January 12. 2022

• Despite concerns from significant shareholders, including activist investor Elliott Investment Management, that the conditions undervalue the pharmaceutical company, Clinigen Group Plc intention to sell itself to Triton Investment Management has gained support from a renowned shareholder advisory group.
• 2TM, a Brazilian startup backed by Softbank and the operator of Latin America’s largest crypto exchange, Mercado Bitcoin, has announced that it will acquire a majority stake in Cripto Loja, a crypto exchange based in Lisbon.
• Velodyne Lidar, Inc. (Nasdaq: VLDR, VLDRW) recently announced that QinetiQ Inc. (QinetiQ), a prominent firm in the military and security sectors, signed a five-year sales deal for its lidar sensors. QinetiQ has chosen Velodyne sensors to provide perception and mapping capabilities to its Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs).
• UNITEX Corporation, a digital information industry pioneer, has announced that their famous USB LTO tape drive will be available with LTO-9 technology in spring 2022. It contains a USB port, 18TB of native storage, 45TB of compressed storage (at 2.5:1), and a data transfer rate of 300MB/second.
• Novo has acquired $90 million in Series B investment for its phenomenally simple small business banking platform. The investment round was led by Stripes, Crosslink Capital, Valar Ventures, Rainfall Ventures, and BoxGroup.
• As corporate travel recovers, European travel management company TravelPerk has secured $115 million to grow its business working with small and medium enterprises. General Catalyst Partners, Kinnevik AB, was the lead investor in the round. In addition, Gillian Tans, the former CEO of Booking.com, and Joel Cutler, the Managing Director of General Catalyst, will join the board.
• Panther Protocol and ShapeShift, a well-known cryptocurrency exchange, have partnered together. Both teams will focus on research, privacy technology development, and letting ShapeShift users participate in Panther’s staking plan and management.
• Luxor Technology is introducing a new bitcoin mining machine marketplace for buying and selling high-performance bitcoin miners. Luxor Technology is a computing power firm that is constructing blockchain infrastructure. According to the industry, the pricing of mining computers on primary and secondary markets varies based on macroeconomic conditions, geography, and market cycles.
• Roche has invested $290 million in Freenome, bringing its total funding to more than $1.1 billion since its inception in 2014. Freenome is a biotech business that has created a comprehensive multi-omics platform for early cancer detection using a typical blood sample.
• DHL Express, a courier services firm, announced that it had launched the Middle East’s largest robotic sorting center in central Israel. The business claims it would not have been able to keep up with the speed of orders in Israel if it had not invested 250 million shekels ($80 million) at the plant near Ben Gurion Airport.

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PWI Daily January 11, 2022
PWI Daily January 10, 2022