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BGF receives Queen’s Award for Enterprise, Innovation category

BGF has received a Queen’s Award for Enterprise in the Innovation category. BGF is the first investment company to have received this honour.

The Queen’s Awards are designed to celebrate outstanding achievement by UK businesses. BGF has been recognised for offering a unique innovation, going above and beyond in its area of expertise in a truly disruptive way, and demonstrating continuous commercial success for over five years.
 
The judges highlighted BGF’s achievements in delivering an effective and scalable solution for growth capital investing in the UK through a unique combination of regional infrastructure, technology, investment structure and processes, all delivered through an unrivalled investment platform. As a result, BGF is addressing the historic and critical lack of growth capital provision to small and mid-sized companies – a long-term feature of the British economy – to grow total UK investment and deliver prosperity to ambitious, growing businesses and the wider economy. 
 
Stephen Welton, Founding CEO of BGF says: “Receiving the Queen’s Award for Enterprise is a tremendous honour and a powerful reflection of the hard work, commitment and culture which pervades BGF and our supporters. This accolade demonstrates that that innovation, particularly in relation to how growing businesses are supported, really can make a significant difference.
 
“The lack of growth capital provision on any meaningful scale, first recognised in the MacMillan Report of 1931, became the catalyst for the creation of BGF in 2011. Since then, we have pushed forward ground-breaking and innovative steps. These have included working with regulators to devise new capital treatment for long-term investment vehicles; rethinking all aspects of the standard investment process; and developing new technology for the effective deployment of capital on a large scale.”
 
The Queen’s Award judges also recognised that BGF’s model is now being studied as an exemplar by countries around the world, including Canada and Ireland, and has generated interest from policymakers looking to shape and scale the funding ecosystem in the UK using a new and more innovative approach.
 
Welton says: “We are immensely proud of the efforts we have made to fundamentally unlock a deep pool of capital and create an alternative long-term funding option for the many ambitious businesses that exist in Britain.
 
“Most importantly, we have created and nurtured a culture that places these businesses, and the founders, entrepreneurs and management teams that lead them, at the heart of investment decision-making. We are incredibly proud to be have been recognised in this year’s cohort of winners among BGF-backed Monodraught as well as the companies in our portfolio who have received the award in past years.
 
“With ongoing investment from BGF and continuing support for UK SME’s we believe the future can be bright indeed. The challenge now is to scale up further and faster from here.”

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