{"id":19059,"date":"2025-02-14T07:51:47","date_gmt":"2025-02-14T07:51:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thebusinessdesk.com\/south-west\/?p=19059"},"modified":"2025-02-14T07:55:20","modified_gmt":"2025-02-14T07:55:20","slug":"the-shining-light-of-uk-tech-that-was-bought-for-9-after-118m-investment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebusinessdesk.com\/south-west\/news\/19059-the-shining-light-of-uk-tech-that-was-bought-for-9-after-118m-investment","title":{"rendered":"The ‘shining light of UK tech’ that was bought for \u00a39 after \u00a3118m investment"},"content":{"rendered":"

TheBusinessDesk.com’s Rainmakers platform<\/a><\/strong> has an exclusive story this week about Bristol-based Huboo, which was rescued by a pre-pack deal just before Christmas:<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>“Never in my career in VC have I seen an investment opportunity with the scale prospects of Huboo,” said Ada Ventures partner, and Huboo director, Matt Penneycard.<\/p>\n

It is December 2023, and the ecommerce fulfilment company had just raised another \u00a329m, in an equity and debt funding round featuring HSBC and Blackrock, alongside follow-on investments from Ada Ventures and Maersk Growth.<\/p>\n

Huboo\u2019s total fundraising in its first six years had now gone into nine figures.<\/p>\n

One year later, on December 23, 2024 – right at the end of the Christmas delivery period – the Bristol-based company appointed administrators and a pre-pack deal went through.<\/p>\n

The new owners paid \u00a39.<\/p>\n

For the price of a glass of wine, an investor consortium led by Baaj Capital and Atalla Capital, had taken over a company employing 643 people in the UK, Netherlands, Germany and Spain.<\/p>\n

To get to that stage, it had been funded by \u00a3118m of equity and \u00a320m of secured debt. And it had run out of money, and options…<\/p>\n

To read the full story, sign up for a free trial to Rainmakers, the specialist platform delivering analysis and insight into corporate finance in the regions<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TheBusinessDesk.com’s Rainmakers platform has an exclusive about the collapse of Huboo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":19060,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"coauthors":[81],"class_list":["post-19059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","tag-featured-story"],"yoast_head":"\nThe 'shining light of UK tech' that was bought for \u00a39 after \u00a3118m investment - South West<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thebusinessdesk.com\/south-west\/news\/19059-the-shining-light-of-uk-tech-that-was-bought-for-9-after-118m-investment\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The 'shining light of UK tech' that was bought for \u00a39 after \u00a3118m investment - 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