London, 19 June 2012 - Business Growth Fund (BGF), which was established to help the UK’s fast growing smaller and medium sized businesses, yesterday announced two investments totalling £4.4m into Springfield Healthcare Group, the largest independent provider of domiciliary care in Yorkshire and Humberside. The investments of £2.5m and £1.9m respectively were made into Springfield Homecare and Seacroft Care Village.
This follows BGF’s investments of £4 million into Primrose, a rapidly growing online retailer of garden products; and £3 million into the Cennox Plc group of companies (including ATM Parts and Mainet), which provides services to the ATM (cash machines) sector. These four investments totalling £11.4m were completed during the month of June.
“To make four investments in high quality companies so far in June is very encouraging. We are now averaging two investments per month, which will continue to rise. This highlights growing demand on the part of the businesses that we want to support and keeps us on track to achieve our mid term goal of making 40 plus investments per year with a combined initial value of about £250m.
“Equally, as our portfolio companies grow, they will need follow-on capital and BGF has been structured with this flexibility in mind. Assuming half our investee companies raise follow-on capital, this could easily and quickly add an additional £100m or so to our annual investment level.
“This level of investment will make a significant impact for small and medium companies across the country. There is clearly a real need for additional sources of funding and we can play a central role in expanding the pool of long-term capital available to growing companies. We also believe that BGF can act as one of the catalysts for growth in the economy, not only for the companies that we back but also for the wider business community within which they operate.”
