Subordinating ‘alt-finance’: how British venture capital became dependent on the US

Is the formation of venture capital (VC) markets a national phenomenon? Against the common view that VC emerged in the US in the post-WWII period and later (yet independently) in Europe, we argue that the uneven relation between US and UK VC markets was crucial for British VC formation since the 1980s. Based on an empirical analysis of secondary literature and financial data, the article demonstrates that this relation is better understood through the lens of international financial subordination and identifies three types of dependencies to qualify this relation: the dependencies of UK VC on US start-up investments, US growth capital, and US exit deals. This type of financial subordination is specific to ‘alternative finance’, because highly profitable VC exits kick-started a flywheel effect in UK VC in the 2000s, and the subsequent expansion of British VC went hand in hand with a concentration of capital because UK VC followed a ‘winners-take-all’ logic that is characteristic of alt-finance in general. This suggests, counterintuitively, that after UK VC formed, the US economy benefitted more in financial, economic, and technological terms from the growing British VC market than its UK counterpart mainly because most large exit deals took place in the US.