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THE BIG INTERVIEW The innovation game
IBS Journal talks tech trends, Brexit and why London’s still brilliant with Phil Cox, Head of EMEA and President of the UK Branch Silicon Valley Bank
Senior Editor Scott Thompson
UK in 2012.
2016 was absolutely fascinating. After the highs of 2015, which was a huge year for UK tech, US venture funding into Europe completely stopped in January. Too early to be Brexit-related, it seemed that the industry was slowing down and valuations were coming back down to earth. That said, the UK continued to innovate, raise capital at home and keep forming companies. We saw fewer deals done but the same volume of capital involved, essentially a flight to quality.
Once the Brexit vote was in, our clients quickly recalibrated and carried on with business as usual. We grew our client base significantly in the UK last year, almost doubling our number of clients and expanding our loan book to £1.1 billion. We also moved to much bigger offices on Finsbury Square in London and hired over 35 people. In 2017 we’ll be expanding further to fuel our rapid growth, hiring around 30 more people here in London.
IBS Journal: Which FinTechs and banking technologies stood out for you in 2016?
Valley Bank and how 2016 panned out for it? I
Phil Cox: Silicon Valley Bank is a commercial bank that only serves the innovation economy. We have been laser focused on technology and life sciences for over 30 years. We have had a UK presence for over 10 years and opened a full branch in the
www.ibsintelligence.com © IBS Intelligence 2017 BS Journal: Could you tell us about Silicon
PC: The majority of deal volume was across payments, enterprise, investments, forex and research (source: Pitchbook). A trend that we were excited about last year was RegTech – given the number of FinTech businesses springing up all over the UK, there is a huge market for the technology that supports and underpins regulation – from identity checking to compliance monitoring. Not particularly glamorous, but incredibly important.
Open Banking was the 2016 buzzword. Here at Silicon Valley Bank we hired a team from banking API startup, Standard Treasury, in
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