geo/europe-and-central-asia
By invitation only
To take stock of the collective efforts of institutions and governments around the world regarding the impact of COVID-19 outbreak, the SME Finance Forum organizes weekly virtual roundtables designed to support members by providing a space to share experiences and knowledge through the industry’s leading voices.
The EIF Working Paper 2020/062: The Business Angel portfolio under the European Angels Fund: An empirical analysis.
This working paper, from member EIF, analyses the Business Angel (BA) portfolio of the European Angels Fund (EAF), which is an initiative of the European Investment Fund and engages in co-investment relationships with experienced business angels across Europe.
The present study, presented in Brussels, analyses whether sharing more comprehensive data improves the functioning of credit markets in European countries. Assuming that mechanisms to share data do exist, does a higher comprehensiveness in the data collected matter for credit markets?
Over the next five years, Mastercard and SumUp will bring electronic payment acceptance to several million small and medium-sized companies across Europe. This partnership is yet another significant step in displacing cash and driving financial inclusion for small European businesses and supporting their entry into the formal economy.
SME access to finance conditions improved considerably in Slovenia, Estonia, Czech Republic and Croatia and also in Belgium and Portugal as per the European Investment Fund (EIF) SME Access to Finance Index June 2019 update. #eifsmes
Europe’s digital gap with the world’s leaders is now being compounded by an emerging gap with the world’s leaders in its development and adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Without faster and more comprehensive engagement in AI, that gap could widen. Europe may not need to compete head to head but rather in areas where it has an edge (such as in business-to-business [B2B] and advanced robotics) and continue to scale up one of the world’s largest bases of technology developers into a more connected Europe-wide web of AI-based innovation hubs.
Having sufficient access to finance is an important determinant for the development of an enterprise. It is a well-known phenomenon that SMEs face different challenges when accessing finance than large scale enterprises (LSEs). LSE’s for instance, have direct access to capital markets whereas for SMEs this holds to a lesser extent or they have no access at all. Ultimately, the specific financing needs of SMEs warrant specific policy attention.
The new EIF interactive map lets you search for businesses supported by EU-financing in your neighborhood.
Research & Market Analysis (RMA) has the presents "Financing Micro Firms in Europe: An Empirical Analysis", n.44 of EIF's Working Paper Series.
The European Investment Fund (EIF) and ProCredit Group are providing an additional EUR 450 million to innovative small and medium-sized companies (SMEs). This brings a total of EUR 820 million to companies in eleven countries.
