[7] A shortfall in funding for small and mid-sized businesses in the UK had been identified as long ago as 1931 by the Macmillan Committee.

[8] BGF was seen as a successor to the Industrial and Commercial Finance Corporation (ICFC), set up by the Bank of England in 1945 and subsequently renamed 3i.

[11] In 2017, BGF opened an office in Dublin to administer a €250 million fund to invest in small and mid-sized Irish companies.

The historian Sir Anthony Seldon has described the market segment of small and mid-sized companies in which BGF seeks to invest as “the growth economy”.

[33] Research by PwC found there were 21,400 growth economy companies in the UK in 2018, defined as fast-growing businesses that report turnover of between £2.5-100 million.

[34] BGF provides an alternative source of funding for these companies, which have traditionally relied on bank loans to finance growth.