Capitalises on Data, Digital, Education and Health Sector expertise
Builds on promising 4-‐year track record in “deal by deal” EIS
London, 17 July 2018. Nexus Investments, a division of Harry Hyman’s Nexus Group, today announces the launch of its first EIS Scale-‐Up Fund (“the Fund”).
This is believed to be the first UK EIS Fund specifically focused on scale-‐up opportunities to launch since the recent June announcement of the UK Government’s £2.5bn British Patient Capital programme.
The Fund addresses a large gap in the market by providing UK investors with access to exciting but curated UK entrepreneur-‐led private companies that have successfully passed the start-‐up stage and are ready to scale up on a global basis.
It will focus on four of the most exciting areas of change in the world today where UK
early stage companies can become global leaders: Data, Digital, Education and Health.
Nexus Investments has been successfully arranging and managing EIS co-‐investments deal-‐by-‐deal into these sectors for a number of years, with a mixture of smart-‐money, family offices and industry experts already valuing the chance to co-‐invest EIS capital into deals where they can (if they wish) spend time with the founders and management prior to and after making an investment. Nexus’ own involvement as investors and advisors re-‐assures them, and later-‐stage VC and institutional investors, that the portfolio company founders will be best in class and that things will be “run properly” from an early stage.
An example star-‐performer is Boclips into which Nexus led the seed investment round in 2014. This education tech business is transforming the use of video in classrooms all over the world, from the USA to Singapore. The overall addressable market for educational materials is an enormous and rapidly growing market ($58bn in 2016, excluding China where a huge opportunity exists in itself). Boclips was one of Mayor of London Sadiq Khan’s 10 UK tech picks to accompany him on his trade mission to India last year. Boclips is a good example of the “businesses of tomorrow” that Nexus Investments consistently finds and helps to grow and to which smart money investors love to get early access.
Another stand-‐out company that is scaling up internationally is healthy food brand http://www.soupologie.com, into which Nexus led an investment round in 2015. Food traffic light labels were introduced by the UK Government in summer 2013 to show how much fat, saturated fats, sugar and salt are in food by using the traffic light signals for high (red), medium (amber) and low (green) percentages for each of these ingredients. Soupologie makes products that they believe uniquely score “green” on all the traffic-‐ light indicators on the sides of packs. Soupologie is now shaking up the food industry by selling its healthy products not just in the UK (in Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and others), but now also on French supermarket shelves. The European chilled soup
market is the fastest growing soup market in the world and accounted for 45% of the total global chilled soup market in terms of value at end 2017, according to Persistent Market Research.
One characteristic of Nexus Investments companies is that they often manage to attract not only high calibre EIS investment, but also very high calibre boards of directors. Distinguished chairpersons who sit alongside Matthew O’Kane on existing Nexus-‐backed companies include Mark Wood (formerly Editor in Chief of Reuters, and now Advisory Board member of PwC) and Mike Rusbridge (formerly CEO of Reed Exhibitions PLC, and currently Board Member of the National Exhibition Centre (NEC)).
The Nexus Investments EIS Scale Up Fund will enable a far wider pool of EIS Investors and their financial advisers to learn about and similarly benefit from Nexus’s sector experience, deal pipeline and management expertise, through an EIS fund managed by Nexus Investment Management Ltd.
The Fund is targeting up to £10m with a first completion in September 2018 and evergreen monthly completions thereafter, to invest into 8-‐10 or more holdings over the coming 1-‐2 years. The Principals have committed over £250,000 to the Fund.
Fund details can be found at www.scaleupfund.co.uk
Matthew O’Kane, Managing Director of Nexus Investments, said: “The Government have identified scaling as the next big policy priority if the UK is to capitalise upon the start-‐up boom of the past 5-‐10 years. At the same time, the era of limited life or “asset-‐ backed” EIS Funds has effectively come to an end with the new Risk-‐To-‐Capital condition introduced last year. The Government is instead encouraging a shift way from historical safe harbours toward knowledge-‐intensive, entrepreneur-‐led companies, in value-‐add industries”.
Harry Hyman, Founder of Nexus Group, commented: “Since the UK Government’s Patient Capital Review, the focus for EIS investment criteria has shifted to high potential, growth investments. This is the area in which we specialise, and have done for some time. We have put our money where our mouth is in our own EIS deals to date. Our Scale-‐Up Fund is specifically designed to help investors access these top-‐tier UK investments within a diversified fund portfolio that reduces risk”.
Matthew O’Kane added: “Nexus Investments are already on speed-‐dial for the very best entrepreneurs looking for high-‐quality EIS capital from active industry experts who add real value. We think tomorrow’s greatest challenges and therefore biggest opportunities will continue to be seen in the Data, Digital, Education and Health sectors. Our Scale-‐ Up EIS Fund should therefore be of great interest to private investors and their advisors who agree with this analysis and wish to benefit from our deep expertise in growing UK companies to compete internationally in these sectors”.
For more information and details on a series of upcoming launch events for financial
advisors and investors please contact:
Kinlan Communications
David Hothersall
[email protected] – Tel. 020 7638 3435
Nexus Investments Matthew O’Kane
matthew.o’[email protected] – Tel. 0207 104 2059
About Nexus Investments
Nexus Investments originates investment opportunities across a diverse portfolio where mission-‐driven founders are tackling macro-‐economic issues within Data, Digital, Education and Health.
A circle of almost 100 leading UK entrepreneurs and business leaders have followed Harry Hyman and other Nexus executives who have sourced and reviewed over 300 sector-‐specific early-‐stage deals since 2014, investing actively into around 20 of those that have passed Nexus Investments’ strict due diligence criteria, over 50 investment rounds. Over £40m has been subsequently invested into our portfolio companies since our first involvement.
Examples of businesses that are transforming their sectors include personal data management
company DigiMe and radiotherapy medtech company TRUEinvivo.
Nexus Investment Management Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and is member of BVCA (British Venture Capital Association and EISA (Enterprise Investment Scheme Association). Preliminary information on the EIS Scale-‐Up Fund can be found at www.scaleupfund.co.uk
Details of Nexus Investments’ portfolio can be found at www.nivl.co.uk
About Nexus Group
Nexus is a long established private group founded and controlled by Harry Hyman. Since its inception in 1994 the Nexus Group has managed Primary Health Properties PLC (PHP). PHP is a UK FTSE 250 company listed on the main market of the London Stock Exchange investing in primary health care real estate with a market capitalization over £800m. Nexus also managed the Nexus Pine fund, investing in operational property let to educational providers, which was sold in May 2017 to the Universities Superannuation Scheme (“USS”) for £95 million. As well as being the founder and manager of PHP and PINE, the Nexus Group has built Investor Publishing Ltd into an authoritative B2B events and publishing business, and manages a number of other divisions. The Nexus group employs approximately 70 staff.
www.nexusgroup.co.uk
About EIS (Enterprise Investment Scheme)
The Enterprise Investment Scheme (“EIS”) is a Government scheme that provides a range of tax reliefs for investors who subscribe for qualifying shares in qualifying companies. For more information please visit https://www.eisa.org.uk
About British Patient Capital
British Patient Capital is a new UK Government £2.5bn programme designed to enable long-‐term investment in high growth potential companies across the UK led by ambitious entrepreneurs who want to build successful, world-‐class businesses. British Patient Capital invests in venture and growth capital, capturing value through financing the growth of innovative companies. We focus on investing in both fixed term and evergreen funds and will consider co-‐investment alongside our portfolio funds.
www.britishpatientcapital.co.uk
