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Corporate finance advice

The Shareholder Executive provides corporate finance advice to BIS and other government departments. For BIS, it appraises and negotiates grants awarded to non-government owned businesses: in particular Selective Finance for Investment in England (SFIE) and, where appropriate, launch investment and rescue aid.

Selective Financial Assistance

The Shareholder Executive appraised a number of regional assistance cases over the year leading to offers amounting to £19.7m. The supported projects are linked to £209m of private sector capital investment and they will create or safeguard 2,255 good quality jobs in Assisted Areas.

One key regional assistance project focused on Nissan's car plant in Sunderland. The company recently announced the building of a new compact sports utility vehicle which will secure jobs at the site, where Nissan employs 4,700 people. The active participation of the Shareholder Executive in co-ordinating Departments and agencies across Government played an important role in securing £55m of new investment, with Government contributing over £6.2m. The Shareholder Executive also provided advice on a proposal to spend £100m enhancing the redevelopment of Birmingham New Street Station.

Launch Investment

Launch investment is support given by the Government to the aerospace industry for the development of aerospace products. The investments are repayable at a rate of return, usually via levies on product sales. As at the end of the year, the Shareholder Executive was advising BIS and Invest Northern Ireland with respect to the negotiation of a package of launch investment and Selective Financial Assistance for Shorts, the Belfast subsidiary of Bombardier. This culminated with the announcement in July 2008 of a £155m investment in the Bombardier CSeries, a 110 to 130 seat commercial airliner, due to enter service in 2013. This will support the development of aircraft wings and engine nacelles, to be manufactured in the UK from composite materials.

Other advice

Meanwhile, the Shareholder Executive's participation in Government's wider corporate finance activities, where other Departments have approached the Shareholder Executive for advice, continued to increase. In this respect the Shareholder Executive was engaged to conduct strategic reviews for a number of large business and asset portfolios, where work is currently ongoing.