Rhona Barbour

Rhona Barbour is an Investment Director and one of the four owner-partners of Whiterock Finance, the Belfast-based SME fund manager also registered as WhiteRock Capital Partners LLP. She owns and runs the firm alongside chief executive Paul Millar, Neil McCabe and David McCurley. Across four investment funds, Whiterock has managed roughly £150m of capital deployed into SMEs across Northern Ireland.

She is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants Ireland, having qualified in March 2007 and placed 10th in Ireland in the ICAI Final Admitting Exams. Before joining Whiterock she spent around ten years in PwC Corporate Finance, where she prepared business plans and detailed integrated financial projections for business start-ups, expansions and acquisitions — background that underpins her hands-on approach to structuring deals. In total she has over 15 years of experience in fund management and corporate finance.

In her current role she is responsible for sourcing and executing investment transactions for the Investment Fund for Northern Ireland. She led the successful deployment of Whiterock's Growth Finance Fund and previously managed the Growth Loan Fund portfolio, backing SMEs across a broad range of sectors. She is also involved in Whiterock's £75m Growth Capital Fund (announced March 2024), the largest locally managed equity fund for the region, backed by £45m from the British Business Bank and £30m from private investors, targeting minority equity stakes of £1m–£5m in up to 20 companies over five years.

Note: aggregator profiles (Crunchbase, Tracxn) tag Rhona as an "angel investor" based in Belfast, dating her entry into the startup ecosystem to Whiterock's 2020 investment in Artemis Human Capital and focusing on Business Services. Her substantive work, however, is as a professional fund manager deploying institutional growth capital rather than as a personal seed-stage angel.

• Invests through Whiterock's managed funds into ambitious, growth-stage Northern Ireland SMEs — addressing the region's structural funding/equity gap. Paul Millar (CEO) frames the mission: *"While funding options have improved for companies, independent research has found there is still a clear equity gap in Northern Ireland when it comes to locally based private equity investors."*
• Growth/debt finance: loans typically in the ~£0.5m range and up (e.g. £500k for Sensoteq; £1m for CATAGEN) via the Growth Finance Fund to fund sales, hiring and expansion.
• Growth equity: £1m–£5m minority stakes through the £75m Growth Capital Fund, targeting digital, fintech, life sciences, agri-tech and advanced manufacturing.
• Favours companies with clear expansion plans, job creation and the ability to scale beyond the local market (several portfolio companies have expanded into GB / Central London).
• Values rigorous financials and credible business plans — a reflection of her chartered-accountant and PwC corporate-finance grounding.