Government outlines £150m hi-tech fund
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Your support makes all the difference.The Government yesterday unveiled plans to create a state-backed venture capital fund, which it hopes will raise as much as £1bn for investment in small-cap technology companies.
Gordon Brown said the Government would invest £150m, to be matched by private sector backers, and said that the fund could be leveraged higher with private investment over the next decade.
“This fund will help build Britain’s future by investing in key sectors. It will provide crucial support for our most promising start-ups and existing small companies just when they need it most. Venture capital finance is the lifeblood of innovation and crucial to ensuring the commercialisation of the discoveries coming out of our research base. The fund will boost future UK competitiveness,” the Prime Minister said.
Plans for the fund were first announced in the Budget and the Government has come in for criticism from some sectors, particularly the biotechnology industry, which has said it has not acted quickly enough to allocate the funds.
However, the Bioindustry Association (BIA) yesterday praised the announcement: “We welcome the Government’s plan for an Innovation Fund and believe it will make a significant contribution to securing the long-term health of the life science sector in the UK, providing much needed follow-on investment to early stage companies developing innovative technologies for the patients that need them,” Clive Dix, the BIA chairman, said.
The fund is expected to be tapped by clean technology, bioscience and advanced manufacturing companies.
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