Nick Stork

Nick Stork is a Fund Manager in the New Investments team at the Development Bank of Wales, the Welsh Government–owned development bank that was rebranded from Finance Wales in 2017 (the legacy name persists in his email domain). In this role he works with Welsh businesses to structure bespoke funding packages — combining equity and debt drawn from the bank's various funds — to support companies at all stages of growth. He is based in Cardiff and the bank's profile of him emphasises tailored solutions across the funding lifecycle.

Before the Development Bank of Wales, Nick built a career in mainstream and asset-based banking. His background spans roles at HSBC and Lloyds Banking Group, and he has been associated with Novomorphic. His professional expertise is described as covering invoice discounting, factoring, funding, financial risk and corporate finance — a commercial-lending and working-capital skill set that he now applies to structuring growth and succession deals.

Nick holds a BEng in Electrical & Electronic Engineering from Loughborough University (1991–1994), an engineering grounding that pairs well with his recent focus on financing manufacturers and decarbonisation projects.

In the current period he has become one of the public faces of the bank's green-finance agenda, co-leading flagship transactions and representing the Green Business Loan Scheme in media and podcast appearances.

• Invests on behalf of the Development Bank of Wales' funds (e.g. the Wales Business Succession Fund and Wales Flexible Investment Fund), not as a personal angel — meaning deals serve both commercial return and the bank's economic-development mandate for Wales.
• Backs Welsh SMEs across the growth curve, structuring "bespoke funding solutions to support them at all stages of growth," blending equity and debt as the situation requires.
• Strong current emphasis on green and energy-efficiency financing: he fronts the Green Business Loan Scheme, which offers discounted fixed-rate loans from roughly £1,000 up to £1.5m, with patient-capital features such as upfront capital-repayment holidays and terms linked to project payback.
• Comfortable with complex situations — management buy-outs, succession deals, and large syndicated/ESG-linked facilities alongside commercial banks (e.g. partnering with Barclays on Bluestone).
• Says yes when management teams are credible and the funding genuinely enables growth, decarbonisation, or local-ownership continuity; the bank's mandate favours job creation and retention in Wales.