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Walbrook PR are pleased to announce its appointment as Financial PR advisor to Armscote Investment Company Plc, to manage communications with the financial media, research analysts and investors surrounding its acquisition of Venn Life Sciences Ltd, Placing to raise £2.5m and admission to AIM.

Following shareholder approval the enlarged group with be renamed Venn Life Sciences Holdings Plc and the shares are expected to begin trading on AIM on 26 November 2012.

Venn Life Sciences is a Clinical Research Organisation ("CRO") providing a suite of consulting and clinical trial services to pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device organisations and having operations in France, the Netherlands and Ireland, with a branch office in Switzerland. The Venn Group also includes a Clinical Resourcing business based in France. Venn's near term objective is the expansion of its coverage to other European countries through strategic acquisitions thus combining a number of small European CROs to build a mid-sized CRO focused on the European market, offering clients a full service, multi-centred capability in Phase II-IV trials and across a range of principal disease areas.

The proposed Board for Venn Life Sciences brings together a number of Directors with a track record of acquiring, integrating and growing businesses in the Life Sciences sector. Tony Richardson, proposed CEO, co-founded Altracel Pharmaceuticals where he was CEO when it listed on AIM in 2001 and was sold in 2008 for over $40m. David Evans, Proposed Chairman, was Chairman of AIM listed BBI Holdings which grew from a value of £4m to a value of £84m in 2007, when BBI was sold to Inverness Medical Innovations Inc. David is also Chairman of EKF Diagnostics Holdings plc, an existing Walbrook client, and will be joined on the Venn board of the enlarged group by Paul Foulger and Adam Reynolds, who are also Directors of EKF Diagnostics Holdings plc.

Paul McManus, Director of Walbrook PR, said: "We are very pleased to work with the Venn team, having worked closely with many of them over the last few years on EKF Diagnostic Holdings plc. We look forward to increasing Venn's profile within the UK capital markets, particularly as it executes its strategy of building a mid-sized pan-European CRO business through targeted acquisitions."