Mills & Reeve acted for venture capital fund, Low Carbon Innovation Fund (LCIF), on a series of investments totalling approximately £7 million last year.

LCIF is operated by the University of East Anglia and supported by the European Regional Development Fund. The fund makes early stage investments into small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) in the East of England that are developing low carbon processes and products. In 2014, LCIF completed a series of investments in low carbon companies, raising an aggregate of almost £7 million in SMEs in the region.

Clifford Chance advised NWS Holdings Limited (NWS) on its acquisition of a 40% stake in Goshawk Aviation for a total cash consideration of US$222.5 million. Goshawk is a joint venture with Chow Tai Fook Enterprises Limited and Investec Bank plc which is engaged in commercial aircraft leasing. It has a portfolio of 27 aircraft which are leased to various airlines across the world.

We assisted UK private equity investor Dawn Capital in an investment in Finnish growth company LeadDesk. The EUR 5.5 million investment round was led by Dawn Capital with participation from Finnish Industry Investment. This was the most significant investment of early 2015 on the Finnish startup scene. Founded in 2010, LeadDesk is a Finnish SaaS company serving the European call center industry. Over three million calls and 100,000 orders are handled by LeadDesk software each week.

Dawn Capital specialises in investments in the FinTech and B2B Software-as-a-Service sectors.

Bird & Bird has advised long standing client Farfetch (www.farfetch.com) on its $86m Series E round of investment. Farfetch is the pioneering online luxury fashion retailer, providing an online marketplace in which more than 300 of the world's best independent designer boutiques sell their products. This latest investment values the company at US$1bn.

The round was led by DST Global, an early backer of Facebook, Twitter, Airbnb and Alibaba, and supported by existing investors Vitruvian Partners and Condé Nast International.

Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP advised founders and investors of Quandoo, a Berlin-based start-up founded in 2012, on the sale of their shares in the company.

Quandoo was acquired by Japan’s Recruit Holdings for approximately 198.6 million euros in cash. Recruit initially invested in the restaurant booking platform last October, then acquiring an approx. 7% stake. With this most recent transaction, Quandoo’s founders and investors sold the remainder of their shares in the company.

Olswang has acted for software as a service (SaaS) warehouse management system provider Peoplevox on a $6 million funding round led by Index Ventures, an investor in retail and technology companies including ASOS, Farfetch, Etsy, Dropbox and Skype.

The funding round, which also includes financial backing from well-known angel investors Ben White and Jon Kamaluddin, will help Peoplevox to further its product offering, which focuses on assisting e-commerce companies to modernise their warehouse operations and will also be used to expand in London and internationally.

Clifford Chance has advised Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) and Hermes Infrastructure, on their successful bid for 40% of Eurostar. The stake  is valued at £585.1m and CDPQ and Hermes Infrastructure intend to own 30% and 10% of Eurostar respectively.

Osborne Clarke has advised Google Ventures on its series C funding into Kobalt Music. This is Google Ventures’ first investment from its new European fund.

The Osborne Clarke team was led by Corporate Partners Rob Wood and Steve Wilson assisted by Corporate Associate, Mike Freer.

A team of lawyers from Esin Attorney Partnership, a member firm of Baker & McKenzie International, advised Dogan Group on a stake sale in Hepsiburada.com, Turkey's leading e-commerce site.

The Firm advised Dogan Group on the sale of 25% of the shares in D-Market Elektronik Hizmetler Ticaret A.S. to The Abraaj Group. D-Market, owned by members of the Dogan family, operates Hepsiburada.com as well as Evmanya.com and AltinciCadde.com. The deal was signed on December 30, 2014 and closed on February 20, 2015.

Stephenson Harwood LLP is advising Woodford Investment Management LLP on the launch of Woodford Patient Capital Trust plc (the Trust), the investment manager's second fund following the highly successful launch of the CF Woodford Equity Income Fund last year. The Trust is targeting an issue of £200 million by means of a placing and offer for subscription of ordinary shares.