British Business Bank commits £2.3bn in smaller business finance in 2023/24 – The Intermediary

British Business Bank committed a record £2.3bn in smaller business finance to the market in 2023/24, but reported unrealised loss due to short-term fall in valuations.

These figures were released as part of the bank’s full year results, which also revealed that it provided over £777m worth of debt commitments, surpassing its target of £713m.

It also provided £1,527m in equity commitments and £1,782m worth of gross deployment outside of London.

In addition, the bank published its first ‘Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures’ (TCFD) and undertook first submissions under both the Principles of Responsible Investment (PRI) and the UN Global Compact (UNGC) within the 2023/24 financial year, meeting its target of delivering required sustainability reporting.

Louis Taylor, CEO of British Business Bank, said: “In the last year, the British Business Bank has performed above expectations against a backdrop of challenging market conditions, making funded commitments of £2.3bn across our programmes.

“The impact of the activities we carried out in 2023 is expected to be the creation of 39,400 additional jobs and £8.4bn of gross value added (GVA) over the life of the finance.”

He continued: “As suggested last year, the continuing challenging market for investments has resulted in a loss of £122m for 2023/24.

“However, this is largely an unrealised loss, reflecting short-term falls in the book valuation of long-term investments, rather than actual cash losses.

“Significantly, valuations remain 1.35 times our original cost, and we would expect them to rise further over their five-to-10-year investment period as we enter a period of recovery and economic growth.”

Stephen Welton, chair of British Business Bank, added: “This is an especially exciting time in the Bank’s development, with more being asked of us at a time when driving longer-term investment to support the growth economy is so critical.

“This is testament to what we have built over the last 10 years.

“After a strong year for the Bank in challenging markets, I look forward to working with the board and the executive leadership team, and other key stakeholders, as we look to increase the scale, effectiveness and impact of the bank, crowding in private investment and institutional capital for innovative, high growth firms to boost economic growth across the UK.”