Gwent businesses have been an important factor in another record breaking year for UK Steel Enterprise.

The Corus subsidiary helped create 60 jobs at Cardinal Packaging in Ebbw Vale, and supported several other companies in the area with strategic investments. These include Precision Cast Components of Newport, and the innovative Flower Stork firm in Ebbw Vale.

UK Steel Enterprise, and its subsidiary UKSE Fund Managers Ltd, agreed deals worth £3.5m in Wales in 2005, outstripping the previous year by almost 20 per cent. The results have been underpinned by two related factors - a higher level of demand for equity-based deals, which itself leads to larger deal sizes. "Welsh companies are increasingly moving towards equity-based deals, usually as part of a package with more traditional funding," said Mr Hughes, UKSE manager in Wales. "Companies are thinking longer term when they raise finance, and this is a healthy sign.

It shows that the Welsh economy is more in step with competitor economies in other regions of the UK and Europe," he said.

UKSE estimates that the investments it made in 2005 will have directly helped create around 750 jobs and leveraged £12m into the economy.

The willingness of Welsh entrepreneurs to go down the equity route is also a facet of the Finance Wales Investments Ltd Objective 1 and Objective 2 Funds which have been available for several years."