British Business Bank increases Mercia’s investment mandate by £54.3m

Mercia Asset Management PLC, the regionally focused specialist asset manager, has announced that the British Business Bank has allocated an additional £54.3 milliion to Mercia’s two existing investment mandates from the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund.

This takes Mercia’s total mandates from BBB to £186.3 million and the group’s total assets under management to around £800 million.

Mercia was first awarded investment mandates from NPIF in February 2017 across two funds; the £57.5 million NPIF YHTV Equity fund and the £51.0 million NPIF Y&H Debt fund.

Since then, Mercia has been deploying these funds to support regional businesses as part of its Complete Connected Capital business model. Of the new allocations, £23.7million has been allocated to the existing equity fund and £30.6million to the existing debt fund.

Mark Payton, chief executive officer of Mercia, commented: “The Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund is playing an important role in helping unlock the potential of small businesses across the North of England and we are delighted to build on our successful partnership through this increased allocation across both funds.

"Now is a particularly critical time for regional SMEs and these new allocations will help us support both existing and new portfolio companies.

“These additional funds, alongside the £38.2 million recently raised for our Northern VCTs, takes our total AUM to nearly £800 million, as we continue to progress towards our target of £1.0billion AUM.

"It is particularly encouraging that we have made this recent progress despite the current market backdrop, which I believe reflects continuing confidence by stakeholders in Mercia’s experienced investment team and track record, including their ability to successfully source opportunities and deploy capital.”

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