Courtesy of Young Company Finance
When we reported the results for calendar year 2014 in February, investment by members of LINC Scotland had reached an all time high. Now that the financial year figures are available, the picture is even brighter.
The chart below shows the amount invested by different parties to deals in which LINC members participated – the business angels themselves, the other private investors joining the deal (sometimes management or directors of the investee companies, and sometimes independent institutional investors such as VCs), and matched funding from the public sector (largely the Scottish Investment Bank’s Co-investment and Venture Funds).
The 108 investments included in this chart amounted to £43.2 million, in itself an 84% increase over the previous year. The amounts invested by business angels themselves showed the most dramatic increase, 76% above FY 2013/14. Investment by other private investors also showed a large increase over the previous year, but as we have stated frequently before, this fluctuates widely from year to year, usually dependent upon the number of infrequent but large ‘block-buster’ deals. Because of the way in which the SIB’s co-investment funds work, the public sector figure partially tracks the curve of the other investors, although a significant number of deals in this year’s figures did not include public sector co-investment.
And, again as we noted in the calendar year figures, this increase in investment levels is by no means restricted to follow-on investments in portfolio companies. As the second chart shows, investments in new companies increased by over 100% to a level well in excess of the previous high point in 2013.
