London remains Europe's favourite city for tech investment

Last year's referendum decision to leave the EU has not deterred foreign investment in UK tech companies, according to a new study from London & Partners, London’s promotional agency.

Relocate Editorial

5 July 2017

Since the Brexit vote, British tech companies have received more venture capital (VC) investment than any other country in Europe, according to a new report from London & Partners, the Mayor of London’s promotional agency, with record levels of investment in the first half 2017 helping London maintain its position as Europe’s leading technology hub for global investors.

London tech has attracted more investment than ever in the past six months

The report said London’s technology sector attracted the lion's share (£1.1 billion) of the £1.3 billion-plus pumped into UK tech companies over the first six months of the year – more than in any other half-year period over the past decade.Laura Citron, chief executive of London & Partners, said, “London remains Europe’s leading hub for global investors. The Brexit vote has understandably created some uncertainty but it is no surprise to see that London continues to attract more than double the amount of investment than any other European city.“The fundamental strengths of London as a centre for technology and business have not changed and we have everything companies need to be successful: policy makers, finance, infrastructure, world-class universities and talent. This year’s record investment levels show that London’s tech sector continues to thrive and remains open to investment from all over the world.”

Tech start-up, Improbable receives largest VC investment

Since the referendum a year ago, London received more than £1.8 billion in VC funding across 544 contracts – more than double the £775 million invested in Berlin, the second largest European city for VC investment.One of the largest investments of $500 million (£388 million) went to Improbable, a start-up that uses cloud-based computing to digitally simulate complex real-world locations. The company was founded five years ago by two friends who met at Cambridge and a third from Imperial College in London.Herman Narula, Improbable CEO, said, “For a technology business looking to raise growth capital and scale, investment can come from anywhere in the world, but London is a great place to be located. London provides access to the UK’s tremendous tech talent, and is also an attractive place to work for the global talent vital to growing a tech business.“The investment we received earlier this year will accelerate the growth of our business and is helping us to build our SpatialOS platform for massive-scale virtual worlds. The money investors such as SoftBank are putting into London’s tech companies will benefit the tech ecosystem as a whole, and will play a vital part in building foundational technologies for the 21st century here in Britain.”

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The report found that, apart from VC, the first half of the year also brought healthy private equity investment in UK tech, with London companies raising £4.5 billion in 34 deals. Across the UK as a whole, private equity funding has amounted to £5.3 billion so far this year, about a billion more than the total for the whole of 2016.London & Partners found that the one area of the sector that had declined in 2017 was in mergers and acquisitions, with the number of deals considerably down on the first half of last year.Read about the huge success of the Relocate Awards Technological Innovation Joint Winners, PwC's MyMobility mobile app and MoveAssist's MAIA, the first intelligent chatbot for the global mobility sector – in the Summer 2017 issue of Relocate Magazine.For related news and features, visit our Brexit section.Access hundreds of global services and suppliers in our Online Directory

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