The finance gap is one of the five gaps outlined by The Scale-Up report. Companies looking to scale in the UK often find they are unable to access funding to match their needs.
A key challenge is that investors often have short-term goals which do not match the long-term aims of the company, and banks have historically been limited in their support of entrepreneurs.
In order to combat this trend, Barclays has launched a dedicated proposition ‘Barclays High Growth and Entrepreneurs’ which includes a dedicated team of 50 Barclays High Growth & Entrepreneur Relationship Directors from across the UK and two new dedicated funds totalling £150million to specifically help innovative companies.
In addition, the Business Growth Fund was established in 2011 backed by five of the UK’s major banking groups, and has directly invested over £400m of growth capital in more than 70 British scale-ups, with more than £200m deployed in the past 15 months.
Barclays is discussing the finance gap at the Cambridge Judge Business School and the London Stock Exchange during Global Entrepreneurship Week. Panellists will discuss why companies cannot find appropriate funding in the UK, and how the lack of local financing could negatively impact UK economic growth over a 20 year time frame.
Speakers in London include Enrico D’Angelo from Parkwalk Advisors, Chris Hodges from Business Growth Fund and Matt Cooper from Crowdcube. Speakers in Cambridge will feature David Braben from Frontier Developments, Goncalo de Vasconcelos from Syndicate Room and Peter Hiscocks from the Cambridge Judge Business School.