Mercia Technologies heads north of the border

WARWICKSHIRE technology funder, Mercia Technologies has expanded its presence in the UK with the opening of a new office in Scotland.

In addition to the new Edinburgh office, the Henley-in-Arden group has also secured partnerships with Abertay University and the University of Strathclyde as it looks to reinforce its support for early stage Scottish businesses. The office will be headed by Paul Devlin, who joins Mercia as Investment Manager, Scotland.
 
Located in central Edinburgh, the office will allow Mercia to bolster its commitment to finding and investing in disruptive, scalable technology businesses in Scotland, which is it said was largely underserved by later stage investors despite an impressive variety of start-ups and spinouts.
 
Paul Devlin, who ran the LAUNCH.ed student company formation service at the University of Edinburgh until joining Mercia, will build a team in Scotland to increase Mercia’s deal flow and provide the company with new and exciting investment opportunities.

Mercia said Devlin had a strong track record as an entrepreneur and supporter of early stage businesses, together with a wealth of expertise in market and technology assessment, academic and industrial collaborations, company formation and IP commercialisation.
 
Mercia’s partnerships with Abertay University, which has notable strengths in the digital sector, and the University of Strathclyde, which excels in life sciences, manufacturing and electronics, will provide Mercia with a pipeline of new investment opportunities.
 
Mercia now has 11 partnerships with universities across the Midlands, the North and Scotland, with a dedicated technology transfer team to support spinout companies through to commercialisation. Spinouts from these partners now provide approximately 50% of all investments via Mercia’s third party funds, managed by its wholly-owned subsidiary, Mercia Fund Management (MFM).
 
As a result, MFM recently successfully raised its University Growth Fund, a tax-efficient SEIS and EIS fund, which will be used to support university spinouts from Mercia’s partners across the UK.
 
Mark Payton, CEO of Mercia Technologies, said: “When we listed on AIM last year to scale our established model of informed and patient capital provision, Mercia made a clear statement of intent – that it was a national business with a strong focus on the Midlands, the North and Scotland, all of which are a hotbed of technology-led innovators struggling to find supportive investment.
 
“In 2014, £2.7bn was invested across the South East of England in venture capital against less than £300m across all of Scotland. We look forward to working with Scottish entrepreneurs to address this imbalance, with our focused investment activity and expertise, managed by industry-leading investment directors who have built highly successful businesses in each of the sectors we support.”