London Stock Exchange Group

London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) is a global markets infrastructure business. We provide services for customers globally, focusing on intellectual property, risk and balance sheet management and capital formation. LSEG therefore plays a vital economic and social role, by enabling companies to access capital for growth and development, ultimately creating jobs of the future and contributing to GDP.

The Group is dedicated to helping small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) access the funding and support they need to scale. LSEG operates a broad range of international equity platforms, including the most successful global growth market, AIM. Our annual Companies to Inspire publications identify and celebrate some of the fastest-growing and most dynamic companies bringing them together as a community to share their success.

Our ELITE initiative connects scaling businesses to an ecosystem of entrepreneurs, advisers, investors, business leaders and SME stakeholders. SMEs are the lifeblood of any economy and LSEG has long campaigned for greater use of long-term patient capital for high-growth and innovative businesses.

Debt is perfectly suitable (and tax-deductible) for established companies to manage their obligations but is often unsuitable for high-growth, dynamic firms which seek to prioritise innovation and growth ahead of servicing a loan. Patient or long-term capital providers are increasingly supporting each other across the equity funding ladder, from angel finance to venture capital and crowdfunding through to public markets like AIM.

We recognise companies need guidance, expertise and practical advice to be able to grow their businesses to the next stage. LSEG provides one-to- one advice to management teams across the UK through a regional advisory team working to realise untapped potential. We also offer structured long-term engagement through ELITE.

www.lseg.com

Our offer to SMEs

ELITE

ELITE is our programme and platform for ambitious and fast-growing companies. It boosts growth by providing companies access to the capital, skills and networks needed to strengthen scalable, sustainable and economically impactful enterprises, from the early stages to maturity.

ELITE gives founders and management teams the confidence to address their growth challenges and identify the right funding for their businesses. It highlights different funding options and transaction types. ELITE operates its own funding platform to give companies efficient access to capital from private professional investors. It also acts as a platform to raise the profile of ambitious companies and embed them in the LSEG community where they can access expertise, mentoring and practical advice to support them in executing on their ambition.

Since 2014, over 130 UK companies have joined from 34 sectors (to be part of a global community of over 800 companies from 34 countries). These UK companies have undertaken capital transactions in excess of £2bn in the last four years, including through over 100 corporate transactions with four companies completing an IPO and one retail bond issue on LSE’s markets.

AIM

AIM is a tremendous UK success story. It provides access to vital growth finance for thousands of ambitious businesses and their entrepreneurial founders from a broad range of global markets and sectors. It allows investors to invest in companies at an earlier stage in their growth journey.

Over its 23-year history, AIM has supported more than 3,800 companies to raise close to £110bn of growth capital raised through new money and further fundraisings. With the support of an extensive community of companies, advisers, investors and brokers, AIM is the world’s most successful and established growth market. Much of the capital has supported founders and entrepreneurs in their pivotal role of growing their companies.

As a Group, we have an unshakeable commitment to helping grow and fund the companies of tomorrow. Through our initiatives, markets and partnerships we look forward to welcoming the next generation of entrepreneurs, founders and fledgling businesses into our community.

Stories we've helped

Graze
As one of the UK’s leading healthy snack companies, Graze has used a data-driven strategy to successfully expand into the US, boosting its revenue to more than £70m. Read more...
Cafepod
Early investment from friends and family helped Cafepod enter the lucrative coffee capsule market when Nespresso’s patent expired, and six years on the company’s pods are stocked in every major UK supermarket. Read more...
Vision Direct
Selling contact lenses online might have little to do with a Japanese arcade game, but CEO Michael Kraftman credits the company’s success to its acquisitive “Pac-Man” strategy. Read more...
Profile Pensions
CEO Jordan Mayo says efficient back-end technology and front-end human capital position Profile Pensions well to serve the UK mass market, delivering pensions clarity to tens of thousands of savers who like the service so much the company’s net promoter score is 77. Read more...
Blaze
Laurencekirk-based Blaze Manufacturing Solutions is a true Scottish offshore oil and gas industry success story, but co-founder Ann Johnson says there were turbulent times when the family business could have collapsed. Read more...
busuu
Founder and CEO Bernhard Niesner says that having the wrong culture created a “near-death experience” for busuu, but a concerted turnaround has put the mobile language-learning platform at the top of its class for the past few years. Read more...