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Shoosmiths' three deals in 10 days for Octopus

21 September 2009

Corporate specialists from national law firm Shoosmiths have advised Octopus Ventures Limited (Octopus) on a hat-trick of deals in just 10 days.

The deals were led by corporate partner Alastair Peet, with support from solicitor John Finnemore.

£1.3m was invested in Getoptics Group Limited, a company that has encouraged a number of optical retailers to join forces online to create a one-stop shop for online glasses, contact lenses and accessories.

A second investment of £1.3m was in True Knowledge Limited, which has developed an internet search engine allowing users to ask direct questions and receive direct responses, rather than lists of internet hits.

The third deal was a £200,000 investment in The Key Revolution Limited, a company enabling nomadic computer users access to documents on their personal computer from any computer terminal in the world.

Peet said: "All three deals were made more complex due to the significant time constraints that we had to accommodate.

"We helped to put a fairly complicated, four tiered corporate structure together for The Getoptics investment which had to comply with the official regulations of Venture Capital Trusts and the Enterprise Investment Scheme. A considerable amount of due diligence was also involved.

"It was essential that the work we completed on the other two deals was as swift as possible to allow the additional funding to flow within the given deadlines."

Alliott Cole, investment manager at Octopus, said: "Shoosmiths play an invaluable role on our transactions.

"Not only do they provide practical relevant legal solutions to the commercial problems we face but they also manage our transactions efficiently and speedily.

"This hands-on and proactive approach allowed Octopus to complete three very different types of funding in a very short period of time."

Octopus Ventures, a subsidiary of Octopus Investments, is a venture capital company that focuses on identifying early-stage business opportunities that show significant potential for explosive growth.

In the past ten years, the Octopus Ventures team has invested over £38m into 35 companies and generated a realised return of 3.5x cash on cash (equivalent to 49% IRR). Across the entire portfolio (including those investments not yet realised), Octopus Ventures' IRR is 20% (IPEVCG guidelines 31st December 2008). 

For further information please contact:
Name: Sophie Llewhelin
Phone: 08700 864127
Email: sophie.llewhelin@shoosmiths.co.uk

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