EOS Advisory LLP (“Eos”), the St Andrews-based impact investment firm, has grown its headcount to 11 with a number of executive appointments this year aimed at supporting the firm’s growing portfolio which now totals 18 companies.
Anne Muir joins the firm as Director of Portfolio from the University of Dundee where she was Deputy Director, Research & Innovation Services, and Head of IP and Commercialisation, and Rob Halliday joins Eos as Investment Director from SIS Ventures where he was a Senior Investment Manager. They join recent recruits Jill Arnold, the former Head of SIS Ventures who is now Investment Relationship Director at Eos, and Calum Keddie, Investment Executive at Eos, who began his career on Rolls-Royce’s commercial graduate programme before taking up a financial analyst role with Dutch bank ING.
Andrew McNeill, Eos’s Managing Partner, said: “The growth of the portfolio and the overall quantum of our investments means we needed to build more capacity and expertise. We couldn’t be happier to have Anne and Rob join Jill and Calum on the executive team. Together with our advisory team, we now have the right mix to guide us and our portfolio companies through the next phase of growth.”
Eos has also completed the third annual close of the Eos Innovation Fund (EIS), which is the cornerstone of the firm’s investment model, enabling Eos to invest £15-20 million per annum at the seed stage. Eos, which invests into predominantly Scottish science and technology companies that are addressing key global issues, recently returned a double-digit return to investors from portfolio company ENOUGH (previously 3F Bio), the first of two exits during Q4.
Mark Beaumont, Partner at Eos, said: “The Eos Innovation Fund has allowed us to work with individual investors, companies, and family offices in a way we couldn’t when we only operated as an angel group. The concept of an annual subscription gives us far greater certainty in access to capital and allows our investors to have a long term stake in a portfolio of highly impactful and high potential companies, all focused on areas of sustainability and quality of life.”
In June, Eos announced that British Business Investments, a wholly-owned commercial subsidiary of the British Business Bank, will commit up to £10 million to Eos via its Regional Angels Programme. The funding will be allocated to invest alongside Eos’s Angel Syndicate and EIS Innovation Fund.
Eos has also provided support to Ana Stewart, a Partner with Eos, around Pathways Forward. Pathways Forward was launched in September, following the publication of the Scottish Government-commissioned Pathways: A New Approach for Women in Entrepreneurship report in February. The report, co-authored by Mark Logan, the Scottish Government’s chief entrepreneurial adviser, is aimed at achieving gender equality in entrepreneurship.
Eos’s portfolio includes Bioliberty, Carcinotech, Chromacity, Cumulus Oncology, Dxcover, Nth, Green Bioactives, GM Flow, ILC Therapeutics, Laverock Therapeutics, Naturbeads, Novosound, Penrhos Bio, RAB Microfluidics, Rooser, Waire Health, Wobble Genomics, and Chemify.
