The Enterprise Capital Fund will provide high growth startups with access to a fund worth 40m.
Entrepreneurs in Britain will have access to a new Enterprise Capital Fund worth 40m, small business minister Margot James has announced.
The fund, backed in part by the British Business Bank, is specifically targeted to help scale up rapid growth? startups.
Speaking at the Scale-Up Institute’s regional economic growth programme, James praised the positive effect of startups on the UK economy.
‘small businesses are at the heart of our economy and the whole country benefits when they grow and create jobs for people. The government-owned British Business Bank is helping more than 48, 000 businesses with over 3.1bn of support, much of it going to those with high-growth potential, she said.
In a statement, Keith Morgan, CEO of the British Business Bank, said that the Enterprise Capital Fund would enable early-stage startups to receive the financial support required to grow.
this important new fund will enable more UK smaller businesses to get the investment and support they need to scale up successfully, he said.
Morgan is one of Business Advice’s Small Business Decision Makers of 2016, and through his role with the British Business Bank is responsible for crucial business funding initiatives such as Start Up Loans and the Angel CoFund.
The announcement of newfunding for entrepreneurs comes alongside research that suggested a decline in confidence of the government’s commitment to enterprise in the UK.
Fresh figures from the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) found that small business confidence had fallen into negative territory for the first time since 2012.
The FSB Q3 Small Business Index (SBI) showed business confidence at -2.9 the second largest year-on-year fall in the history of the SBI.
Commenting on the findings, Mike Cherry, chairman of the FSB, said that government intervention would be crucial in improving the prospects of small firms, and re-building the confidence of business owners in a post-Brexit climate.
we look to the party conferences and upcoming Autumn Statement to?green-light infrastructure projects at local and national level, to simplify the tax system and to help reduce the costs of doing business, ” he said.
A new study from global insurance firm Hiscox also revealed a collapse in confidence of small business owners in the belief that the government provides appropriate levels of support for their firms.
Just 35 per cent of those surveyed in the DNA of an Entrepreneur Report believed the government to be supportive of their business a ten per cent drop on the previous year’s findings.
