Edinburgh-based law firm Anderson Strathern cheers another record year for investment deals

Legal firm hails buoyant Scottish investment market – including strong appetite for bankrolling pioneering young firms.

Edinburgh-based law firm Anderson Strathern has flagged “continued optimism” in the Scottish investment market as it unveiled what it says is its most successful 12 months ever for investment deals for the second year running, with the total value of deals it worked on more than doubling from 2022.

It has outlined how, over the past year, its corporate investment team was involved in more than 30 investment deals with an aggregate value in excess of £46 million, up from the £20m it handled in 2022.

The legal business, which in the Scottish capital has relocated to Capital Square from Rutland Court, said that as a result of such increasing investment activity, it has over the past 12 months recruited two newly qualified solicitors and one associate to the corporate investment team, which is led by partner Euan Tripp. Anderson Strathern says the unit advises some of Scotland’s most active investors, “from private equity funds to high-net-worth individuals, universities, and investment arms of large corporate organisations”.

Euan Tripp, partner at Anderson Strathern, says: 'We have many clients looking for new opportunities to invest.' Picture: contributed.

The firm added that deals have been dominated by investments into medtech, bioscience, and green energy companies, with one “highlight” for the team acting on behalf of a new client, Almero Ventures, in its £1.5m investment into Carbon Capture Scotland. The latter, it notes, is behind technology that enables the decarbonisation of industries such as agriculture and distilling that generate carbon dioxide during decomposition, fermentation, or combustion processes.

The University of Strathclyde – a long-term client of Anderson Strathern – has also had a busy year for investment. The law firm has supported its team to complete multiple deals, including an investment into life sciences company Microplate DX, which in September said it closed a £2.5m seed funding round to develop its point-of-care diagnostic platform that it says can rapidly identify effective antibiotics to use or those to avoid in a patient’s treatment. Investors in the funding round included existing backers Deepbridge Capital, and the University of Strathclyde plus new investors Scottish Enterprise, and impact investor SIS Ventures.

Euan Tripp, partner at Anderson Strathern, said he is optimistic for the year ahead. He stated: “As well as a strong performance by our own team, we’ve noticed that the sums being invested in Scottish companies have generally increased over the past year. We have many clients looking for new opportunities to invest, especially in young companies with exciting ideas in similar areas that dominated the 2023 investment market.”

Max Scharbert, a senior director in Anderson Strathern’s corporate investment team, added: “Despite challenging market conditions, our clients have raised considerable new funds in 2023, which we expect to boost the volume of high-quality deals in 2024. Scotland remains a very attractive option for investors.” Edinburgh was recently ranked as the top spot for innovation in the UK beyond a “Golden Triangle” cluster of cities in the south of England, while Glasgow and Aberdeen also been ranked highly.

Anderson Strathern dates back to 1749, and takes its name from the union of Scottish legal firms J&F Anderson and Strathern & Blair, which joined forces in 1992. It now has a workforce including 52 partners and 126 support staff, and also has offices in Glasgow, Haddington, and Lerwick in Shetland.