Lee Wild

Small businesses offer investors a fantastic opportunity to back UK companies as they grow into the ARM's and Renishaw's of tomorrow. We continue to champion the cause of the thousands of hugely exciting, fast-growing companies listed on the London Stock Exchange, and follow with great interest the fortunes of those that are not. After all, it is they that are the lifeblood of the country's economy, the growth engine on which Britain depends.

The UK economy is growing faster than any of its rivals and should easily outperform the other advanced economies this year. The annual rate of inflation is running well below the Bank of England's target, too, at just 1.5%. Clearly, the pressure for an early rise in interest rates is off.

And that is incredibly important for Britain's army of almost five million small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Low interest rates not only keep the cost of borrowing down, but encourage the public to spend. That, in turn, encourages economic growth, vital for smaller businesses here which employ over 14 million people and generate annual turnover of £1.6 trillion.

Yet the significance of small British companies is often overlooked. We've all heard of ARM Holdings. It’s one of the world's most important semiconductor companies, designing computer chips for Apple's iPhone and Samsung. But it was once a tiny company called Acorn, building BBC Micro computer’s in Cambridge for secondary schools across the country.

Precision engineer Renishaw began making highly accurate measuring probes in a garage then a former ice cream factory in Gloucestershire. It worked on Concorde and is now worth £1.2 billion. Oxford Instruments invented the world’s first superconducting magnet in the early 1960s and is now capitalised at £623 million. And motor industry consultancy AB Dynamics, set up thirty years ago by one man and his wife in Bradford on Avon, is now making and exporting millions of pounds worth of machines and robots every year.

At Interactive Investor, we understand how small businesses work, and that they offer investors a fantastic opportunity to back British companies as they build and develop into the ARM's and Renishaw's of tomorrow.

Our readers understand that, too. Among them are 780,000 business professionals, of which 160,000 are owners of small and medium sized business themselves. The vast majority are invested in UK companies and make Interactive Investor their first-stop for serious, in-depth analysis of the AIM and small-cap sector.

We continue to champion the cause of the thousands of hugely exciting, fast-growing companies listed on the London Stock Exchange, and follow with great interest the fortunes of those that are not. For it is they that are the lifeblood of the country’s economy, the growth engine on which Britain relies so much.