A roundup of today's other business news in brief

 Auctioneer and surveyor groups to merge

A single body to represent surveyors and auctioneers is expected to be formed shortly. The councils of the Society of Chartered Surveyors and the Irish Auctioneers Valuers Institute have given their backing to the plan to merge the organisations. The proposal will be voted on by 4,000 members of the two organisations on June 2nd.

Businesses run by chartered surveyors and auctioneers have been severely hit by the property crash and the credit squeeze.

Clinical trials firm raises 3m from investors

Dublin clinical trials company Venn Life Sciences has completed a $3 million (€2.24 million) fundraising round from unnamed private investors.

Venn Life Sciences, founded in 2007, provides clinical trial services to companies in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device sectors.

The company recently opened new offices in Mexico and Australia and expanded into Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands with the acquisition of Dutch contract research firm UpToYou.

Dediserve secures € 1m investment

Technology services provider Dediserve has secured a €1 million investment from technology investment group Carav Holdings. The firm, founded last year, said the investment will help fund expansion this year through acquisitions locally and in Europe. Carav Holdings is the investment vehicle of Stephen McCarron, who earlier this month sold his cloud computing and data centre services operation Hosting 365 to US firm SunGard for an undisclosed sum.

Dediserve was founded by Mr McCarron’s brother Aidan McCarron, who was general manager of an associated business, Register365.