In a counter cyclical achievement, investors from the Beer & Partners angel community attained up to 100 per cent pa returns on two UK companies – one a London poker club and the other a Cambridge MedTech play.

If these six angels sold at the flotation price, they have made a profit of 43 per cent on their original investment in less than five months – 100 per cent pa.

Although angels tend to invest long‐term, this project provided a quick, solid return to investors in a very short space of time.

Investors introduced through Beer saw a return of 83 per cent on their investment into Fox Poker Club over 17 months. The club, which opened in September 2010 after securing fundraising of around £1m, is London’s only dedicated poker club with a full UK casino license. Genting Casinos recently acquired the business for an undisclosed sum.

Life Sciences is an area going from strength to strength within the angel community according to Beer associate Lawrence Fenelon – the driving force behind the fund‐raising for Sphere Medical – a company attracting a great deal of attention in the Life Sciences world.

Sphere raised £14m from a share placing in association with its AIM float valuing the company at £34.05m. The company is developing a revolutionary new real‐time system for monitoring blood gas levels (oxygen, carbon dioxide) and other parameters in critically ill patients.

Simon Heywood, Beer’s London-based Life Sciences associate, says that investors may be attracted to the sector with hopeful expectations of a “less volatile investment future.”

Share prices also held up well during the recession among good quality healthcare businesses. He adds that this is somewhat logical, indicating the unavoidable truth that “people will always want and need treatment when sick.”

Life Sciences is therefore an area unaffected by recession, similar to the believed immunity of the gambling industry. Dwight Makins, Fox Poker’s Beer associate, adds that it is “usually easier to make money in the ownership of gaming companies than from the games they offer.

“The increase in social network gaming for low stakes and prizes will give more investment opportunities in the coming years, but that will come with increased risk as the popularity of the games offered will wax and wane.”

Bucking the trend of economic misery currently sweeping the globe, Beer is reporting signs of a pickup in new capital with investment levels at higher levels than in any time over the last 12 months.

• PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS: Simon Heywood