Mail on Sunday correction
The letter below was sent to the editor following an inaccurate representation of Scottish Enterprise investments.
Dear Sirs
Following your article of 10th March on Scottish Enterprise’s investment activity (page 20), I write to provide a more accurate picture of the significant and sustained investment activity that was omitted from your article.
Investment in very young businesses always carries risk, but our funds are designed to share this risk equally with our private sector co-investors, who invest their own funds into these companies and also stand to lose if their investment in a company fails.
To date, £869 million has been invested by Scottish Enterprise into more than 600 innovative Scottish companies, so far leveraging an additional £2.3 billion of private sector funding into these companies.
As a result, we have generated £470 million in income for the Scottish economy, compared to £160 million in investment write-offs since 2003. This tells a truer story of our investment activity, generating three times as much as we have written off.
This return on public investment is precisely what Scottish Enterprise, Scotland’s national economic development agency, is tasked with delivering. Our role is to seek out opportunities to transform our economy, as our achievements with our investment activity demonstrate.
Yours faithfully
Adrian Gillespie
Chief Executive
Scottish Enterprise