Barclays Helps to Scale-Up the UK: Growing Businesses, Growing Our Economy

Barclays is launching a new report on the future of business scale-ups in the UK. It is part of a long-standing project partnership built with the business schools of both the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge.

In January last year, the vice chancellors of both universities met with senior leaders at Barclays and other businesses to discuss the barriers to small businesses scaling-up and the importance of developing solutions to some of these problems for the benefit of future generations. 

Changing the UK’s entrepreneurial ecosystem

Following that discussion, Barclays worked with two of the world’s most eminent research teams in entrepreneurship, led by Peter Hiscocks from the Cambridge Judge Business School and Professor Thomas Hellmann from the Oxford Said Business School, on a project that looks to contribute to a fundamental change in the UK’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Both teams carefully examined a range of issues, such as access to investor capital, debt and equity finance, the management and leadership skills required and business mentoring opportunities. The report will make a leading contribution to the national debate on the future of business growth in this country.  

Scale-up UK: Growing Businesses, Growing our Economy

The report, Scale-up UK: Growing Businesses, Growing our Economy, will be launched by Barclays’ CEO, Jes Staley, alongside both universities and the Chair of the Scale-up Institute, Sherry Coutu, on Monday 25 April 2016.

Looking ahead to the release of the report, Jes said: “This report demonstrates Barclays’ commitment to working with leaders in academia and business, to solve the economic challenges our society faces. We’re proud to have the world experts in entrepreneurship from Oxford and Cambridge working together on this report, and I hope the report will make a positive contribution to the economic and policymaking debate on scale-ups that’s ongoing in this country.”

Further details of the report and its recommendations will be available on home.barclays/scaleup once published on Monday 25 April 2016.