To be eligible, it was previously a requirement - under EU State aid law – that businesses could demonstrate that they were not an ‘undertaking in difficulty’ as at 31 December 2019. The new guidance permits the assessment to be determined at the date of application for the schemes.

A swathe of legislation and regulations has been introduced in recent months by the UK government with the intention of mitigating the effects of Covid-19 pandemic on the country’s businesses and relaxing the regulatory and administrative burden on companies.

For most founders the early stages of business are “bootstrapped” - funded by friends and family, reinvested profits, salary sacrifice, personal credit cards, mortgages and the like. There are essentially two forms of funding for any business – debt (loans) and equity (shares in your company) — so what are the things a business needs to look out for when seeking equity investment?