Investment

3i invested a total of £1,110 million in the year, significantly up on the £755 million invested in 2005. Having entered the year with a very strong pipeline of new opportunities, some significant individual investments were made in the first half, including NCP (£96 million) and Giochi Preziosi (£61 million). The split of investment across our regions reflected our increasingly international focus, with 63% invested outside the UK. Investment, including co-investment funds, totalled £1,322 million. Consistent with our strategy, the most notable increase by business line was within Growth Capital.

Across the Group we invested in 58 new assets in the year (2005: 67). We also increased our investment in established funds to gain exposure to new or emerging markets. We invested a total of £111 million (2005: £26 million), 10% of our total outlay, into these externally managed funds. This included five new funds into which we committed £242 million (of which £97 million was invested during the year), the largest of these being the I² infrastructure fund (£79 million invested).

The average investment size in the other 53 new assets was £15 million (2005: £8 million), in line with our strategy of increasing deal size within the "mid-cap market" segment.