GITA PATEL'S TRAPEZIA FUND HITS IT'S £4.5 MILLION TARGET
(20 January 2007)

Gita Patel of Stargate Capital has successfully closed her first EIS fund: Trapezia, having reached its target of £4.5 million. This is the first Venture Capital Fund in the UK dedicated to investing in businesses where women have an influential role and will be fully invested within months. Amongst the fund's investors are the Consensus Group and Bank of Scotland Corporate. Stargate Capital intends to start the fund raising process for its second Trapezia fund in the first quarter of 2007.

The business case for the fund is founded upon research in the US (Catalyst) and UK (Cranfield) which links gender diversity to financial performance and strong corporate governance. The UK research shows that companies with women directors on their boards have both a higher return on equity and stronger corporate governance. In the US it was demonstrated that companies with a greater representation of women in senior management positions delivered higher total returns to shareholders than those with proportionately lower numbers of women in senior positions.

WOMEN FOCUSED BUSINESSES

Women-focused businesses belong to a segment that is currently underserved and fund raising remains very challenging even for quality projects. The pool of capital to support new ventures has increased significantly since the 1980's but the flow of this venture capital to women-focused businesses has been low compared to the number of such businesses and their force in the economy. In 2004 only 2.5% of venture capital was invested in women entrepreneurs (source: Dow Jones VentureOne). Stargate believes that there is a compelling case for servicing the perceptible funding gap in relation to women focused businesses.