Friday, March 29, 2024

£950 million fund launched to support SMEs across East Midlands

HSBC UK has launched a £15bn lending fund today for small and medium sized businesses with £950m ring-fenced to support local economies, employment opportunities and drive growth across the East Midlands.

Whilst concerns about the broader market remain, HSBC’s customers are thinking about growth via investment, acquisitions and capital expenditure. Businesses have told us that they are ready to invest for growth and are confident about the prospects for their own businesses. They point to the biggest areas of opportunity are in sustainability (12%) and digitisation (11%)*.

The Fund is a key part of HSBC’s commitment to help British businesses to innovate, thrive and grow in the UK and internationally. SMEs are vital to the UK economy and account for three fifths of the employment and around half of turnover in the UK private sector according to the FSB. The Fund, which includes specific regional and locally focussed allocations, will seek to ensure that companies throughout the country can benefit.

This year’s fund also includes ring-fenced funding for businesses trading internationally (£2 billion), in the agriculture sector (£1.2 billion) the tech sector (£500m) and franchise businesses (£500m).

It is also aligned with the Green SME Fund (£500m) for businesses of all sizes to transition and thrive in a low carbon economy and the new Growth Lending Fund (£250m) for high growth tech businesses to support well-equitised, high growth, loss-making scale ups early in their growth journey.

Since launching the SME Fund in 2014, HSBC has lent more than £90 billion helping businesses to make the most of their money, now and into the future and opening up a world of opportunity for our customers.

In 2021, the HSBC UK SME Fund supported Little Eaton car and van repair centre, Panel Match, with a five-figure package. The support allowed the company to open a new unit, which has increased operating space by 50 per cent and enabled the company to meet increasing customer demand for its body repair and paint services.

Small Business Minister, Paul Scully said: “This new fund puts HSBC on course to have lent more than £100 billion to UK small businesses within a decade, which is a great milestone for HSBC and even better for the communities across the country being helped to thrive.

“This extra funding builds on the support available through government schemes like Help to Grow and Start Up Loans to help small businesses grow and reach their full potential.”

Small Business Commissioner, Liz Barclay, said: “The challenges facing small businesses are beyond imagination. The problems caused by poor payment practices such as late or delayed payments, and extended payment terms pile pressure on cash flow. Small firms are the lifeblood of the economy, and they must be paid fast and fair, and if they are to have the confidence to invest and build the resilience, they’ll need to weather the storms ahead and they will need the support of funds like this more than ever”.

Peter McIntyre, Head of Business Banking at HSBC UK, said: “SMEs are vital to the UK economy, and our customers have told us they are ready to invest for growth.  The £15 billion fund will help businesses to expand internationally, as well as here in the UK, supporting key sectors and driving investment across the regions.

“We want to make a significant contribution to economies across the country, driving employment, local wealth and growth by providing funding, when and where it’s needed most. We know our customers are innovating and adapting at pace and British businesses need their bank to be flexible, supporting future growth opportunities.”

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this story on our news site - please take a moment to read this important message:

As you know, our aim is to bring you, the reader, an editorially led news site and magazine but journalism costs money and we rely on advertising, print and digital revenues to help to support them.

With the Covid-19 pandemic having a major impact on our industry as a whole, the advertising revenues we normally receive, which helps us cover the cost of our journalists and this website, have been drastically affected.

As such we need your help. If you can support our news sites/magazines with either a small donation of even £1, or a subscription to our magazine, which costs just £33.60 per year, (inc p&P and mailed direct to your door) your generosity will help us weather the storm and continue in our quest to deliver quality journalism.

As a subscriber, you will have unlimited access to our web site and magazine. You'll also be offered VIP invitations to our events, preferential rates to all our awards and get access to exclusive newsletters and content.

Just click here to subscribe and in the meantime may I wish you the very best.









Latest news

Related news

By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. more information

The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.

Close