Immersive Labs, the Bristol cyber security firm founded by a former GCHQ researcher, has raised $8m (£6.2m) to further develop its innovative training system that uses computer game techniques to fight real-life threats. The skills platform, which is already used for complex cyber security training by clients such as engineering...
Bristol-based invoice finance firm Optimum Finance increased its lending to small and medium-sized businesses by more than 330% in just its second year of trading. The firm, founded by former Ultimate Finance chief executive Richard Pepler in 2017, worked with companies across the UK to help fund growth and...
National financial planning firm Cooper Parry Wealth has opened a base in Bristol as it looks to bring its award-winning offering into the South West for the first time. The firm, which covers the East and West Midlands and the South East from offices near Derby and in Solihull,...
The “overriding priority” for both the government and Parliament must be to avoid a no deal Brexit following the overwhelming defeat of the Prime Minister’s deal, the region’s largest business organisation said this week. Business West, which runs Bristol Chamber of Commerce, said firms in the region now found...
Nearly 40% of West of England business owners back a second Brexit referendum while just one in 10 is confident the government will secure a good deal for the UK, according to the region’s largest business survey. Worryingly, more than 40% of the senior managers and directors taking part...
An innovative scheme encouraging and supporting Bristol scale-up businesses has been praised by industry experts as a role model for other parts of the country. The ScaleUp Institute, a company which aims to make the UK the best place in the world to develop a thriving business, said the...
Bristol businesses looking to increase the diversity and inclusiveness of their workforce as well as their attractiveness to diverse and younger markets can get help through a new training course developed by city-based youth empowerment organisation Babbasa. Called Bridging the Gap, Babbasa’s professional development programme, harnesses its research and...
LettUs Grow, the Bristol-based agri-tech firm, has secured investment of £1m to build world-beating indoor ‘farms’ that could help feed the ever-increasing global population. Under the funding, which has come from a range of investors, LettUS Grow scale its operations and develop new products to access a rapidly growing...
Bristol robotics firm Open Bionics, which makes innovative hi-tech prosthetic limbs for amputees, has raised £4.7m to help it become a global player. The firm, founded four years ago by CEO Joel Gibbard and COO Samantha Payne, pictured, and based at UWE’s Future Space innovation hub, secured the funding...
The director-general of the CBI used a speech in Bristol today to warn that a no deal Brexit would hit the South West’s manufacturing and services industries hard as well as scuppering vital export deals. Addressing a gathering of senior business figures at Bristol Old Vic, Carolyn Fairbairn, pictured,...
Countdown presenter Nick Hewer is to host this year’s South West Fair Trade Business Awards. Nick, pictured, who was also Sir Alan Sugar’s former right-hand man on The Apprentice, is a long-running supporter of ethical business and a patron of The Fairtrade Foundation. He will help present the awards...
Further growth is planned at Bristol-based specialist R&D tax credit consultancy ForrestBrown this year as it prepares to take on more than 40 new staff and expand its tax associate programme. The firm, which became the UK’s largest business of its kind in 2018 just five years after its...
The BD Consultancy, the Bristol-based business development group, has appointed Catriona Tully as a business development consultant. Catriona, pictured, has 18 years’ experience as a business development and marketing director in professional services firms such as global accountancy group KPMG, where she was a director for nine years in...
