BUSINESS angels in Scotland made a record £26.4 million investment into early-stage companies last year.
New data from trade body LINC Scotland showed there was a 10.23% rise on 2010's £23.95m figure.
Across 2011 there were 78 deals involving 56 businesses which was lower than the 105 deals into 65 companies the year before.
However, the average size of the sum invested rose 47.2% to £338,462.
The 16% put into new businesses was comparable to the 15% seen in 2010.
Members of LINC Scotland spent £12.18m with a further £14.22m coming from other private investors with the public sector, mainly the Scottish Co-Investment Fund and Scottish Seed Fund, saw their contributions fall 6% from £8.89m to £8.35m.
David Grahame, chief executive of LINC Scotland, said: "2011 saw a substantial increase in the size of the investments being made in Scottish businesses, with investors showing faith in early-stage companies.
"The fourth quarter of 2011 was particularly strong, due to two large deals completed at Braveheart and Alida Capital.
"Although 2010 was a record year for the number of investments made, this included an unusually large volume of smaller deals, and appears to have been an anomaly within the overall pattern of recent years."
Mr Grahame is hopeful his members and other business angels can increase funding amounts again in 2012 particularly to firms which have not sought investment before.
He added: "We expect to see this upward trend continue throughout 2012 due to the new tax reliefs being introduced under the Government's Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme."
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 hereComments are closed on this article