Fund and venture capitalists on cloud nine over £20m SEP and BGF investment

By PETER RANSCOMBE
Published on 13/09/2012 00:00

VENTURE capital firm Scottish Equity Partners (SEP) yesterday teamed up with the high street banks’ Business Growth Fund (BGF) to pump £20 million into a “cloud computing” company.

London-based SkyDox makes software that allows companies to store their documents on the internet, which allows users working in different locations to edit the same documents.

Following the injection of cash, SkyDox is buying Workshare, a specialist document management firm that works with legal practices.

Bringing the two businesses together will allow users to work on documents via their smartphones, tablet computers or traditional desktop machines, the firms said.

Under the deal, Duncan Lewis – a non-executive director at London-listed Spirent Communications – will become chairman of the expanded SkyDox’s business, with Anthony Foy continuing as its chief executive. Barrie Hadfield, SkyDox’s current chief technology officer, was one of the founders of Workshare. The £2.5 billion BGF was set up last year by Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, Royal Bank of Scotland and Asia-focused lender Standard Chartered to invest between £2m and £10m in companies for a minimum stake of 10 per cent.

Audrey Baxter, chairman and chief executive of Fochabers-based soup and sauce maker Baxters Food Group, serves as a non-executive director of the BGF, which has so far made three investments in Scotland.

The fund pumped £7.8m into Aberdeenshire-based pipeline engineering firm Stats, with just under £4m going to Glasgow-based laser maker M-Squared and £4.2m being invested in Edinburgh-based fancy dress costume maker Morphsuits.

SEP is currently investing £200m from its IT, healthcare and energy fund.