30th November 2018

Meet the fund managers

The £40 million Cornwall & Isles of Scilly Investment Fund (CIOSIF) supports new and growing businesses across the region.

It is a collaboration between the Government-owned British Business Bank and the Cornwall & Isles of Scilly Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), European Regional Development Fund and HM Government and provides commercial loan and equity finance between £25,000 and £2 million to small growing businesses.

The CIOSIF is managed by appointed fund managers The FSE Group. It’s our job to evaluate applications and allocate funds to businesses, and in order to do this we have recruited a highly experienced team in Cornwall to support these investments.

My own background includes more than 20 years of investment experience with the likes of Crowdcube, Octopus Investments and YFM, working with venture investors across a range of sectors including creative, health tech, aerospace and renewables.

Our senior fund manager for equity investment is Ralph Singleton, with more than 30 years’ experience. He is skilled in finding non-executive directors and advisors to help investee companies maximise their potential, as well as attract co-investment.

FSE’s senior fund manager for loans is Tim Williams. Tim has over 16 years’ banking experience across the South West – nine of them based in Truro serving the Cornish SME community, most recently as relationship manager for Lloyds.

Completing the FSE team is Meg Salt in fund management and Brent Treloar in business development. Meg comes with over 10 years’ banking experience within Clydesdale Bank, most recently as a director in corporate and structured finance. Brent has been involved in advisory, innovation and programme management services in the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly for more than 25 years and has extensive SME, funder and advisor contacts across the region.

The FSE team is working with SWIG Finance as a delivery partner. They have been active in the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly SME lending market for almost 30 years and have recruited business manager Mike Wall to help support delivery of the debt fund for CIOSIF. Mike has 40 years’ experience in personal and commercial lending, including 28 years at Barclays in Cornwall.

SWIG Finance work on the delivery of CIOSIF loans between £25,000 and £250,000, and the FSE team focuses on lending above £250,000 along with all equity investing.

We welcome enquiries and applications to the team via the fund website at www.ciosif.co.uk

Stuart Nichol is Head of Funds, Cornwall, at The FSE Group.