| Code | DS/UK/39 |
| Corporate Name | Finance For Industry PLC |
| Dates | 1973 - |
| OtherFormsOfName | FFI; Investors in Industry Group PLC (1983-); 3i (1983-) |
| Activity | Finance for Industry limited was founded in 1973 and became the holding company for two previously separate but related businesses, the Finance Corporation for Industry (FCI) and the Industrial and Commercial Finance Corporation Ltd. (ICFC). Each had been formed in 1945 to fill 'gaps' in the capital markets: FCI to assist larger companies with loans of a term longer than that of working capital provided by banks but shorter than the long term finance obtainable in the bond market: ICFC to provide long-term capital to small and medium-sized firms, whose difficulty of access to the capital market had become known as the 'Macmillan Gap' following the 1931 report of the Macmillan Committee on Finance and Industry. The Bank of England was a shareholder in both companies, joined in FCI by the insurance companies and investment trusts, and in ICFC by the London and Scottish clearing banks.
In 1983 the company changed its name to Investors in Industry Group plc, better known as 3i. |
| Source | Richard Coopey & Donald Clake '3i. Fifty years investing in industry' (1995). |
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