic viruses will be invaluable to our scientific programs whilst Dr Paoletti's experience in the global development and commercialisation of novel cancer therapies will be critical in effectively and efficiently taking these programs to patients and ultimately to market. These appointments are a mark of our ambition for these programs.”

For more information about PsiOxus Therapeutics, please contact:

PsiOxus Therapeutics
Dr John Beadle, Chief Executive Officer
Tel +44 (0) 7810 770 310
John.beadle@psioxus.com

US Media Enquiries:  Erik Clausen at Chempetitive Tel +1 781-608-7091 PsiOxus@chempetitive.com

UK Media Enquiries:  Tony Stephenson at Chempetitive Tel +44 (0) 7899 796655 tstephenson@chempetitive.com

Or visit www.PsiOxus.com

About PsiOxusTherapeutics, Ltd.

PsiOxus Therapeutics is a development stage biotechnology company using non-traditional approaches to develop novel therapeutics that address cancer and other clinically unmet diseases. The Company’s lead candidate is MT-102, a dual action Anabolic Catabolic Transforming Agent (ACTA) in phase II clinical development for the treatment of cachexia and sarcopenia. ColoAd1, an oncolytic virus for the systemic treatment of metastatic cancer, has demonstrated optimal anti-cancer properties in late pre-clinical development. The Company is also developing treatments based upon the research phase vaccine platform PolySTAR, which combines recombinant viral vectors with polymers to shield them from the immune system, and the research phase adjuvant and immunotherapeutic platform PolyMAP, which combines polymers with synthetic adjuvants to significantly enhance the effectiveness of vaccines.

Birmingham/Oxford, 6 December 2011. Mark Payton, MD of Mercia Fund Management (MFM) comments on today’s Finance Bill:

“We welcome the draft finance bill which, if enacted, will both increase the attractiveness of EIS Funds to investors and target those funds more accurately at the high growth opportunities for which EIS was originally intended.

With investment returns from risk free savings at an all time low and since the marked reduction this year in the annual allowance for pension investments, investors have been seeking  alternative tax efficient products.  EIS funds were already becoming a popular investment vehicle and these changes should accelerate their use.

The draft bill shows the government clearly supports Mercia Fund Management’s investment rationale and we welcome the crackdown on some of the schemes which operated outside of the spirit of the existing EIS scheme.

We do, however, believe there is room for further improvement. The widening of eligibility to allow investment in larger companies is a positive as is the introduction of Seed EIS (SEIS), however with the latter we believe a maximum of £150,000 investment is too small based on our experience.  Furthermore, given that larger companies are more likely to be able to pay dividends in the near to medium term, it would be sensible to look again at the tax treatment of such dividends – thus providing parity with VCTs that do benefit from tax-free dividend payments.   We would also have liked to see some thought given to the inclusion of preference shares within the scope of EIS to add flexibility to investment structures used tailored to the specific business to be invested in.

We welcome the increase in the maximum investment in a company to £10m, up from £2m, allowing EIS funds to continue to follow their initial investment in subsequent investment rounds.  This is crucial when investing in high growth unquoted companies.

As well as the direct changes to the EIS scheme, and the introduction of the SEIS scheme there are also several other announcements here which could assist the high growth companies in which Mercia Fund Management invests. The changes to the taxation of non-domiciled investments in unquoted UK companies could see a significant new source of funding.  We also welcome the improvements in R&D tax credits, a key issue for technology businesses, and the taxation arrangements for the Patent Box.

As a fund manager focussed on risk mitigation and capital growth, we are delighted that the Government has listened to ours, and others, concerns and have put so much focus on improving the flow of equity funding to high growth companies.  This draft Bill is undoubtedly a step forward and we expect that other fund managers will now look to follow the Mercia Growth EIS Fund lead.”

The Mercia Growth EIS Fund  closes on 5th April 2012, but may close sooner if the investment target is reached.

Mark Payton, MD of Mercia Fund Management (MFM) comments on Chancellor George Osbourne’s new enterprise investment scheme (EIS), giving investors 50% tax relief for investing in business start-ups.

“The further increases in tax relief and the widening of the eligibility rules will make EIS investments into early stage high growth businesses even more attractive, particularly given the low levels of interest currently available on savings. This is not just good news for investors but it will potentially make a significant difference to the funding of such businesses and to the economy as a whole.

We have already been delighted by the reception for our recent EIS Fund launch.  We believed that a combination of tax relief for investors with the reduction in risk gained from an experienced Fund manager and a portfolio approach would be an appropriate way to fund the fastest growing technology based businesses.  These additional reliefs make the offer even more compelling.  Many of these changes are in line with our suggestions to Treasury and it’s gratifying to think they may have been listening.

We are also pleased that the Chancellor has recognised the vital importance of high technology firms in this economy, not only by improving the EIS reliefs but by continuing to support science funding and by widening the eligibility for R&D tax credits, all of which will further benefit the companies in which the fund will look to invest.”

Mercia Fund Management offers the Mercia Growth EIS Fund for tax efficient investment in its existing and future technology portfolio, which spans medical technology, clean technology and electronics, telecoms and software.

The Mercia Growth EIS Fund is open to investors with a minimum of £25,000 to invest and who are looking to enhance their investment portfolio with high growth technology businesses.

The MFM portfolio focuses on high growth scalable businesses which have modest capital needs and are four years away from profitability or exit.

MFM has a strong track record of sourcing, investing and growing the revenue base of scalable technology-backed businesses. To boost its portfolio, MFM is also expanding its geographical footprint by actively seeking new investable companies outside the Midlands region, where it originally established its investment track record in 2007.

Run by a team of experienced technology-focused investment professionals, MFM has a strong deal flow resulting partly from the investment team’s relationship with eight universities, including Birmingham and Warwick, which have been a key source of deal flow, due diligence and expertise.

Molecular Solar is pioneering ultra-thin, flexible solar panels that can be used in portable chargers for mobile phones and other handheld devices, allowing devices to be recharged without needing to be connected to a mains power supply.

As well as being a convenient way to charge electronic equipment, the technology will also help to reduce an individual’s carbon footprint.

The Lord Stafford Awards showcase collaboration between business and Universities and Molecular Solar was recognised for its very successful partnership with the University of Warwick.

MFM invested via the Mercia Fund 1 earlier this year and has been instrumental in securing funding and building the commercial management team to enable Molecular Solar to translate the research done in the University’s Department of Chemistry into marketable products.

Most recently, Molecular Solar announced that its solar cells, which are made from organic photovoltaic materials, can now produce voltages of over 4 watts, making its technology suitable for recharging the lithium-ion batteries used in many handheld devices. This means the cells are now ready to be developed for commercial use.

At a ceremony held last night (17 November) in the University of Birmingham’s Great Hall, Molecular Solar’s academic founders, Professors Tim Jones, Mike Shipman and Dr Ross Hatton were presented with the award by Lord Stafford.

Professor Shipman says: “Molecular Solar is founded on the strength of its partnerships with the University of Warwick, the Department of Chemistry, and other companies with whom we are working closely. We are delighted that the success of those partnerships has been recognised by the Lord Stafford team.”

Andrew Oldfield, Head of Cleantech at MFM, says: “MFM has a great track record of investing in successful Central England based technology businesses and it is always a great honour to be recognised in the Lord Stafford Awards. We are delighted with Molecular Solar’s achievement and look forward to working with them as they continue to grow and develop a truly ground-breaking technology. Mercia Fund 1 ensures that we remain at the leading edge of innovation by supporting ground breaking technologies from the university sector from our eight university partners. We have built on this success backing revenue generating technology companies with Mercia Fund 2 launched in 2007. The latest fund, launched this year, the Mercia EIS Growth fund, will for the first time allow non-institutional investors to enjoy exposure to the same high growth sector whilst qualifying for EIS tax relief.”

Mercia Fund Management (MFM) will be presenting the Mercia Growth EIS Fund for tax efficient investment in its existing and future technology portfolio, which spans medical technology, clean technology, electronics, telecoms and software, at the VCT and EIS Investor Forum 2011 on 23 November 2011.

Hundreds of private investors are expected at the event, which will take place in London. Dr Mark Payton, Managing Director of MFM, will be participating in a panel session on “Identifying the differences and benefits between planned exit, generalist and specialist fund models” at 10.30 am and will also present the Mercia EIS Growth Fund at 2.40 pm.

The Mercia Growth EIS Fund is open to investors with a minimum of £5,000 to invest and who are looking to enhance their investment portfolio with high growth technology businesses.

MFM has a strong track record of sourcing, investing and growing the revenue base of scalable technology-backed businesses, examples of which include Allinea, Intelligent Orthopaedics, Warwick Audio, LM Technologies and Concurrent Thinking.  During the event, products from LM Technologies, including an innovative iPad keyboard, will be available to sample.

“Last year’s inaugural VCT and EIS Investor Forum set the benchmark.  With the Government’s changes to the VCT and EIS schemes it was imperative that private investors and the fund management community were brought together again to discuss the key topics in the industry,” said Modwenna Rees-Mogg, of event organiser, AngelNews.

Dr Mark Payton added: “We welcome the opportunity to present our fund as a sound option for investors and will be talking about the companies we invest in and how we plan to deliver positive financial returns.”

Run by a team of experienced technology-focused investment professionals, MFM has a strong deal flow resulting partly from the investment team’s relationship with eight universities, including Birmingham and Warwick –which have been a key source of deal flow, due diligence and expertise.

MFM recognises EIS as a highly attractive, tax-efficient investment vehicle for professional investors, UK wealth managers and UK family offices. Advantages include 30% income tax relief, capital gains tax deferral, tax free capital gains, 100% exemption from inheritance tax after two years and loss relief.

The Mercia Growth EIS Fund closes on 5th April 2012, but may close sooner if the investment target is reached before that date.

Past performance is not a guarantee of future returns.

For more information about Mercia Fund Management's funds, click here: EIS Funds

For more information about the event: http://www.thevctandeisinvestorforum.com/vct-and-eis-investor-forum-2011/

Mercia Fund Management (MFM) has launched the Mercia Growth EIS Fund for tax efficient investment in its existing and future technology portfolio, which spans medical technology, clean technology and electronics, telecoms and software.

The Mercia Growth EIS Fund is open to investors with a minimum of £25,000 to invest and who are looking to enhance their investment portfolio with high growth technology businesses.

The MFM portfolio focuses on high growth scalable businesses which have modest capital needs and are four years away from profitability or exit.

MFM has a strong track record of sourcing, investing and growing the revenue base of scalable technology-backed businesses, examples of which include Allinea, Intelligent Orthopaedics, Warwick Audio, LM Technologies and Concurrent Thinking. To boost its portfolio, MFM is also expanding its geographical footprint by actively seeking new investable companies outside the Midlands region, where it originally established its investment track record in 2007.

Run by a team of experienced technology-focused investment professionals, MFM has a strong deal flow resulting partly from the investment team’s relationship with eight universities, including Birmingham and Warwick, which have been a key source of deal flow, due diligence and expertise.

MFM recognises EIS as a highly attractive, tax-efficient investment vehicle for professional investors, UK wealth managers and UK family offices. Advantages include 30% income tax relief, capital gains tax deferral, tax free capital gain, 100% exempt from inheritance tax after two years and loss relief.

Dr. Mark Payton, Managing Director of MFM said: “Mercia Growth EIS Fund is perfectly positioned to help high earners seeking tax efficient investments in the technology sector. We see our EIS Fund building on the successes of Mercia Funds 1 and 2 which have collectively invested in excess of £9 million and leveraged additional funding of circa £50 million in 34 businesses to date.

We were delighted by the response at our launch event in Oxford earlier this month and are confident that our experience and deal flow will help us to raise the £6-10 million we are targeting.”

The Mercia Growth EIS Fund closes on 5th April 2012, but may close sooner if the investment target is reached.

Past performance is not a guarantee of future returns.

For more information: www.merciafund.co.uk/eis-fund

Molecular Solar Ltd, a spinout company from the University of Warwick, has achieved a significant breakthrough in the performance of solar photovoltaic (PV) cells. They have achieved and demonstrated a record voltage for organic photovoltaic cells that means these highly flexible, low cost solar cells can now be devolved for commercial uses in a wide range of consumer electronics.

The Company’s most recent advance in the development of its organic photovoltaic (OPV) cell technology is the realisation of cells with open-circuit voltages in excess of 4 volts for the first time. Molecular Solar’s research team believe this is a record for an OPV device.

Dr Ross Hatton, Research Director of the company commented “This is an important advance. We are now very close to having highly flexible organic photovoltaic cells that will be capable of delivering electrical energy at a voltage suitable for recharging lithium ion batteries that are widely used in portable consumer electronics. Remarkably, this high voltage is achieved using a cell with only 4 junctions (sub-cells).’’

University of Warwick researcher Professor Tim Jones, who is Chief Technology Officer of Molecular Solar, added
“The first generation of organic photovoltaics will be exceptionally well matched to consumer electronics applications. The advantage of Molecular Solar’s high voltage cells is that a single cell can be used with no requirement to connect multiple cells in series for these applications, saving manufacturing cost.’’

Andrew Oldfield, Head of Cleantech at Mercia Fund Management said “We were attracted to Molecular Solar’s unique approach to realizing truly flexible, environmentally sustainable photovoltaics that are well matched to the burgeoning portable consumer electronics market.”

Molecular Solar are currently finalising a £5m investment round to complete the up-scaling of their OPV and MS-Flexifilm™ electrode technology.

Editors’ Notes

Molecular Solar Ltd

Molecular Solar is a spin-out company from the University of Warwick. The Company has been established to commercialise third generation solar cell technology developed in a multi-million pound R&D programme at the University. The founding team has over 80 years of combined experience developing and commercialising new technology and a track record of success.

Early financial support came from the Founders, the University, Warwick Ventures Ltd., RDA proof of concept funding and a grant from the Technology Strategy Board (TSB).

For further information please contact:

Dr Ederyn Williams
Executive Chairman, Molecular Solar Ltd.
T: 07531 667222
E: Ederyn@btinternet.com

Warwick Ventures Ltd (www.ventures.warwick.ac.uk)

Warwick Ventures Ltd is a subsidiary of the University of Warwick. It has the mission of commercialising the world-leading research of the University, in which £120 million per year is invested. Our aim is to create new enterprises and new products, to build the regional and national economy and to aid the well-being of people. We work with many individuals and commercial partners, who collaborate in product development, invest in our spin-out companies and licence our technologies. Our innovations span a wide range of technologies and sectors, and new innovations emerge every week.

For more information, contact:

Quentin Compton-Bishop
CEO, Warwick Ventures Ltd.
T: 024 7657 5480
E: q.m.compton-bishop@warwick.ac.uk

Mercia Fund Management (www.merciafund.co.uk)

Mercia Fund Management has a suite of funds under management. Mercia seeks technology-backed companies seeking early stage, growth and development capital. One such fund, the Mercia Fund 1, is focused on supporting leading technologies, that have achieved proof of principle with global potential in Healthcare (particularly MedTech ), Telecoms, ITC, and Clean Technologies deriving from 8 Universities.

Mercia Fund Management is located on Birmingham Science Park Aston and is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority (FSA). It is a member of the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (BVCA).

For more information, contact:

Andrew Oldfield
Head of Cleantech, Mercia Fund Management
T: 07894 452 149
E: andrewo@merciafund.co.uk

Sinoparasoft (www.sinoparasoft.com) and Allinea Software (www.allinea.com), the leading supplier of software development tools for high performance computing (HPC), announce the signature of a reseller agreement between the two companies for the promotion of Allinea’s parallel software development tools throughout China.), previously dominated by US sites. Allinea’s products are already in use on 35 of the top 100 systems worldwide and it has high hopes for its new partner, Sinoparasoft (www.sinoparasoft.com) - a spin-out from the software division of the highly respected Chinese Academy of Sciences CAS) in Beijing.

With over with 50,000 staff faculty members, CAS is the premier postgraduate education and research institution in China. The HPC market in China is growing rapidly, thanks to investment as part of the Chinese Government’s twelfth 5 year plan to promote enabling technologies and indigenous innovation. China has around 5 national supercomputing centres and 30 regional centres, as well as numerous commercial users in Oil & Gas, climate modelling, weather forecasting, aerospace engineering and bioinformatics. Sinoparasoft is a parallel software specialist providing consulting, training and development services as well as locally-developed software such as Job Scheduling, Oil Reservoir Simulation, weather forecasting and parallel data compression and search products for archiving.

Professor Yao, a co-founder of Sinoparasoft and one of the faculty members of the CAS Parallel Software Lab was previously technical director of the Shanghai Supercomputing Centre. He and his co-founder, Prof. Yunquan Zhang, are two of the most influential and connected HPC people in the country.

Commenting on the agreement with Allinea, Professor Yao states “We are dedicated to providing service and consultancy to HPC users across China. Allinea DDT is a key component of the development toolset which we can offer the HPC user community. Together we can help them to solve many of the grand challenges which we face, for example helping in the efforts to curing cancer, mapping the human genome, simulating earthquakes and climate modelling, combating desertification and much more.”

Mike Fish, CEO of Allinea Software, comments “Supercomputing technology has now become a mainstream tool for high end research in all developed countries, and our products are already in use on 35 of the top 100 systems worldwide. Our debugging tools help to develop and deploy research applications that help solve the most important science and technology challenges of our age. This is a hugely significant agreement for Allinea. This agreement with Sinoparasoft marks a very important inroad for us into the Asia Pacific market, given the presence and credentials which we have already demonstrated in the US and European markets. Allinea DDT is in use with leading supercomputer sites around the world, and our recent win at NCHC, the Taiwan National Supercomputing Center shows our growing presence in the Asia Pacific region.”

Notes to Editors

Dr. Jifeng YAO, CEO of SINOPARASOFT

Dr. Yao got a bachelor's degree in Applied Mathematics from Tsinghua
university in 1998 and a PhD in Computer Science from the Institute of
Software in Chinese Academy of Sciences (ISCAS) in 2004. He joined Shanghai
Supercomputer Center in 2005, acted as the manager of R&D department and
then the technical director of HPC. In 2010, he co-founded and served as CEO
of SINOPARASOFT, the first firm focused on parallel software in China. He is
now also an associate professor of ISCAS and an adjunct professor of
Shanghai University.

About SINOPARASOFT

SINOPARASOFT, founded by ISCAS and private investors in 2010, is the first
company focused on parallel software and parallel computing technologies in
China. Its business scope includes parallel software development, HPC system
integration, and also consulting and training services for parallel
computing technologies. SINOPARASOFT currently has over 20 professional
engineers originally from the parallel computing lab of ISCAS, which is in
charge of the TOP100 list of HPC systems and regarded as one of the leading
labs in China for the past 10 years.

About Allinea Software - www.allinea.com

Allinea Software is the leading supplier of tools for parallel programming and high performance computing (HPC). Allinea’s products are used by leading commercial and research institutions across the world, and have consistently set the standard for affordability, functionality and ease-of-use – whether applied to applications at modest scale or peta-scale applications on the world’s largest supercomputers. With new product features aimed at multi-threaded applications and novel computing architectures, Allinea is now bringing its wealth of experience in parallel tools to the rapidly-expanding arena of multi-core processing.

Allinea has offices in San Jose, USA and in the UK, and has partnerships with the leading HPC vendors.

For further information contact:

Mike Fish
CEO, Allinea Software
E: mfish@allinea.com

Molecular Solar Ltd (www.molecularsolar.co.uk), a spinout from the University of Warwick, announced today that it has completed a seed round of equity investment led by Mercia Fund Management.

The company is participating in a recently announced £2.1 million project being funded by the Technology Strategy Board (TSB), the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the other participating companies (Kurt Lesker, Asylum Research and New World Solar) to develop prototype third generation organic solar cells. The University of Warwick and Imperial College London are also participating in the project.

The new technology will harvest the sun’s energy at lower cost using sustainable and environmentally friendly materials and manufacturing processes and open up the possibility of truly flexible solar cells.

Prof. Tim Jones at the University of Warwick, a co-founder of the company said "We formed Molecular Solar to commercialise the technology developed in a multi-million pound research programme at the University over the past 4 years. We are delighted to have the funding to take the company forward towards this objective."

Dr. Ross Hatton, co-founder of the company added "We have progressed the technology to the point that we must now focus on practical applications. Our funding from the TSB, EPSRC and our investors will enable us to build the first product prototypes and continue our leadership in this technology."

Dr. Andrew Oldfield, Investment Associate of Mercia Fund Management (MFM) with clean tech responsibility said "Our strategy includes backing world-leading academic excellence associated with scalable, disruptive technology. Molecular Solar excels on all fronts and we see this new venture as the potential leader in third generation organic solar technology making this form of energy provision open to a much broader market place."

Dr. Mark Payton, Managing Director of MFM said "We are thrilled to support Molecular Solar. Over the coming period MFM will launch new funds to build on our success to date as we seek to support and accelerate the growth of new ventures in key technology sectors offering attractive returns." 

Editors Notes:

About the Mercia Fund

The Mercia Fund is focused on supporting leading technologies with global potential in Medical & Healthcare, Advanced Materials, Clean Technologies and ICT & Digital Media. Mercia Fund Management is an active investor in early-stage technology companies located in Central England. Potential investees must demonstrate their potential for rapid growth and will possess a strong proprietary position with respect to their technology, intellectual property, and products.

The Mercia Fund is managed by Mercia Fund Management Ltd, based at its Birmingham offices. Mercia Fund Management Ltd is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and is a member of the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (BVCA).

For further information, please contact:

Dr Mark Payton
Co-Founder & Managing Director, Mercia Fund Management Ltd

T: 0121 236 8855
M: 07811 435199
E: markp@merciafund.co.uk
W: www.merciafund.co.uk

Allinea Software, the fast growing software tools specialist in parallel development and high performance computing (HPC), announced today that it has won a prestigious Red Herring 2011 Top 100 Europe award. Red Herring (www.redherring.com) announced its Top 100 award in recognition of the leading private companies from Europe, celebrating these startups’ innovations and technologies across their respective industries.

Since 1996 Red Herring’s Top 100 Europe list has honoured the year’s most promising European private technology ventures and has become a mark of distinction for identifying promising new companies and entrepreneurs. Red Herring editors were among the first to recognize that companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Skype, Salesforce.com, YouTube, and eBay would change the way we live and work.

“Choosing the companies with the strongest potential was no small feat,” said Alex Vieux, publisher and CEO of Red Herring. “After rigorous contemplation and discussion, we narrowed our list down from hundreds of candidates from across Europe to the Top 100 Winners. We believe Allinea embodies the vision, drive and innovation that define a successful entrepreneurial venture. Allinea should be proud of its accomplishment, as the competition was very strong.”

“Allinea DDT is used on 36 of the top 100 supercomputers on the respected global ‘Top 500’ list - in the US, in Europe and now in Asia”, comments Mike Fish, Allinea CEO. “We’re delighted that Allinea has been recognised as one of Europe’s hottest software companies by such a respected authority. Science and technology is seeing an ever-increasing need for computing power that can only be met using more – not faster – processors. Our tools help make software run in parallel on these multiple processors – and so our market opportunity is massive.”

“Our solutions are playing a role in solving many of the grand challenges which we face,” he added, “such as helping to cure cancer, model climate change and improve energy efficiency.”

Allinea’s software tools help researchers make their computationally-intensive software run “right first time” on computers that use hundreds of thousands of processors to meet the ever-increasing need for computing power. Allinea has established a leadership position for handling these very large systems, for supporting new high performance architectures (such as Nvidia’s CUDA for GPU), and for ease-of-use – both for these most demanding users and by making the same technology accessible for everyday commercial and academic use.

Red Herring’s editorial staff evaluated the companies on both quantitative and qualitative criteria, such as financial performance, technology innovation, management quality, strategy, and market penetration. This assessment of potential is complemented by a review of the track record and standing of startups relative to their sector peers, allowing Red Herring to see past the “buzz” and make the list a valuable instrument of discovery and advocacy for the most promising new business models in Europe.

Editors Notes

Allinea has offices in the USA (San Jose) and UK (Warwick)

For further information contact:

Mike Fish
CEO, Allinea
E: mfish@allinea.com
Follow us on Twitter - www.twitter.com/AllineaSoftware

Mercia Fund Management (Mercia) and Catapult Venture Managers have made an investment of £600k into a Staffordshire-based company whose products retail globally and are at the cutting-edge of repairing broken bones.

Already a significant investor, the Mercia Fund has followed up with a further £250k in this funding round, whilst the Advantage Enterprise & Innovation Fund, managed by Catapult, has invested £350k.

Intelligent Orthopaedics Ltd (IO) specialises in the design, development, manufacture and distribution of orthopaedic trauma devices. Its core product “STORM” (Staffordshire Orthopaedic Reduction Machine) is a reusable device that is used toreduces/realigns fractures of the tibia prior to surgical fixation. whilst patients are in the operating theatre. It has already proved successful in clinical practice across the world.

Dr. Mark Payton, Managing Director of Mercia Fund Management Ltd, commented: “IO’s founders and management have produced a suite of proprietary products positioned on the market on a global basis. IO typifies a Mercia Fund portfolio company; a scaleable product base derived from world-leading expertise with a global opportunity. This investment will accelerate IOs product roll out and provide the capital to now put IO on the map”.

IO started as a successful collaboration between Staffordshire and Keele Universities and the University Hospital of North Staffordshire. The team now includes Professor Peter Thomas (Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon), Professor Peter Ogrodnik (CTO and Professor of Engineering Design at Staffs University), Susan Hartman (CEO ex Summit, Graseby and Convatec)) and Alistair Taylor (Chairman ex Pfizer, HowMedica, BioCompatibles).

Catapult Director Graham Mold commented: “The products developed by Intelligent Orthopaedics are already used in over 30 hospitals in the USA, Europe and the UK and the devices have CE marking and FDA clearance in the US. The money from this funding round is to be primarily used as working capital to enable the company to establish a sales team which will focus on developing the US and German markets. The company has an excellent management team led by CEO Susan Hartman having over 25 years experience in medical devices from wound care to infusion devices and orthopaedics, and Chairman Alistair Taylor who ran Pfizer/Howedica’s orthopaedic business as President of Howedica’s Southern Europe Orthopaedics Division based out of Geneva.”

Susan Hartman, CEO of IO, commented: “All of us at Intelligent Orthopaedics are delighted to have secured this investment from Catapult and our long-standing partner the Mercia Fund. Since spinning out, IO has launched three products for the treatment of unstable fractures of the tibia (shin bone) and we have customers in the USA and other European countries as well as the UK. This investment will allow us to expand our presence in two key target markets, the USA and Germany by building on our initial success with key opinion leaders to establish the IO method of treating these difficult fractures as the ‘standard’. In addition, the funding will allow us to accelerate our product development programme and we anticipate at least two new product launches in the next twelve months.”

Graham Mold concluded: “The company’s intention is to establish the ‘STORM’ method as the standard for re-aligning displaced fractures of the shin bone. ”

Catapult was advised by Jon Gill of Eversheds who commented: "This transaction is a great example of the local venture capital community working together to enable Midlands-developed intellectual property to achieve its commercial potential in a global market."

Editors Notes:

About the Mercia Fund

The Mercia Fund is focused on supporting leading technologies with global potential in Medical & Healthcare, Advanced Materials, Clean Technologies and ICT & Digital Media. The Mercia Fund provides venture capital for early-stage technology start-ups that are based in the West Midlands region and that have achieved proof of principle. Potential investees must demonstrate their potential for rapid growth and will possess a strong proprietary position with respect to their technology, intellectual property, and products.

The Mercia Fund is managed by Mercia Fund Management Ltd, based at its Birmingham offices. Mercia Fund Management Ltd is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and is a member of the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (BVCA).

For further information, please contact:

Dr Mark Payton
Co-Founder & Managing Director, Mercia Fund Management Ltd

T: 0121 236 8855
M: 07811 435199
E: markp@merciafund.co.uk
W: www.merciafund.co.uk

The Native Antigen Company (NAC; http://thenativeantigencompany.com) has been formed following a spin out from PsiOxus (formerly Hybrid BioSystems). NAC, headquartered in Birmingham with research offices in Oxford, has its expertise in the isolation and purification of both viral and bacterial native antigens. These antigens serve as key components of infectious disease testing kits (a growing market estimated to be worth up to £100m); their function being to accurately detect pathogenic infection by capturing antibodies in patient samples.

With their proprietary approach developed over many years of research at Hybrid BioSystems, NAC is well placed to take a significant part of a growing need for diagnostic kit producers to purify and supply challenging components which result in enhanced assay performance. This is best illustrated in the immune-compromised patient where an accurate and rapid diagnosis of respiratory or gastric pathogens can be critical to patient survival.

Andrew Maxwell NAC's CEO said “Most antigens used in current diagnostic kits are not native and can thus lack the specificity and sensitivity which we offer with our native antigens. Accurate identification of an organism is vital to ensure an effective patient treatment regime. Industry has become reliant on recombinant antigens in part, due to perceived costs savings and ease of manufacture. There is a clear gap for an innovative company which can focus its expertise in the isolation and purification of native antigens and is prepared to work closely with the kit manufacturers to provide tailored, cost effective solutions. This is reflected in the strong market appetite to evaluate our approach.”

Mark Payton, Managing Director of Mercia Fund Management Ltd, commented "NAC has a tremendous opportunity to improve the performance of diagnostic kits with the supply of native antigen kit components. The business has a strong team and a set of supportive investors that truly understand the industry and market opportunity. We look forward to the continued growth of this business."

Editors Notes:

About the Mercia Fund

The Mercia Fund is focused on supporting leading technologies with global potential in Medical & Healthcare, Advanced Materials, Clean Technologies and ICT & Digital Media. The Mercia Fund provides venture capital for early-stage technology start-ups that are based in the West Midlands region and that have achieved proof of principle. Potential investees must demonstrate their potential for rapid growth and will possess a strong proprietary position with respect to their technology, intellectual property, and products.

The Mercia Fund is managed by Mercia Fund Management Ltd, based at its Birmingham offices. Mercia Fund Management Ltd is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and is a member of the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (BVCA).

For further information, please contact:

Dr Mark Payton
Co-Founder & Managing Director, Mercia Fund Management Ltd

T: 0121 236 8855
M: 07811 435199
E: markp@merciafund.co.uk
W: www.merciafund.co.uk

About The Native Antigen Company, Ltd.

The Native Antigen Company (NAC) specialises in the purification of Native Viral and Bacterial Antigens for the in vitro diagnostics (IVD) manufacturer. NAC has the scope to produce almost any Native Antigen, from low volumes to bulk. In addition, NAC offers an Adenovirus purification and production capability and a screening service for anti-cancer drug compounds.

Andrew Maxwell is the CEO of NAC. Mr Maxwell was previously Managing Director at Lab21 and prior to this held global responsibility at Genetix plc for its reagent and microarray divisions.. Professor Geoffrey Hale, CEO of BioAnalab, which was acquired by Millipore in 2009, will serve as Chairman of the Board of Directors.

The shareholders of NAC include Management, Mercia Fund, Cancer Research Technology and the University of Birmingham.

For more information please visit http://thenativeantigencompany.com
 

Hybrid Biosystems has merges with Myotec to form PsiOxus Therapeutics combined with £3.6m new funding to develop therapeutic pipeline.

The Mercia Fund, a leading providing of investment and support for technology-backed high growth enterprises, has announced the merger of its portfolio company Hybrid Biosystems Ltd (Hybrid) with Myotec Therapeutics Ltd (Myotec) to form PsiOxus Therapeutics.

This transformational merger will be supported by a new funding round of £3.6m from Imperial Innovations, Invesco Perpetual and the Mercia Fund, a founding investor in Hybrid.

The merged business and new funds will be used to develop a pipeline of therapeutic treatments for cancer and wasting diseases, helping to advance two particularly promising treatments, Myotec’s MT-102 and Hybrid’s ColoAd1, through Phase I and II clinical development.

The Mercia Fund was the founding investor in Hybrid and has supported it since its foundations as a spin out from the University of Birmingham. The Mercia Fund has worked closely with the founding management to develop its product strategy and was instrumental in building out its management base and leading the merger and investment transactions.

Hybrid directors Mark Payton (representing The Mercia Fund) and Phil L’Huillier (representing Cancer Research Technologies) will join the newly formed PsiOxus board, together with Charles Swingland as an independent director.

PsiOxus will initially focus on the advancement of MT-102 and ColoAd1 through clinical trials. Developed by Myotec, MT-102 is a dual action Anabolic Catabolic Transforming Agent (ACTA) in phase II clinical development for the treatment of cachexia, a wasting disease that is the direct cause of death in 20 to 40 percent of all cancer patients.

 Hybrid’s ColoAd1 is a unique oncolytic virus developed using the evolutionary principle of natural selection to generate a virus with optimal anti-cancer properties. ColoAd1 is an extremely potent anti-cancer therapeutic with high selectivity for killing cancer cells but which shows little or no activity on normal tissue.

As well as advancing MT-102 and ColoAd1 through phase I and II clinical development, PsiOxus will also use the new funds to develop novel drug candidates derived from the PsiOxus platform technologies.

Dr Michael Moore, Chairman of PsiOxus said “As a combined entity, we have the clinical trials expertise among our scientific founders to develop promising new therapeutics to treat cancer and other serious diseases. We now look forward to advancing this product pipeline through the clinical stages ahead.”

Dr Mark Payton, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Mercia Fund Management Ltd, commented "PsiOxus has the potential to transform the treatment of cancer and cancer cachexia. Hybrid represents a typical Mercia Fund investment, technology derived from world leading research with solid proof of principle established. This merger now takes Hybrid to the next level of realising its goal of demonstrating true patient benefit from its products that benefit from years of targeted development."

Warwick-based company Concurrent Thinking has been spun out from Streamline Computing Ltd (Streamline) as part of a £1 million investment co-led by the Carbon Trust and Mercia Fund Management. Other investors in the company include the management team and Streamline shareholder Midven. The new company will use the investment to drive international sales growth of its unique technology for managing large-scale distributed computing environments, which helps cut energy, carbon and cost.

Concurrent Thinking’s technology is suitable for all data centres due to its scalable design.  However, as it is simple to deploy and highly intuitive, it is ideal for small and medium enterprises which can typically find the cost of the more heavyweight data centre management software suites on the market too high.

Dr Mark Payton, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Mercia Fund Management, commented "As a leading investor in technology backed early stage ventures, Concurrent displays the traits we seek; it is a disruptive play with a market-led robust technology offering that has clear advantages over competing approaches. We are delighted to back management to accelerate the company’s growth into this global multi-billion dollar market opportunity."

The management team at Concurrent Thinking has decades of experience in High Perfromance Computing (HPC) and computer science.

Dr Michael Rudgyard, CEO and founder of Concurrent Thinking, said his team’s depth of expertise in the HPC market ensures that Concurrent Thinking’s products and solutions are holistic in their approach, leading to more integrated, user-friendly and easy-to-manage solutions for customers.

He said: “We believe that the products we have developed as part of our High Performance Computing heritage, as well as other forthcoming products, will allow us to offer solutions that are relevant to data-centres and next-generation clouds.  We welcome the support of our investors and look forward to building Concurrent Thinking’s business and product portfolio both within and beyond our traditional customer base.”

In this challenging environment, we are pleased to announce that Anaxsys Technology, a Mercia Fund Management portfolio company, has now completed an oversubscribed combined investment of £1.73 million over two rounds of investment in the last 12 months. Investors included the Mercia Fund 2, SEGF, AEIF(Catapult Venture Managers), London Business Angels, and the Early Advantage Fund (Midven).

Anaxsys is a medical device company with a portfolio of distinct products under development for a variety of indications to include respiration rate monitoring and counting, the monitoring and diagnosis of asthma and COPD. Each product incorporates proprietary electrochemical sensing technology, with applications across numerous medical and non-medical markets.

Dr Williams, CEO of Anaxsys, commented on how the investment will help: “We have already demonstrated the viability of our core technology through clinical trials and with this investment will take our lead respiration rate product through final trials to approval.”

Dr Mark Payton, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Mercia Fund Management, commented “We are pleased to be a part of this latest investment round. Anaxsys, located at Keele University Science and Business Park, is typical of the type of investment we seek and support; it has a compelling product portfolio, an innovative platform technology, an experienced management team and an extensive patent estate, all of which are geared towards significant global market opportunities.”

University of Warwick spin-out company Warwick Audio Technologies has secured a £1.5 million investment to develop their innovative ‘flat flexible laminate’ loudspeaker technology. At between 0.25 to 1mm thick, the speaker developed by Warwick Audio Technologies is lightweight and flexible enough to fit into most contoured spaces, making it ideal for applications such as car interiors where space is at a premium. Its unique directional quality means it could also be used in advertising display panels, or public address systems.

The investment has been led by Finance Wales with the founding investors, Mercia Fund Management and Porton Capital Inc., also investing, putting Warwick Audio Technologies firmly on track to bringing the 'flat flexible laminate’ technology to market.

“This investment puts Warwick Audio Technologies in a really strong position to make the 'flat flexible laminate’  technology a major market success,” says Warwick Audio Technologies’ CEO, Steve Couchman. “Already we are having discussions with a range of potential partners representing leading brands, each of whom has seen a different, innovative end use for the product. We believe the potential for growth is enormous.”

Tim Hazell, Co-Founder and Investment Director of Mercia Fund Management, said: “Given the difficulty in the current climate for early stage technology companies to raise further funding, it is testimony to the efforts of the management team and the enormous potential of the technology that this fund raising round has been so successful.”

Warwick based Allinea Software a specialist software developer, has completed a syndicated venture capital funding round of £400,000 after being spun out from its parent company Concurrent Thinking Ltd.

Allinea Software specialises in developing software tools designed to ensure that applications can run problem-free on parallel computing systems. Parallel computing involves breaking down extremely complex computational problems into smaller, more manageable tasks that can then be dealt with simultaneously. This can lead to a significant reduction in the time taken to solve such complex tasks. It is widely accepted that parallel computing will be one of the cornerstones of the computing industry over the coming decades.

The syndicated investment round was co-led by Mercia Fund Management and the Midven managed Advantage Growth Fund, and included investment by the management team. Mercia Fund Management and Midven had previously supported the establishment and rapid growth of Concurrent Thinking Ltd through consecutive investment rounds.

The recent funding round provides Allinea Software with sufficient working capital to fully establish its market independence from the parent company and to continue building on its success in attracting major contracts from large corporate clients.

Allinea Software started life as an operating division of Concurrent Thinking Ltd, but has rapidly established itself as a profitable, highly successful and internationally recognised business in its own right, with a strong and growing list of blue chip clients in the High Performance Computing sector. These clients include Airbus Industrie, CGGVeritas,
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Met Office and a large number of well-known universities and research institutions, worldwide. Allinea has also recently announced highprofile collaborations with the French CEA (Atomic Energy Commission) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and has recently demonstrated its tools running on more than 100,000 processors on ORNL’s Jaguar Supercomputer – the second most powerful computer on the planet.

Concurrent Thinking will now focus exclusively on its core business of providing cluster appliances and will also benefit from continued strong financial backing and support from its existing investor base.

Although Allinea Software is now a separate business with its management team focusing exclusively on tool development, a close and mutually beneficial long-term working relationship with Concurrent Thinking is anticipated going forward.

Dr Michael Rudgyard, CEO of Allinea Software commented "Thanks to the continued support of our investors and the hard work of our staff, Allinea Software is well-positioned to make a real impact in parallel computing. I am confident that Allinea will continue to innovate while expanding its customer base within High Performance
Computing and the broader multicore computing marketplace"

Dr Mark Payton, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Mercia Fund Managment commented "Allinea has a robust technology offering and is gaining early market traction with clear advantages over competing approaches. We are delighted to back management to accelerate the company’s growth."

Mercia Fund Management, a leading provider of venture capital to early stage technology businesses in the West Midlands, has made a significant investment into Nightingale-EOS as part of a syndication with Finance Wales. The company will be headquartered in the West Midlands.

This investment leverage’s additional grant funding from the Welsh Assembly Government to complete development of its first product targeted at the medical device manufacturing market. The company’s laser-based technology, called Beam Profile Reflectometry, is able to measure the characteristics of the thin coatings applied
to medical implants such as cardiac stents and replacement joints.

Beam Profile Reflectometry, standard within the semiconductor industry, is a unique laser-based measurement technique that, unlike other technologies is able to make direct, deterministic measurements of thickness and composition of transparent coatings using a single non-destructive measurement. Nightingale’s patented solution requires minimal user expertise, significantly reduces the cost and time to make a measurement and improved accuracy making it ideal for both laboratory testing and production QA, providing medical device manufacturers with a low cost, robust solution for complying with the FDA’s Process Analytical Technology initiative.

The company‘s development centre is in Wrexham, and will open an applications laboratory and sales office in Coventry University Technology Park where the West Midlands Manufacturing Measurement Centre (WMMMC) is also based.

Alistair Taylor, the company's Chairman, said “There are clear benefits for medical device manufacturers in adopting technology such as this to streamline their production processes, reduce cost and improve quality. This investment enables the company to bring the technology to its customers in time for the next generation of devices”.

Everard Mascarenhas, Co-Founder and Investment Manager of Mercia Fund Management, commented “In Nightingale-EOS we see a company with a strong IP position and technology that addresses a need poorly served by existing solutions in a rapidly-growing market."