NatWest joins forces with BGF to raise over £80m to back British entrepreneurs

Coutts, the private banking arm of NatWest Group, and BGF, the UK and Ireland’s “most active” growth capital investor, have now raised over £80m through the UK Enterprise Fund (UKEF).

This provides the bank’s client base with access to investment opportunities in privately-owned scaleup and early-stage businesses, as part of BGF’s nationwide platform.

The fund launched in June last year with £40m of committed capital and has now been matched by a further £40m at the close of the second fundraising round. Through BGF, UKEF capital is invested into “carefully selected” scaleup businesses headquartered in the UK, providing long-term funding to support growth.

The UKEF aims to provide funding to address equity gaps across the entrepreneurial ecosystem and has been a boost to female-owned businesses with 22 per cent of the first tranche of fundraising backing women-owned businesses. This compares with the industry standard of just 1 per cent.

UKEF investors can benefit from BGF’s investment strategy of reaching a “high volume of high-quality” businesses across different growth stages, multiple sectors and all regions of the UK, offsetting concentrated risk exposure. BGF is the leading growth capital investor in the UK and exclusively takes a minority shareholding in each of the companies it backs.

It focuses on supporting investee businesses through its local investment teams based in 15 regional offices in the UK, extensive people network and strategic advice in a variety of areas, such as positive environmental, governance and social changes.

To date, UKEF has exposure in 48 BGF-backed businesses including Character.com, a children’s clothing and branded products ecommerce platform, Enhanc3d Genomics, a human genome mapping business and Reactive Technologies, a provider of critical data to the energy grid and asset operators.

One in five of these businesses has a female founder, compared to only one in 100 across the industry, whilst 23 per cent have appointed a female Chair from BGF’s network to their Board. 73 per cent of the capital invested in this cohort of companies has been deployed into businesses headquartered outside London and the South East.

Andy Gregory, CEO of BGF, commented: “By its nature, UKEF is an innovative and highly differentiated offering in equity investing.

“Through UKEF, Coutts’ clients are able to increase their exposure in privately held UK companies, whilst benefiting from the due diligence, robust governance and skilled investment expertise that comes with the BGF platform.

“Whilst we are acutely aware of the current macro-economic environment for businesses and investors, BGF’s long-term model provides us with the economic means and mindset to view investments and exits from a longer-term horizon, which has proved highly attractive to UKEF investors and indeed to the diverse set of scaleup companies that we continue to back.”

By Matthew Neville – Correspondent, Bdaily

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