High-growth businesses in the Bristol area are to be offered specialist support under a scheme launched by Barclays.
Called ‘Barclays High Growth and Entrepreneurs’, the initiative is in direct response to what the bank sees as Britain’s ‘scale-up gap’, and will also help the UK compete on the global stage.
Barclays believes that by supporting UK scale-ups and their founders they will be able to grow rapidly and have the potential to create thousands of jobs.
These high-growth firms typically project annual growth of 20% plus over three years. It is estimated that this nascent sector created more than 230,000 jobs last year. 
Under Barclays High Growth & Entrepreneurs, the bank has:
- Created a dedicated team of 50 specialist relationship directors across the UK to support high-growth companies from start-ups, to scale up to IPO. The new team is in addition to the thousands of SME, corporate banking and wealth managers across the country, who will also actively seek out and refer entrepreneurs for specialist support. A further 13 specialist ‘high growth credit sanctioners’ will support the lending needs of high growth businesses.
- Set up two dedicated funds totalling £150mi to specifically help innovative companies under Barclays’ High Growth Venture Debt Fund and InnovFin finance. These funds ensure that fast-growing firms in the UK do not miss out in comparison to US counterparts.
- Trained more than 200 of its most senior leaders from Barclays Personal and Corporate Banking with Cambridge Judge Business School to better understand the financial needs of entrepreneurs.
- Committed to explore how it can potentially utilise space in Barclays premises for early stage scale-up companies to co-locate, collaborate with peers and get expert advice.
Launching the new drive in Bristol and Bath, Barclays Head of Business and Corporate Banking David Goodall, pictured, said: “It’s imperative that the financial system in the UK is able to fully back brave entrepreneurs who create jobs and unlock new advances.
“Barclays financed the world’s first steam railway in 1819, which went on to bring about the industrial revolution. By giving expert support to today’s entrepreneurs we can help the UK to win in the digital revolution. We want to be the financial partner for high-growth firms and the people behind them – giving them support across every step of their journey.”
