Some of the country's most high-profile companies and investors have announced a string of deals across the North West in recent weeks.
Household names such as Mike Ashley and Steven Bartlett have invested in businesses while the likes of musicMagpie CEO Steve Oliver has also hit the headlines since our last round up.
Among the companies featured in our latest deals round up include Studio Retail Group, Fearless Adventures and Daisy Group.
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Here, BusinessLive rounds up the latest deals from across the North West we feel you should not miss.
Studio Retail Group
Entrepreneur Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group has swooped for digital retailer Studio Retail in a £26.8m deal.
The firm – which already owns a huge portfolio of businesses including Flannels, House of Fraser, Sports Direct and Evans Cycles – announced on the stock market that it had "rescued another business out of administration and saved approximately 1,500 jobs".
The move comes after the Lancashire-headquartered online trader confirmed on Thursday, February 24, it had appointed Teneo to lead the administration process of Studio Retail Group.
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That also came after the group, whose largest shareholder was Frasers Group, issued a statement on Monday, February 14, that it was set to call in the administrators.
KnownOrigin
A NFT business, which was established in a basement in 2018, has completed a £3.5m funding round.
The investment into Manchester-based KnownOrigin was co-led by venture capital firms GBV and Sanctor Capital.
The company has partnerships with the likes of Adidas, Netflix and Adobe and was founded by UX consultant David Moore and blockchain engineers Andy Gray and James Morgan.
The funding round also saw participation from Cultur3 Capital, D1 Ventures, MetaCartel Ventures DAO, LD Capital, Pluto Digital and Future Arts, Colborn and Yin Cao.
Steven Bartlett
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Dragons' Den star Steven Bartlett has taken part in a $10m investment round into a New York-based wellness start-up.
The entrepreneur, who co-founded Social Chain in Manchester with Dominic McGregor, has also taken a seat on the board of The Healing Company.
The business was co-founded by former IMG Model and supplement entrepreneur Anabel Oelmann alongside former Jet.com and Equinox Media president Simon Belsham.
Wellness icon Deepak Chopra has also taken a stake in the business as well as psychedelics entrepreneur Christian Angermayer.
AppLearn
A Manchester-headquartered software provider, which works with the likes of EY, IHG and King's College London, has completed the acquisition of a Slovakia-based company.
AppLearn has snapped up digital adoption platform provider YesElf for an undisclosed sum.
The company was founded in 2016 by CEO Peter Simun and CTO Ladislav Gažo and has a base in Bratislava.
The move comes after AppLearn announced plans to create 60 jobs after securing an eight-figure funding boost.
WalkSafe
An app to help women walk home safe, whose usage soared to half a million downloads following the murders of Sarah Everard and Sabina Nessa, has been backed by a multimillion-pound fund set up by three Manchester-based entrepreneurs.
Fearless Adventures has led a £300,000 investment round into London-based personal safety app, WalkSafe.
The app includes regularly updated police crime data to show users where the recent hotspots are, so they can pick safe routes to walk home.
The app’s features allow users to alert contacts if they’re feeling unsafe while walking and has already surpassed 500,000 downloads.
Co-op Live
A new financing deal has been secured for the £365m Co-op Live Arena which is being constructed in the shadow of Manchester City's Etihad Stadium.
Los Angeles-based Oak View Group (OVG) is leading the scheme alongside City Football Group (CFG) while musician and actor Harry Styles is also an investor.
The 23,500-capacity venue is set to open in late 2023.
It has now been confirmed that OVG and CFG have closed and funded a 27-year senior secured note and five-year senior secured credit facility for the venue.
Daisy Group
Telecoms and technology giant Daisy Group has announced the acquisition of a rival reported to be worth more than £200m.
Daisy Group, which is headquartered in Lancashire, has signed a deal to acquire XLN, with completion expected in early March.
XLN provides over 100,000 small businesses with services including business broadband, phones and card payments.
This division of Daisy now has in excess of 200,000 customers with combined revenues of over £200m.
Fearless Adventures
The co-founder and CEO of musicMagpie is among the investors who have backed a growth vehicle for direct-to-consumer start-ups.
Steve Oliver has been joined by James Cox, co-founder of Simba Sleep and tech-entrepreneur Alex Packham, who recently sold his company ContentCal to Adobe, in backing Fearless Adventures.
The Manchester-based company was launched in October by David Newns, Charlie Yates and Social Chain co-founder Dominic McGregor.
Since then, the business has supported Sale-based Pets Purest, an ethical swimwear brand established by Love Island star Montana Brown as well as an app to help women walk home safe.
Mypura.com Group
Maven Capital Partners has led a £4.25m funding round for Cheshire-based Mypura.com Group, a fast-growing baby care brand which specialises in eco-friendly wipes and nappies.
The transaction includes £4mof funding split evenly across the Maven VCTs, NPIF Maven Equity Finance, part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund, and Maven Investor Partners, Maven’s high net worth investment syndicate.
Michael Law, former operations director at Next Plc, has also invested and will join the board.
Originally set up to sell direct to the consumer, the funding will support Pura’s expansion into B2B sales targeting the supermarket sector, including the US, and allow for increased investment into marketing to help drive its growth.
BOE House
A Lancashire-based retailer of children’s gift boxes is looking to launch a European arm to its business, after growing in a host of new international markets with the support of a business loan from Rosebud.
BOE House, which trades as Baby Box Shop, is based in Thornton and sells a range of gift boxes for babies’ and young children’s special occasions which include items such as clothing and soft toys. The company is led by Kim and Owen Burrows.
Baby Box Shop sells its products through Amazon and had grown steadily until June 2020. However, due to the time it was taking to order products, often from China, then ship to customers, Baby Box Shop did not have enough surplus funds to grow at the speed Kim and Owen desired.
The company also needed to develop its warehouse and employ additional staff to facilitate this growth ambition.
e4enable
Altrincham-based e4enable, has secured a significant round of funding from five experienced North West technology investors.
The company, which provides a data-driven sales coaching platform to businesses across the 海角视频, Europe and North America, has clients including NCC Group and Apogee and has recently added UX Insights company UserZoom to its roster.
This latest round of funding comes as it looks to triple its headcount and further invest in its platform to continue to help sales leaders develop a coaching framework for optimum sales rep performance and measure the impact of training and enablement activity.
The newest investors to join e4enable’s advisory board include former AppSense chairman and current chairman of Summize, Charles Sharland and founder of Pareto Law and creator of the original model of coaching and developing sales people, Jonathan Fitchew.
They are also joined by former Avecto CEO Tony Bolland, who has also joined e4enable’s board and experienced fundraiser and technology M&A adviser, Chris Lewis.
Existing investor and experienced CFO, Rachel Cunliffe has also furthered her investment in the business.
Sysco Technical Solutions
A Lancashire business that provides and project manages specialist security installation projects at high security sites has been acquired by its management team.
Sysco Technical Solutions, based in Leyland, was established in 2013 and has project managed the installation of perimeter security technology at a large Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) site in recent years.
The company has been purchased by Shawn Reed, Mark Beetham, Ian Hearle and Bradley Ogden.
The buyout will allow the company’s previous owners to retire, while the new management team at Sysco Technical Solutions intends to grow the business by targeting further security installation and management work at high security sites across the 海角视频.