The British Business Bank announced that it co-invested more than £250 million into the UK’s scale-up firms. This latest capital injection has been channeled into 33 UK tech and life science firms, more than half of which are described as being university spinouts. These firms have secured a total in excess of £2 billion, indicating that the Bank is crowding in investment into the United Kingdom’s high-potential scale ups.
The British Business Bank has also recently expanded its direct investing team to 13 professionals as the Bank gears up to significantly increase its investment activity into UK scale ups. Recently, the Bank announced that it has increased the amount that it would invest directly into UK firms that seem to be at the forefront of driving ad advancements and growth from £15 million to £60 million.
Additionally, the Bank is working on the introduction of the British Growth Partnership, which aims to channel external institutional capital into the UK’s high potential firms. The British Growth Partnership’s inaugural fund will reportedly aim to strategically invest into UK growth stage firms, tapping into the Bank’s network and existing pipeline. Aegon UK, NatWest Cushon, and London CIV confirmed their intention to work with the British Growth Partnership.
Leandros Kalisperas, Chief Investment Officer at British Business Bank, said that the Bank’s co-investing serves an important role in offering scale up capital, however, they want to take this further.
Ian Connatty, Managing Partner, British Growth Partnership, said that
the British Growth Partnership should provide pension funds access to the Bank’s live pipeline of scale up initiatives.
In addition to this, the British Business Bank also recently released its latest Nations and Regions Tracker, which finds that use of external finance remained stable in 2024, after a strong uptick back in 2023.
The report further revealed that the proportion of smaller businesses open to seeking external financing options to grow increased by a considerable 5 percentage points (to around 38%) from the past financial year. But a cautious approach still prevails, with 19% of businesses that were potentially open to considering finance in order to grow thinking it could be challenging to secure it.
External finance use among SMBs saw a modest decline in 2024 (-1 percentage point) to 45%, which is said to be consistent with a trend of stabilisation since the recovery (10 percentage point increase) in 2023.
External finance across half of the United Kingdom’s Nations and regions was fairly stable or increased “marginally,” with Northern Ireland claiming the largest number of smaller businesses using external finance at 52%.