Merseyside Special Investment Fund
Merseyside Special Investment Fund (MSIF) was set up to provide businesses across Merseyside with funding to start and grow. The Funds were roughly a 50:50 mix of public and private sector investment.
Since it was set up, MSIF has backed almost 1300 businesses across the five boroughs of Merseyside.
The MSIF Funds ceased investing on 31 December 2008 although an extension to some existing facilities totalling £4.6m will allow the MSIF Small Firms and Mezzanine Funds to continue to provide loans to businesses based in or prepared to relocate to Merseyside up to March 2010.
The £56m European Regional Development Fund element has been fully invested and the earlier Mezzanine and Small Firms Funds have fully repaid all facilities and are now making distributions from profit to all investors including MSIF. This has enabled MSIF to recently establish a successor fund which currently stands at £3m and which will continue to grow with further realisations.
MSIF’s two equity Funds - the MSIF Venture Fund and MSIF Liverpool Seed Fund have created substantial portfolios through their investments. The MSIF Venture Fund has exited successfully on several earlier investments which resulted in good returns. The current Venture Fund portfolio includes 20 live investments which are anticipated to achieve good returns in the future. The Liverpool Seed Fund is MSIF’s most recent Fund having only been launched in 2005 and therefore its portfolio is still relatively young. It is expected that these companies will begin to make returns during the next two to five years.
