'The task now is to build on that 17% growth': Northern Ireland bucks the UK equity trend with the fastest growth in deal activity

Northern Ireland’s equity deal count rose by 17% in 2025. That’s more than anywhere else in the UK.

That’s worth thinking about for a moment. Across the UK equity market, Northern Ireland’s ambitious founders and the investors who back them kept doing deals. At a time when investors have become more selective and businesses are facing a more challenging funding environment, maintaining that level of activity is a strong signal of resilience.

The picture, revealed in the Bank’s Small Business Equity Tracker, is nuanced – the value of those deals fell by 12% to £102m, so while there were more transactions, there was less money moving through them.

It’s tempting to read that as a contradiction, but it isn’t really and, in fact, this isn’t a story which is unique to Northern Ireland. Across the UK, equity markets have been adjusting to a period of greater caution, with investors focusing more closely on opportunities and businesses adapting to changing expectations around growth.

However, what is a Northern Ireland story is the resilience underneath those figures.

When deal values contract but deal numbers keep climbing, it tells you something about the underlying appetite in the market – that businesses are still forming, still pitching, still finding investors willing to back them and continuing to pursue their growth ambitions.

It also underlines that the answer to a tighter equity market is to ensure every founder here understands the full range of finance options open to them – not just equity but also debt and blended finance products that can support businesses at different stages of growth.

Too many businesses still default to the finance route they’ve heard of, rather than the one that actually fits their stage and ambitions. Improving awareness of those options will help more entrepreneurs make informed decisions about how they fund growth and build sustainable businesses.

Closing that awareness gap is, in my view, one of the most useful things the finance ecosystem here can do in the next 12 months.

It’s also why the British Business Bank’s own footprint in Northern Ireland matters.

Across the UK, we supported 15% of all equity deals and 16% of investment value between 2023 and 2025, with a particular focus on innovation-led businesses, including a growing number in AI.

Here in Northern Ireland, that commitment has a name and a number attached to it.

Since we launched the Investment Fund for Northern Ireland, we’ve deployed £30 million directly into 35 businesses.

Just as importantly, that public investment has pulled in an additional £45 million in private co-investment alongside it – capital that might not have found its way to those businesses otherwise.

Put the two together and you get more than £75 million reaching Northern Ireland businesses through this fund alone.

That pattern – public money unlocking private money, rather than replacing it – is exactly what regional finance interventions should be doing. Public investment works best when it builds confidence, attracts additional capital and helps businesses with the potential to grow.

It’s also consistent with what we see across the whole of our activity: 84% of the businesses we newly supported UK-wide in 2024/25 were based outside London.

Northern Ireland’s founders are not a footnote to a London-centric investment story.

They’re a growing part of the UK’s equity market in their own right, and this year’s figures prove it.

The task now is to build on that 17% growth in Northern Ireland, rather than treat it as a one-off. That means continuing to widen access to capital, backing the innovation-led businesses that will define the next decade of this economy, and ensuring every Northern Ireland entrepreneur with a good idea knows where to find the finance that will let them scale.