Morgan Stanley is preparing to invest one million pounds ($1.36 million) in five startups led by women or ethnic minorities in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, expanding a program that’s run for the past four years in the U.S.
The Wall Street bank aims to help groups that often struggle to find seed capital. According to Morgan Stanley, less than 3% of venture capital invested in the U.K. over the past decade went to teams led entirely by women and less than 2% to ethnic minority founders. Total funding for European startups and scaleups rose to 12 billion euros ($13.9 billion) last year, according to trade body Invest Europe.
