Hargreaves Lansdown co-founder Stephen Lansdown to become a partner in creative investment fund Edge Investments
Stephen Lansdown, co-founder of FTSE 100 financial services group Hargreaves Lansdown, is to join creative investment group Edge Investments.
Lansdown will take a ten per cent stake and become a partner in the firm, which has previously invested in Rolling Stones' live events and the Clangers reboot, through the private equity arm of his family office.
He will work alongside David Glick, Edge’s founder and chief executive, in expanding the business.
Lansdown, who invested in a number of Edge's fund before, said:
I have enormous respect for the role Edge plays in funding young, fast-growing creative industries businesses. So I was delighted to take this opportunity to acquire a stake and support David and his colleagues as they develop the business. This is an industry with enormous potential for entrepreneurs and investors alike and Edge is the perfect firm to bring those two groups together successfully.
Edge recently launched a £40m Creative Enterprise Fund is designed to address “the funding drought” in the arts industries, and brings together private investors with funding from the government’s British Business Bank. It's the first fund of its kind, and will start investing early next year.
Guernsey-based Lansdown formed Hargreaves Lansdown with his partner Peter Hargreaves in 1981 from Hargreaves' spare website, and stepped down as chairman in 2009, and left the Hargreaves Lansdown board in 2012. He's been busy since than, buying Bristol City football club in 2009.