British Business Bank takes headline role on SEAM festival investor track

Catalyst has announced British Business Bank as the investment partner and headline sponsor of the investor track at SEAM, its new entrepreneurship festival for Northern Ireland, placing the UK government’s economic development bank in front of founders and up to 50 funds and angel investors on 17 November at Banana Block in Belfast. The bank will host the Cross Investor Lounge, a dedicated investor space that brings founders together with active investors and business angels throughout the one-day festival.

SEAM is expected to attract more than 300 founders, investors, operators and ecosystem leaders, and includes a dedicated investor forum bringing together funders from across the UK and Ireland.

British Business Bank is the UK government’s economic development bank, wholly owned by HM Government and headquartered in Sheffield. It works through subsidiaries including British Business Investments and British Patient Capital.

Catalyst is a Belfast innovation organisation formerly known as the Northern Ireland Science Park, established in 1999 and headquartered in Titanic Quarter.

Susan Nightingale, senior director at British Business Bank, said Northern Ireland has a strong pipeline of innovative, high-potential businesses and that connecting them with external capital is critical to their growth ambitions, adding that the bank is pleased to support the Cross Investor Lounge.

Fiona Bennington, director of entrepreneurship and scaling at Catalyst, said SEAM encourages traction in a founder-centric way and brings Northern Ireland’s whole entrepreneurship ecosystem together, with investors central, and that the bank’s work to improve access to finance for start-ups and scale-ups makes it a natural supporter.

The festival now has two headline positions: Bank of Ireland was named headline partner of SEAM in August, according to The Irish News, while British Business Bank takes the headline role on the investor track.

British Business Bank is state-owned, according to Wikipedia, so the sponsorship places a public lender in a commercially sponsored festival.

For the sector, the sponsorship shows a public development bank using a headline sponsor role at a founder festival to put its investor network beside the ecosystem it is meant to reach, through named investor space rather than logo placement.

Source: UKSPA / The Irish News / Wikipedia