The Business Growth Fund (BGF) has made its first investment in a small, fast-growing business, a year after being set up.
The Business Growth Fund was set up in October last year, following recommendations from the Business Financial Taskforce – a combination of chief executives of some of the largest banks and the British Bankers’ Association (BBA) – and is designed to help Britain’s smaller and medium sized businesses.
The members of the Taskforce include Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, RBS, Standard Chartered and the BBA, who have pooled £2.5 billion to help the BGF begin investing in suitable businesses.
This week the Business Growth Fund announced its first investment in Benefex – a provider of online employee reward and benefit schemes. The BFG has invested £4.2 million of growth capital in Benefex, and will take a minority stake. Commenting on the investment, Stephen Welton, CEO of the BGF said:
“Benefex is the first of many investments that we will be making in fast growing UK businesses. It typifies the sort of business that we are interested in speaking to.
“Since our launch we have been actively out in the market talking to business owners and are now seeing a high level of deal flow. It shows a real and growing demand for a long term partner investor.”
