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Beechbrook Capital achieves a first close on its third UK SME Credit fund

Press release 09 December 2021

Beechbrook Capital has achieved a first close on its third UK SME focused fund, raising £120m, including the fund and separately managed account commitments.

This fund has attracted repeat and new institutional investors, including British Business Investments, the Greater London Authority Strategic Reserve and the Greater Manchester Pension Fund.

British Business Investments, a wholly-owned commercial subsidiary of British Business Bank plc, has made a £30 million commitment to the fund, following previous commitments in 2017 and 2019 to Beechbrook’s two earlier SME Credit funds.

Beechbrook’s UK strategy supports UK small and medium-sized businesses with a turnover of between £10 and £100 million and EBITDA of £1 million and above. It provides mainly senior secured loans to non-private equity-backed companies, to support acquisitions, buy-outs, shareholder re-alignments, re-financings and general expansion plans.

We are pleased to announce the first close of our third generation UK SME fund and are grateful for the support we have received from both existing and new investors. Given the uncertainty created by the pandemic, providing flexible financing for SMEs is more crucial than ever. There remains an acute shortage of development and expansion finance available in the UK lower mid-market and we will continue to play our part in helping fund growth in this important segment of the market. Paul Shea Managing Partner, Beechbrook
This £30m commitment from British Business Investments to Beechbrook Capital’s third UK SME Credit fund will help growing smaller businesses across the UK to access the additional investment capital they need to scale up. The purpose of British Business Investments is to promote greater diversity in the supply of finance, and this compliments Beechbrook’s own approach of providing a combination of debt and equity finance to established businesses seeking growth capital. Judith Hartley CEO, British Business Investments

First close for Beechbrook’s third SME fund follows the completion of the two final investments, CurrentBody and Complete Detection Systems (CDS), in the second SME Credit fund, which raised £130m and closed in March 2020.

Headquartered in Cheshire, CurrentBody is a leading home use beauty device ecommerce retailer. Beechbrook provided a flexible debt and equity solution to support the purchase of a majority stake in the business by ecommerce specialist investor and growth agency, eComplete.

Complete Detection Systems (CDS), is a Leicester-based specialist in the fire protection market. The management team is pursuing a buy and build strategy to expand across the UK and diversify their offering into other compliance areas such as water safety and electrical systems. Beechbrook has provided a debt and equity solution to support this strategy as the company makes further acquisitions.

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Notes to editors

About Beechbrook Capital

Beechbrook Capital, a specialist direct lender founded in 2008, invests in SMEs across a range of industries in the UK and Europe. To date, it has raised more than €1bn through seven funds and has invested in 83 companies in the European lower mid-market.

Beechbrook’s UK SME Credit funds provide finance to predominantly non private equity-backed SMEs in the UK, investing between £5m and £15m per transaction.

In addition to the UK SME funds, the firm’s three private debt funds support northern European private equity-backed companies with a typical enterprise value of €10 million to €100 million, investing between €5m and €25m per transaction.

The Beechbrook team consists of 20 plus investment professionals located in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Frankfurt, Cork and Dublin.

About British Business Investments

British Business Investments is the trading name of British Business Investments Ltd, a wholly-owned commercial subsidiary of British Business Bank plc, the UK government’s economic development bank. It forms part of the British Business Bank’s commercial arm.

British Business Investments aims to earn a commercial return by investing – through finance providers – in smaller businesses and small mid-caps, pursuing investments on a fully commercial basis without receiving any economic advantage from the government. Find out more at bbinv.co.uk.

British Business Bank plc and its subsidiary entities are not banking institutions and do not operate as such.  They are not authorised or regulated by the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) or the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). A complete legal structure chart for British Business Bank plc and its subsidiaries can be found on the British Business Bank plc website.

The funding from British Business Investments to Beechbrook Capital does not amount to any endorsement or warranty from British Business Investments, the British Business Bank plc, or the government of the UK.

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