Supporting PE backed businesses across the UK
Recent research by EY on behalf of the British Private Equity & Venture Capital Association (BVCA) looked at the contribution of PE and VC backed businesses to the UK economy in 2021. In total these businesses employ 1.9 million people and were responsible for £102 billion of economic activity, which represents 5% of the UK’s total GDP.
Looking at the economic activity by sector and region shows how diverse and widely dispersed these businesses are.
Sector Diversity
The table above aligns with our experience of funding PE backed businesses across many different sectors, from providing growth capital to Piper backed restaurant chain Flat Iron to funding the acquisition of a premium mountain biking company Silverfish by Connection Capital.
Regional spread
The regional breakdown shows that 56% of jobs in PE and VC backed businesses are in regions outside London & the South East. This supports our strategy of building out our team of regional PE experts.
To keep up with the increasing demand to fund sponsor backed transactions we have continued to expand our team. In January 2022 we appointed Neil Patel as Senior Director, Sponsors to support PE backed businesses in London and the South East. In March, Michelle Heptinstall joined our newly opened Manchester office as Director, Business Development, Sponsors to cover PE owned businesses in the North & Midlands.
Both have many years’ experience in structured finance; before joining ThinCats, Neil was Director of Structured Finance and Financial sponsors at Santander while Michelle was previously Director, Acquisition Finance at Virgin Money.
Since establishing our specialist private equity team in 2020, we have provided more than £150 million of funding to portfolio businesses owned by over 20 different PE investors across multiple sectors in the lower mid-market. To find out more about our specialist PE funding team and recent sponsor backed transactions that we have funded, click here https://www.thincats.com/business-funding/specialist-lending/funding-for-private-equity
You can read the full EY report at https://www.bvca.co.uk/Portals/0/Documents/Research/2022%20Reports/EY-BVCA-Economic-Contribution-Report-2022.pdf
