As the Bristol Technology Festival kicks off this week to showcase and support the thriving tech ecosystem in Bristol, Burges Salmon is proud to play its part in supporting this vibrant sector. We’re working with many forward thinking and dynamic companies, from start-ups and scale ups through to multinational tech companies, who through their ventures, have firmly put Bristol on the map as one of the top tech clusters in Europe.
We are really excited to be partnering with Bristol Technology Festival again this year. The festival is such an important part of the calendar for the region, bringing together the tech community with a number of fascinating events taking place during the week on hot topics in the sector.
So far in 2023 our teams across the UK have acted on over 45 corporate M&A and financing transactions on behalf of companies operating in the energy, healthcare, life sciences and financial services sectors, where we’re seeing high levels of activity. Amongst these 45 transactions, which involved clients based in the South West and investors targeting the region, 15 were for fintech clients, 16 for energy and clean tech companies and we also advised on groundbreaking technology projects in heathtech including for life sciences company Cytomos.
We’ve been very active in the fintech sector and recently won Best FinTech Sector Law Firm at the 2023 FinTech Awards. Our team brings together a cohesive and experienced group of cross-functional experts – including financial regulation and products, corporate, technology and data, banking and capital markets, employment and IP – to assist fintech clients seize opportunities and established financial institutions transform. Fintech clients include start-ups, high growth scale-ups, international and globally relevant financial institutions and other major corporates.
Recent team highlights include: advising new market entrants bringing financial and data products to market; acting for an international banking group developing its technology and innovation capability; helping overseas fintechs launch in the UK; debt capital markets advice to lending platforms; contributing to the UK chapter of the International Fintech Review, released in association with the European Fintech Association and the International Monetary Fund; and acting for London-based fintech Communion on its new money saving app, the first of its kind, with the firm providing equity fundraising and brand development advice.
We’ve supported a number of companies through our BScale service too including nanotechnology company Nium and robotics and AI start-up Danu. BScale supports early-stage businesses scale up their operations, and it’s great to see businesses we’ve supported from their inception, scale-up, grow and mature into successful businesses.
We’re supporting innovation within our own sector and recently advised Legatics, a legal project management platform that simplifies and automates legal processes, on its £4 million investment from FINTOP Capital and Gresham House Ventures. As lawyers we understand the importance of investing in technologies to enhance the client experience, something our firm is very much committed to, and so it was a pleasure to work with the Legatics team to secure this important investment which promotes and supports innovation and technology in the legal sector.
In February this year, we also ran our annual B-Innovative Week, bringing our people together to explore and be inspired by the latest technologies and approaches to client-centric innovation. Now in its fifth year, the event encourages employees to take part in a journey of discovery by exploring new technology, focusing on aspects of digital transformation and challenging people to think outside of the box. There’s an atmosphere of curiosity and openness here at Burges Salmon to explore digital change, and a clear desire from our people to broaden their horizons. In an ever-changing landscape, initiatives such as B-Innovative Week are important to ensure we challenge our perceptions and enrich our knowledge.
This year we are pleased to be hosting two events during Bristol Technology Festival. Our breakfast club event taking place on Tuesday, in partnership with headline sponsor Ghyston, will explore key topics in relation to the tech talent landscape and our webinar taking place on Friday, in partnership with BDO, will discuss each stage of a company life cycle, from inception to exit.
We will also be attending the Bristol and Bath Cyber conference taking place on Wednesday, where partner David Varney will be speaking about Incident Response – the legal perspective and partner Lucy Pegler will be chairing a session on Future of Cyber Crime and Cyber AI. On Friday senior associate Amy Carr will be joining a panel of experts, for an event hosted by HLK, to explore how and when to involve professional service advisers in your early-stage company.
Visit the Festival’s homepage for more details, we look forward to seeing you there!
