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Fund profile Creative England

Creative England has launched a fund to help growing businesses in the £100bn turnover sector. Marc Mullen speaks to its CEO, Caroline Norbury MBE about its history and the future

Corporate Financier article image In October 2019, Creative England (CE) launched its £24m scale-up finance fund, Creative Growth Finance. The fund is targeting businesses within the creative industries, a sector that contributed £111.7bn GVA to the UK economy and grew by 7.4% in 2017-18, according to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport – compared with the country’s overall expansion of 1.4%. A survey by CE found that 75% of SMEs are predicted to grow over the next 12 months. It also revealed that 72% of SMEs in the creative industries suffered from a lack of growth capital. This new fund is the first of its kind to specifically target the creative sector and is backed by ethical lender Triodos Bank.

“The target businesses are post-revenue, IP-rich SMEs that require finance to support further growth. It is not to fund projects,” explains CE’s CEO, Caroline Norbury MBE. “Creative businesses include those involved in film, television, advertising, marketing, music, publishing, design and fashion; companies must be at least two years old, with turnover of no less than £300,000. The aim is to find management teams capable of taking the business to the next level, funded by debt, and not looking to give away large parts of their business too quickly.”