Traditional private equity and venture capital models often focus on short-term returns and control, discouraging entrepreneurs and limiting the growth of promising businesses. Business Growth Fund (BGF) was established to provide “patient capital” — long-term, minority investments that support entrepreneurs in scaling their businesses without forcing premature exits or imposing rigid control.
Today, BGF, the UK’s most active growth capital investor, announced a significant commitment to invest £3 billion in UK businesses over the next five years. This decisive move aims to increase investment in high-potential companies nationwide. As part of the pledge, BGF is committing at least £300 million to female-powered businesses to support more diverse leadership in the UK’s growth economy, building on its £25 million commitment to the Invest in Women Taskforce initiative.
This new commitment represents an increase from the £2.3 billion deployed between 2020 and 2024. It aims to scale support for growth and early-stage businesses, the engine of the UK economy.
Andy Gregory, CEO of BGF, said: “Despite ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty, BGF is reaffirming its mission to be the long-term partner of choice for ambitious entrepreneurs in every corner of the country. Our £3 billion commitment is about backing British business through the cycle and helping drive their success, sending a clear message that we believe in the potential of this country’s entrepreneurs, and we’re ready to go further.”
Empower ambitious businesses with the capital and support they need to grow
BGF (Business Growth Fund) was founded in 2011 to address the chronic shortage of funding available to Britain and Ireland’s small and mid-sized firms, and to inspire a generation of entrepreneurs largely overlooked by the investment community. Five of the UK’s leading banking groups — Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, NatWest (formerly RBS), and Standard Chartered — established BGF, which operates as an independent company with a well-capitalised, evergreen balance sheet of over £3 billion.
The original vision and leadership came from key figures, including Sir Nigel Rudd (first Chair) and Stephen Welton (Founder CEO), who have deep private equity and business growth backgrounds. Stephen Welton, for example, previously spent over a decade at CCMP Capital and has chaired or led several growth companies and investment initiatives.
BGF’s mission is to support a diverse portfolio of businesses in fulfilling their growth ambitions while contributing to the country’s economic resilience. Their approach helps companies scale effectively through shared values: leading well, growing sustainably, taking thoughtful steps, keeping broad minds, and going further together. BGF calls this “good growth.” The organisation is a certified UK B Corp, a member of the Diversity VC Standard, and a signatory of the UN Principles for Responsible Investment and the Investing in Women Code.
Financially, BGF’s performance continues to place it among the leading investment managers in the market, delivering top-quartile rankings for metrics used to measure returns on investment. Newly released impact data supports this commitment by highlighting BGF’s contribution across the UK. Since 2011, the BGF portfolio has delivered a combined economic impact of £7.1 billion in revenue growth, £1 billion in export growth, and created 27,000 new jobs.
Tim Rea, Co-Head of Early Stage, BGF, said: “Backing businesses from their earliest stages is essential to developing a robust and dynamic scale-up economy. This £500 million commitment allows us to double down on our efforts to support visionary founders with the capital and guidance they need to realise their ambitions.”
BGF employs approximately 180 staff across its 15 offices in the UK and Ireland, making it a regional-first investor with teams embedded in local economies. With 74% of its capital deployed outside London and the South East, BGF is uniquely positioned to address the long-standing regional capital gap throughout the UK. Initial investments range from £3 million to £30 million for growth-stage companies and £3 million to £10 million for earlier-stage companies, with significant follow-on funding available.
Behind BGF: £4.5 billion in more than 600 businesses
Since 2011, BGF has invested £4.5 billion in more than 600 businesses. It provides patient capital as a minority equity partner, follow-on funding to support further growth, and tailored value creation support from investment to exit.
Andy Gregory continued: “BGF is an investment platform built to solve a hard problem. With our platform advantage, we’ve proven we can deploy scale-up capital into a broad base of UK businesses in a commercially rigorous, regionally inclusive way. We can help companies to grow in all conditions.
“Few investors have the nationwide reach to deploy capital at the scale required to make a meaningful difference to the UK’s scaleup landscape, and this next phase is about leveraging our platform advantage to unlock even greater impact for UK plc.”
Recent investments include a £15 million investment in Nottingham-based Cronofy for product development and international expansion; a £9 million investment in Sheffield-based Phlux Technology, an infrared sensor company; and a significant multi-million-pound investment in London-based OCL Vision, a premium ophthalmology group, to fund a site rollout.
Minister for Investment Baroness Gustafsson CBE said: “BGF’s investment in our growth companies is a strong endorsement that Britain is a place to invest and do business in. I welcome this new commitment, which will boost our capital markets and female-powered businesses, helping to grow our regional economies and supporting our change plan.”
Debbie Wosskow OBE, Co-Chair, Invest in Women Taskforce: “This is a historic moment. BGF’s £300 million commitment to female-powered businesses, which builds on the work of the Invest in Women Taskforce, is one of the largest ever made in the UK. 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.”
