By Karen Peattie The number of Scottish venture capital (VC) deals struck last year reached its highest levels since 2013, according to research by Refinitiv. Scottish companies raised £60.9 million of venture capital in 2019 from 28 deals – an increase from the £58.4m raised in 2018 from 25 deals. The largest deal was for Edinburgh-based light communication company Purelifi, which raised £13.6m, followed by Current Health and Intelligent Growth Solutions raising £8.9m and £5m respectively. Scotland's most active investors were Scottish Enterprise Glasgow which invested £18.6m in 15 deals followed by Par Equity with seven deals investing £4.8m. Next was Archangel Investors which invested £2.2m in four deals. Alan Whyte, Scotland country manager at Refinitiv, said it was encouraging to see that "Scottish entrepreneurialism is booming with year-on-year increases for deal numbers and volumes". "VC firms are preferring to spread their investments across a wider number of businesses which is a fantastic sign of confidence for the start-up economy,” he said. UK companies raised a record £8.1 billion of venture capital in 2019 – an 85% increase year on year (£4.3bn). Deal volumes also were slightly up with 560 in this period compared to 554 in 2018. Across Europe, companies raised a record-breaking £19.5bn of venture capital – an increase of 50% year on year. Despite the deal values in the period, volumes fell to 1,408, down by 7% from 2018 and marked the slowest start to a year since 2009.
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