Investment

The Invest in Women Taskforce aims to tackle the vast gender gap in equity finance in the UK. Funding will go towards supporting firms founded by women, or into a specialist ‘Women backing Women’ fund.

LeapFrog Investments has beaten its fundraising target for its Emerging Consumer Fund IV focused on high-impact healthcare and financial services companies in global growth markets.

The European Impact Investing Consortium report reveals that unlisted impact investments grew by 20% between 2022 to 2023, with institutional investors making up a large part of the funding.

Five venture capital funds have worked together to develop a handbook for implementing the European Investment Fund’s approach for linking impact to carried interest.

Education and employment are key development challenges for many parts of Africa. A substantial increase in funding, and the development of innovative investment opportunities are needed, say Paul Ronalds and Sandeep Aneja.

Ninety One’s Africa and emerging market-focused strategy has raised close to $700m (€668m) in capital across three different funds in the past decade.

Swedfund has provided €20m in funding to COFINA to support job creation, business growth and better livelihoods in West and Central Africa.

At the Impact Investor conference, industry experts focused on the opportunities, challenges, and considerations when it comes to integrating biodiversity and natural capital into investment portfolios.

The Article 9 fund has been created in partnership with natural capital specialist IWC, majority owned by BNP Paribas Asset Management, and has raised $130m at first close.

A market study published by SpainNAB and the Esade Centre for Social Impact also revealed that direct impact investments in Spain grew by 26% in 2023 to over €1.52bn.