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Priority Investment Areas
Our investment funds have three designated and interconnected investment priorities, linked by a common focus on securing a coherent, competitive, sustainable and fair regional economy. The Investment Priorities –Innovation, Infrastructure and Challenge – are based on evergreen and co-investment principles.
Innovation
The Innovation priority looks at proposals demonstrating unique intellectual property, market leadership and competitive strength. It also supports support propositions that enhance productivity from the foundational economy and in targeted growth sectors that have the greatest potential for direct economic return on investment through job creation and GVA increase.
Infrastructure
The Infrastructure priority focuses on public sector led and public-private co-investment in physical and digital infrastructure projects intended to deliver maximum impact. These will typically include things like roads, public transport, broadband, skills, sites and premises, and testbeds.
Skills
Our skills priority aims to retain talent within the region, enhancing productivity, innovation and economic growth by linking talented individuals with ambitious businesses across Southeast Wales
Challenge
Our Challenge priority is aimed at re-building local wealth through bringing innovative solutions to tackling some of the CCR’s most urgent societal problems. Typically these fund will invite our public sector bodies to develop challenges and connect with organisations that are able to provide innovative solutions to the challenges identified.
What funds are available?
The Wider Investment fund is a general fund focussed on the priority areas outlined above. The other funds represent bespoke, ringfenced sums specifically allocated for the purposes described. The processes for accessing the funds are specific to each fund.
Wider Investment Fund
Out of the original £1.3bn City Deal funding, £495m has been allocated to a Wider Investment Fund, with the balance being allocated to Metro developments. This is the primary fund that proposals that align with our 3 priority investment areas of Innovation, Infrastructure and Challenge will seek to access. We are seeking proposals into this fund that have the scale and ambition to radically address the challenges facing the region.
Out of this fund a number of “sub-funds” have been created for specific categories of investment. This is in order to ring-fence set sums for investment, create bespoke eligibility criteria, employ dedicated fund managers to manage the application and assessment stages and in general simplify the overall process for the applicant.
Unless your investment request is directly aligned to one of the sub categories please follow the Wider Investment Fund Process.
Challenge Fund
The Challenge Fund aims to build local wealth through creating commercial opportunities for organisations across the CCR, by inviting them to propose solutions to challenges across three priority themes: currently have a £10m fund ring-fenced for an initial set of societal challenges based around the 3 key themes of accelerating decarbonisation, improving the health and wellbeing of the region’s citizens, and supporting, enhancing and transforming communities.
We are currently in the process of working with the public sector to define these challenges in the expectation the challenges will be put to the market in April 2021. 100% funding will be available to those organisations that come forward.
Strategic Sites and Premises Fund
This £50m Sites and Premises Fund has been set up to support the region’s Industrial and Economic Plan by targeting projects, which are key to delivery of the region’s priorities, in support of innovation, business growth and regeneration. It will address funding market failures, accelerate and increase investment in private sector led development and site-specific infrastructure.
CBRE has been appointed as Fund Advisor and the fund is expected to go live for applications in May.
Innovation Investment Capital
In Development
CCR Innovation Investment Capital is a £50 million equity fund supporting scale up businesses across the Cardiff Capital Region in South East Wales. It will provide investments of £2m-£7m to support high-growth businesses located in (or considering relocating to) one of the 10 local authority areas in the Cardiff Capital Region. Created by CCR and powered by PwC, this pioneering funding programme is geared towards generating Good Growth and inclusive prosperity for our whole region – helping realise the ambitions of enterprises being built and shaped around bold visions.
Wider investment fund process
In the first instance please contact us at invest@cardiffcapitalregion.wales to arrange a discussion. This will enable us to understand your requirements and direct you towards the most appropriate fund and process.
Initial Enquiry
At this stage we are simply looking for you to complete a proforma that will give us an outline of
- Your business, size, structure, products and services, financials.
- The nature of the proposal, how it aligns with our stated investment priorities around infrastructure, innovation and challenge explained – read our priority areas for investment.
- The quantum of the investment ask, rationale as to why this route not other 3rd party lending sources together with a high level impact assessment of the financing on the company balance sheet.
- The impact of the investment on the region in terms of growth, contribution to GVA, new jobs created, other capital being invested/ attracted.
Evaluation
The information obtained in the enquiry stage will allow us to make an early assessment as to whether the initial overview suggests that the mutual objectives are sufficiently well aligned to progress to the next stage. As part of this process the materials submitted will be summarised and presented to our Investment panel for their review and recommendations. Subsequent to the investment panel review, the recommendation are then presented to the CCR regional cabinet who make the final decision regarding next steps.Strategic Case
If successful at the initial sifting process the next stage is production of what we call a Strategic outline case. This goes into a lot more detail on a combination of the:
- Economic case – in this the impact of not funding the venture on the company and the local economy will be considered as well as assessing the contribution the investment will make to the wider local economy.
- Commercial case – looking at the industry and market positioning and the proposed “go to market” strategies.
- Financial case – including the nature of the structure/ type and timing of the proposed financial facility and an assessment of the “affordability” of the finance.
- Management and operational cases – including plans for any scaling up required and the approach proposed for project managing the planned developments.
Case Evaluation
As with the initial evaluation, the strategic investment case is presented to the Investment panel for review. Here it will be rigorously scrutinised by a panel of experts to ensure that the case is desirable, viable, feasible, and affordable. That is fully aligned with CCR strategic investment criteria and the benefits to the wider regional economy justify the opportunity cost of making this investment over another.
Business Case
Given the level of complexity and detail required at this stage, together with the cost and professional input required to produce , this is a two stage process where first an outline business case is produced, followed up by a final business case.
In these documents further detail is provided on each of the economic, commercial, financial, management and operational cases. In addition the documents will cover legal considerations, due diligence findings, risks and mitigations, draft heads of terms on the financing facility, state aid compliance reports where applicable.
Evaluation
Again these cases will be first scrutinised and assessed fully by the Investment panel, and then finally, subsequent to any supplementary information/ analysis being required will be submitted together with a full set of recommendations for regional cabinet consideration and ultimate decision making.
