Business Briefs - June 9

Scottish tennis star Andy Murray has joined the advisory board of London-based equity crowd-funder Seedrs.

The company said Murray would provide advice to the firm with respect to “businesses working in the health, sport and wearable technology spaces”.

It added: “Andy will not be offering advice to individual investors or recommending specific campaigns.

“He will also be investing regularly in start-ups and other early- stage businesses through Seedrs, and helping Seedrs to grow its brand in the UK and internationally.”

Murray said: “I’ve always been interested in investment, and being able to get involved in an innovative way to help support British start-ups really appealed to me.”

Brewdog buys US site for first overseas brewery

Aberdeenshire-based craft beer maker Brewdog has secured a site in Columbus, Ohio, to build its first brewery outside of Scotland.

The development was announced at the craft beer firm’s annual general meeting at the Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre, which attracted an audience of 6,000.

The capacity of the new brewery, a key part of its strategy to drive sales in the US, has still to be decided.

Shareholders at the AGM also heard BrewDog has raised £6.2 million in its latest crowdfunding drive, through which oit is aiming to raise £25m.

It is the fourth in its series of Equity for Punks campaigns which have so far drummed up more than 24,500 investors.

KPMG backs Scottish Festival of Entrepreneurship

Global accounting giant KPMG has thrown its weight behind the first Scottish Festival of Entrepreneurship as it seeks to strengthen its presence in the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) arena.

The “big four” firm said the event, part of the Scottish Business Awards to be held in November, was an “ideal platform” to recognise the achievements of Scotland’s SMES.

KPMG’S head of enterprise in Scotland, Phil Charles, said: “it’s important for us to foster growth in the sector to make it as easy as possible for companies to scale up – making that all-important transition from ‘S’ to ‘M’ and beyond.”

HR Firm hires new MD

Aberdeen human resources ( HR) firm Hunter Adams announced yesterday that its owner and founder, Dean Hunter, has handed over the reins to new managing director Leigh Scott.

The firm said Mr Hunter would continue to play a key role, focusing on the company’s strategy for UK growth.

Miss Stott joined the firm in 2011 from Wood Group PSN, where she was HR manager for international operations.

Iomart buys SystemsUp in £9m cash deal

Glasgow-based cloud computing company Iomart has bought London-based sector consultancy SystemsUp in an intitial £9m cash deal.

The with the remainder of the acquisition price will be based on performance over the year to March 2016.

This could be worth between £1m and £3.5m.

SystemsUp advises clients on how best to use cloud computing and is a partner to Google, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft.

In the year to March, it had revenue of £4m and doubled profits from the previous year, to £1.5m.