Covid-19: HM Treasury Support for Ventures 

Many of the investees within our funds are still within their start up or scale up phases and, being pre-profit, will struggle to access the pandemic crisis relief packages already put in place by Chancellor Rishi Sunak.  Many will not want to furlough their small teams of workers while fixed costs continue to eat away at their tightly-managed cash reserves, but all of them have raised private investment in recent years.

 In May, companies which have raised at least £250,000 in the past 5 years may be eligible to have a new fundraising round of between £125,000 and £5m matched by the Government through a convertible loan.  A £250m “Future Fund” has been made available for this, with a further £550m added to the loan and grant scheme already available to companies undertaking research and development.

 As a shareholder in hundreds of early stage, high growth businesses, we will, of course, be supporting our investees as they access Government support through these various schemes. 

For more information, please see: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/future-fund