Business

Cash boost for SME funder

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FUND set up to support small and medium businesses has almost doubled in size following a £5.3 million boost from Invest Northern Ireland.

It makes the pot available to the Co-Investment Fund £12.5m including money from private investors such as business angels or their syndicates.

Co-Fund NI provides up to 50 per cent of equity investment alongside 50 per cent from private investors on a deal-by-deal basis.

The top up will increase the overall availability of equity investment over the lifetime of the fund from £16m to £28m.

It will allow Clarendon Fund Managers, which runs the scheme, to target 14 investments per year and to allow individual company investment of up to £1m.

Clarendon finance director Neil Simms said: "It has been an exceptional year for Co-Fund NI with the top up in funding coming at the end of a busy 12 month period when we invested £2.75m alongside £3.45m of private investment over 18 investment rounds. "This means we have been the most active local source of equity funding in the last year with a great pipeline of investment opportunities coming into 2015. "Given this backdrop the increase in funding is very timely, and as we expected, Brian has hit the ground running having led our participation in two of the last three investments made into new portfolio companies."

Three companies that have recently benefited from the uplift in Co-Fund NI's funding are Autism Biotech, Komodo Learning and Titan IC Systems. Invest NI's director of corporate finance William McCulla said the fund was "a key component of Invest Northern Ireland's wider access to finance strategy, with the objective of stimulating the availability of risk capital to SMEs across Northern Ireland". "As Co-Fund NI has successfully demonstrated, business angels and indeed other sources of private investment, are playing an increasingly important role in the development of young high potential companies that are seeking equity finance to pursue growth in export markets. The uplift in funding will allow Co-Fund NI to continue matching private sector investors and stimulate investment activity, and we are pleased that the local delivery team is expanding with Brian joining the Clarendon team."

To support Co-Fund NI's increased portfolio size and rate of investment, Clarendon has appointed Brian Cummings as an investment director.

He added: "To date Co-Fund NI has invested £7.1m in 26 portfolio companies alongside £10.1m match funding from private investors, and has formed strong working relationships with a majority of both the portfolio companies and our private co-investors. I have been pleasantly surprised with the strength of the existing portfolio, sourced alongside our co-investment partners, which should translate into economic and employment growth for the region."