BGF has pledged £200 million to Scottish businesses as part of a £3 billion UK-wide commitment to support high-potential companies over the next five years.
The investment firm said this new capital will be deployed across sectors to accelerate economic growth and support entrepreneurs in Scotland, with the company adopting a ‘regional-first’ approach, which it claims is designed to address disparities in access to capital across the UK.
This latest investment builds on the £391 million BGF has already invested in Scotland since 2011, which includes the likes of £15 million in funding for Aberdeen-based Sulmara, as well an £8 million investment in Edinburgh luxury brand Strathberry.
“Scotland has long been recognised for its innovation and entrepreneurial energy,” said Paddy Graham, regional partner for Scotland and Northern Ireland at BGF.
“Our new £200 million commitment builds on a strong foundation and is focused on unlocking even more opportunities for Scottish scale-ups to thrive.”
As part of the broader £3 billion package, BGF will also commit at least £300 million to female-powered businesses across the UK, one of the largest initiatives of its kind following an earlier £25 million pledge to the Invest in Women Taskforce (IWT), which helped unlock over £250 million in 2023.
This will form part of the Partner Programme’s investments, which sits alongside the Women Backing Women Fund of Fund, and take the IWT’s total funding pool to over half a billion pounds.
“This is a historic moment,” said Debbie Wosskow, co-chair of the Invest in Women Taskforce.
“It marks a turning point in how we back women-led enterprise and is exactly the kind of action that can start to reshape our business landscape for the better.”
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BGF said that since 2011, its portfolio had delivered a combined economic impact of £7.1 billion in revenue growth and £1 billion in export growth, and created 27,000 new jobs across the UK and Ireland.
The firm claims teams spread across fifteen cities, with 74% of its capital deployed outside London and the South East, which BGF said makes it uniquely suited to tackling capital gaps around the country.
“BGF is an investment platform built to solve a hard problem,” said Andy Gregory, CEO of BGF.
“Few investors have the nationwide reach to deploy capital at the scale required to make a meaningful difference to the UK’s scale-up landscape, and this next phase is about leveraging our platform advantage to unlock even greater impact for UK plc.”
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