BGF (Business Growth Fund) has expanded its South West and Thames Valley investment team with the appointment of Alex Snodgrass (pictured), who joins BGF’s regional team of 10 people responsible for identifying investment opportunities and managing the deal process from origination through to completion.
Snodgrass has more than 10 years’ experience backing ambitious entrepreneurs and management teams, and joins BGF from the investment team at Lloyds Development Capital. Before that, Alex worked at Bank of Scotland Integrated Finance in its investment and portfolio management teams.
BGF is expanding the size of its team in the South West following a busy 2015 which saw more than GBP40 million invested into entrepreneurial businesses in the region. As part of its continued expansion, BGF is opening a new office in Reading, in addition to its Bristol base. He will be based primarily in the Reading office alongside James Austin, Greg Norman and Sarah Ledwidge.
Since 2011, BGF has invested more than GBP100 million into 16 companies across the South West and Thames Valley including cloud infrastructure provider Skyscape, branded audio and telco products supplier Bullitt, luxury kitchens designer and manufacturer Canburg (Smallbone of Devizes and Mark Wilkinson) and Trunki, the maker of ride-on suitcases and children’s travel products.
Across the UK, BGF has a team of 70 investors who, in addition to identifying investment opportunities, provide support either as board members or observers in the companies they back.
Paul Oldham, BGF’s regional director for the South West, says: “We are delighted that Alex has joined BGF to further strengthen our growing team covering the Thames Valley, Hampshire, Dorset and Oxfordshire. We have had great success in those counties and are keen to support many more businesses there and across the South. Our recruitment will continue and we would like to hire a junior investor into our Reading team as soon as possible.”
Snodgrass adds: “The growing portfolio of high-quality businesses across the UK as well as the Thames Valley speaks to the attractiveness of BGF’s non-controlling, long-term equity offer to entrepreneurs. I am pleased to be joining such a strong team and look forward to working with a large number of ambitious companies across the region.”
