The interim head of the embattled Scottish National Investment Bank (SNIB) has hailed its "significant progress" in its first full year of operation despite the abrupt departure of its chief executive earlier this year.
Interim CEO Sarah Roughead said she was "extremely proud" of what the bank has achieved, with £194.4 million committed across 14 investments since its launch. Set up in November 2020, the bank is owned by the Scottish Government and is charged with providing investment to firms that meet its "mission-led" criteria.
It was announced in February that the SNIB's inaugural chief executive, Eilidh Mactaggart, had quit the role with immediate effect. No explanation was initially given for her departure, though Ms Mactaggart later said she had resigned for "personal reasons".
Scottish ministers have come under fire for a lack of transparency in their handling of the situation.
Ms Roughead, who stepped up to interim CEO from her post as chief financial officer, said: "The bank has invested diversely and widely in the Scottish economy across all of the bank’s three missions: achieving a just transition to net zero; extending equality of opportunity be improving places and harnessing innovation to enable the people of Scotland to flourish.
“Considerable progress has been made in investing in innovative and scaling businesses. The bank has delivered direct investment from £1m to £30m and has co-invested alongside a number of private sector investors, leveraging additional capital. The bank’s investments form part of investment rounds totalling £493.2m, demonstrating the scale of investment the bank is helping to achieve."
She added: “The bank has recruited a strong team against the backdrop of Covid-19 and is well-positioned to embed the strong foundations it has built and to deliver its strategic objectives and further mission-aligned investments.’’
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel