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BGF [2022]
Finance and Risk Capital
Impact for scaleups
500+
Companies backed
£3.5bn
Investment made
£1bn
of follow-on funding
72%
of funding invested outside London and the South East
Key sectors
Since its formation in 2011, BGF has backed more than 500 businesses in the UK and Ireland. The investor supports a range of growing companies – early stage, growth stage and quoted – across every region and sector of the economy. On average, it invests in one company a week.
BGF makes long-term equity investments in return for a minority, non-controlling stake in the companies it backs. Initial investments are between £1m-£20m and can be followed by significant follow-on funding. The ScaleUp Institute’s Female Founder Index has identified BGF as the most active institutional investor in women-led businesses for the past three years.
The company has 16 offices in the UK and Ireland. Roughly three-quarters (72%) of its investments are into companies based outside London and the South East. Scaleups it has backed include payments infrastructure company Paddle and recipe box business Gousto, both of which are unicorns valued at more than $1 billion. BGF has established a clean growth advisory board led by Baroness Brown, chair of the Carbon Trust, to accelerate efforts to invest in companies supporting the energy transition.
BGF has an internal team of nearly 200 combined with a 6,000-strong network of business leaders, sector experts and non-executive directors called the Talent Network. Part of BGF’s model is to connect portfolio companies with members of the Talent Network, who serve as non-executive directors as well as provide ad hoc consultancy services.
The BGF model is internationalising. In 2018, Canada launched its own BGF while Australia did the same in 2020. Both are backed by a combination of banks and major investors.
In September 2022, BGF led the second annual Scaleup Week, a week-long series of virtual events, in partnership with the ScaleUp Institute.
