Today in European Tech: Workday buys Peakon for ~$700 million in cash, LendInvest secures £500 million investment, and more

Today in European Tech: Workday buys Peakon for ~$700 million in cash, LendInvest secures £500 million investment, and more

Hello! Below, you can find out what happened today in European Tech.

But before you do: are you, or do you know someone, who can help us keep track of these things? We're hiring a tech journalist/news editor to expand our team and coverage.

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Deals

- HR and finance software provider Workday has acquired Denmark-based SaaS company and ’employee success platform’ provider Peakon for roughly $700 million in cash.

- UK-based property financing and investment platform LendInvest has secured a £500 million investment from JP Morgan. The fresh cash will be used for LendInvest’s future mortgage originations and comes after LendInvest sold a £125 million mortgage portfolio to JP Morgan in September of last year.

- Sber, Russia’s state-controlled financial and tech giant has announced a new partnership to assert itself in the Russian e-commerce space. It has signed a “memorandum of intent” with M.Video-Eldorado Group to “join hands in developing the marketplace Goods.ru.” To these ends, Sber intends to invest some 30 billion rubles ($392 million at the current exchange rate) and to buy out an additional stake from M.Video-Eldorado Group for 4 billion rubles ($52 million).

- A startup out of Germany called the Berlin Brands Group has announced that it plans to invest €250 million to buy up smaller, direct-to-consumer businesses and bring them into its fold.

- Milan-based startup Scalapay has landed a whopping €40 million seed round. The investment was led by Fasanara Capital. The platform allows e-commerce merchants to offer buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) options to their customers.

- A Finnish startup called Flowhaven has closed on $16 million in Series A funding, to help brands manage their licensing partnerships, including the account management aspects, the individual product information, the financial information, and more.

- Airtame, a Danish startup that’s created a wireless screen sharing device for schools and businesses, has secured $6 million to expand its platform internationally.

- We also tracked a large number of (other) European tech funding rounds and M&A transactions, all of which we are putting in a handy list for you on Friday afternoon in our weekly roundup newsletter (note: the full list is for paying customers only). Also check out our European tech news section for ongoing coverage.

Worth Reading/Knowing

- It’s IPO time! Here are 30+ European tech companies most likely to go public this year.

- Just days after its management shakeup, Berlin-based digital bank N26 today said it has reached the 7 million customer milestone. The bank also revealed that its monthly transaction volumes are now over €5.5 billion, and plans to hire for 200 new product and tech roles in 2021.

- Over in the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is investigating the completed acquisition of Giphy by Facebook.

- As part of a wider bid to clamp down on harmful content on the internet, the European Commission has urged major digital platforms to take measures to de-monetise disinformation online.

- Included VC is launching Fellowship II, a global nine-month, fully funded Fellowship for individuals from diverse backgrounds looking to enter the VC ecosystem. Ten funds are backing the programme, including Microsoft’s M12, Santander’s Mouro Capital and Seedcamp, and HSBC has joined, as well.

- The Council of Europe has called for strict rules to avoid the significant risks to privacy and data protection posed by the increasing use of facial recognition technologies.

- Crowdcube and Seedrs have published some lengthy statements in response to the CMA's probe into their merger.

- E-commerce in Germany was worth 83.3 billion euros in 2020.

- Life after Brexit: As UK starts new research partnership with EU there are many wrinkles to iron out.

- The European charter for robots and humans working together has been officially released by the European Engineering Industries Association (EUnited). The document defines 10 focus areas to shape the future of work.

- Three pioneering R&D green aerospace projects have been backed by a total of £85 million in funding. Half of the investment is from the UK government, delivered through its ATI Programme, and has been matched by industry.

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