The Business Growth Fund (BGF), which is backed by five major UK banks, has completed two deals. BGF has teamed up with venture firm Scottish Equity Partners (SEP) to invest £20m ($32.2m) in SkyDox, a provider of Cloud-enabled document collaboration software for the enterprise sector. The investment will allow SkyDox to merge with US rival Workshare, a program designed for real-time document collaboration. The buy-out amount was not disclosed.
BGF has also invested £3m of growth capital in Shuropody, a comfort footwear company that also provide podiatry services. Shuropody will use the new funds to expand. Ian Downing, Investment director at BGF commented that Shuropody “has the potential to substantially increase its geographic footprint across the UK”. The investment is expected to generate 200 new jobs for the company that reported £15.8m in sales at the end of 2011.
Set up in 2011, The Business Growth Fund is backed by 5 major UK banks: Barclays, HSBC, Llyods, Royal Bank of Scotland and Standard Chartered banks. BGF invests between £2m and £10m in UK businesses for between five and seven years.