ThinCats secures £696m funding line with support from British Business Bank
Alternative lender ThinCats has secured a £696m funding line from Citi and Barclays, supported by the British Business Bank’s ENABLE Guarantee programme.
Citi and Barclays are jointly providing senior funding and ThinCats will be using its own capital to provide junior funding, with a small portion of the junior funding also provided by an unnamed UK credit fund.
The new warehouse facility will fund mid-sized smaller businesses in the UK and is one of the largest funding lines with a non-bank lender, the British Business Bank said.
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“Despite macro headwinds we continue to see strong demand from mid-sized businesses to fund organic growth opportunities and for merger and acquisition transactions, with considerable follow-on funding for existing borrowers,” said Ravi Anand, managing director at ThinCats.
“The size of this new funding reflects the maturity of our business in terms of scale and our strong overall performance.”
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Anand added that “mid-sized SMEs businesses are a critical contributor to economic growth and rightly deserve support” through the programme.
This is ThinCats’ second transaction with support from the ENABLE Guarantee programme.
Under an ENABLE Guarantee, the UK government takes on a portion of the risk in a transaction supporting loans to smaller businesses, in return for a fee.
“We are very happy to be part of this innovative transaction with ThinCats, which is the first of its kind under the programme to involve a direct guarantee on a portion of the liabilities in the funding structure,” said Reinald de Monchy, managing director, guarantee and wholesale solutions at the British Business Bank.
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“The guarantee will benefit mid-sized businesses across the UK by increasing available funding, which will support wider economic growth.”
