Welcome to Beer & Partners Funding Site

The Government (HM treasury and BIS) launched a new Green Paper at the end of July “Financing a Private Sector Recovery”. The paper seeks to support a recovery, led by sustained expansion of the private sector and explores a broad range of options to support business stability and growth to enable access to a more diverse range of sources of finance. It includes a strong emphasis on increasing access to business angel finance as well as early stage VC funds and improving the environment for access to bank lending: (http://www.bis.gov.uk/Consultations/financing-private-sector-recovery).

We were disappointed by the apparent lack of emphasis and importance given to the role of Business Angels as legitimate and valuable source of finance to the SME sector. The paper puts Business Angels in the same bracket as VC’s and VCT’s - private equity. As much as Business Angels do provide a private equity source, for the purposes of this report, we feel they should be separated because:
i) Different level of finance available: VCs tend to be £5m as indicated in the report, whereas Angels can be £10k
ii) Different issues for the SME. The report shows a clear understanding of the issues around raising finance from VCs and debt from banks, but the Angel market has its own peculiarities
iii) Lending – it should be noted that Business Angels can be a good source of lending as well as equity investment.

Business Angels represent a significant proportion of funding available to early stage and start up businesses, along with being available for a certain level of expansion support. In fact, the paper mentions BVCA data showing that in 2009, 388 early stage business raised £296m, Business Angel Networks, raised £45m for 233 companies in 08/09 (with £10m raised for 40 companies by Beer & Partners alone). This is 15% of early stage funding and clearly demonstrates the importance of considering the growing Business Angels market a relevant funding source in its own right, rather than a sub section, or even worse, little brother of the VC private equity market.

We have been busy over the summer months, supplementing our countrywide team of associates and are pleased to welcome:

South East

• Anthony Fry - Guildford
• Chris Scott - Maidstone
• Steve Johnson - Southampton

North West

• Eduard Sparkes and Jeremy Salisbury - Corporate Associates based in North Wales
• Bill Caldwell - Manchester

Midlands

• Brian Rutter - Coventry

South West

• Ian Palmer - Bath

London

• Ian Furnivall - rejoined the London team after an absence of 3 years.

As you can see from their biographies on our website (links embedded in their names above) all add substantial skills and qualities to our team of associates across the UK and why we are so delighted to have them on board. We continue to recruit particularly in the Birmingham, Reading, Milton Keynes, Sheffield and Scotland areas.

Mike Weaver, Beer & Partners Limited