Mark Brownridge, Director General of the EIS Association, comments on today's positive budget announcements for the Enterprise Investment Scheme

The government is allocating a further £2.3bn in investment in research development and will increase the tax credit on R&D to 12%. 

Douglas Hanson-Luke, Executive Chairman at Future Planet Capital comments on today's Budget.

Private Equity Firm IW Capital Offers Commentary on the Impact of The Autumn Budget on small businesses, private sector growth and EIS.

“A long term vision and strategy to put the UK at the forefront of global digital innovation is absolutely critical for the long term welfare of the country. It is even more critical however that we continue to properly invest and support the digital sector and innovation is not treated by the Government as short term attention grabbing headlines,” said Mark Abbs, Partner and Head of Global Mobility Tax Services at Blick Rothenberg.

David Ovens is Chief Operating Officer at Edinburgh-based Archangels, the oldest and one of the largest business angel investment syndicates in the world. Read his response to Chancellor Philip Hammond’s measures designed to encourage patient capital investment, and announced in today’s Budget.

The Chancellor, Philip Hammond, announced a further £2.3bn in investment in R&D as well as an increase in the main R&D Tax Credit to 12% (from 11%). “What about our SMEs and Scale-ups?” asks Matt Watts, head of R&D at Smith & Williamson, the accountancy, investment management and tax group.

“The Chancellor has increased the Research and Development tax credit [RDEC] credit by 1% but has left the SME rate the same. “Whilst the existing scheme for SMEs is still more valuable, limiting the increase to R&D tax credits for the large company scheme sends a mixed message to British businesses.? The R&D tax credits is a popular relief which is promoting investment and creating jobs.  Why should only big business benefit when it’s our smaller businesses we need to be supporting?”

First respsonse comment from Ilian Iliev.  Overall this appears to be a budget focused on helping entrepreneurial knowledge-intensive companies, recognising the need for a post-Brexit UK to focus on true innovation, and – on the funding side – implementing a lot of the good analysis from the Patient Capital review. We think this bodes well for the future of the UK’s start-up / venture ecosystem and the economy as a whole. 

Oxford Capital has led a £3 million funding round for Wrisk, an insurance innovator which lets customers buy and claim on their insurance using a simple smartphone app. The initial funding was followed by a £500k crowdfunding round on the Seedrs platform, which was fully subscribed in just four days.  The investment will fund the business up to and through its market launch in 2018.

Suggestv, the intelligent video discovery platform for publishers, has today closed its seed investment round, raising a total of $1m. The investment round, led by Mark Pearson at Fuel Ventures, is being used to bolster the company’s UK business development plans, grow its publisher base and propel the company further into global markets.

“Creating the conditions for success to enable businesses to scale should continue to be a cornerstone of economic policy,” said John Morris, scale-up lead at Smith & Williamson, the accountancy, investment management and tax group.