A Silver Wedding for VCTs: 25 years of innovation

Unquoted investment through venture capital trusts

The great Mae West once dismissed a former lover with the words: “His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork..."

Well, some relationships work, others don't, but one that is showing healthy signs of long-term stability is the union of UK private investors with early stage, unquoted investment through venture capital trusts (VCTs). And as marriages go, it has been remarkably productive. There are now 25 VCT fund managers with more than 1,000 staff, who between them have raised some £8.5bn from individual investors since VCTs were first launched by Ken Clarke in 1995. More tangibly for the UK economy, though, companies backed by VCTs have created more than 27,000 jobs and created a whole new gener...