Europe and Central Asia

Entrepreneurship development is an important requirement for achieving of smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. It is also a means to respond to new economic challenges, to create jobs and to fight social and financial exclusion. The impact of the global financial and economic crisis calls for giving entrepreneurship and self-employment a stronger role in economic and social development policies.

Better late than never, you might say. Five years after the financial crisis almost instantaneously wiped out the funding market for small and medium-sized enterprises across the European Union, the European Commission has finally got round to addressing its own contribution to the blockage.

New rules unveiled by the Commission today finally free the EU’s member states from the red tape that has prevented them from doing more to help SMEs – and medium-sized companies too – to access the funding they need to grow and develop. At least that’s the idea.

Amid all the noise about how companies – particularly small and medium-sized European ones – have been starved of bank lending since the 2008 financial crisis, it is easy to lose touch with reality.

The fact is that lending to non-financial companies increased last year. According to new data from Allen & Overy, the law firm, new loans were up globally by an average of 30 per cent. Bond issuance, up 4 per cent, is also taking up some of the slack of earlier bank lending.

The European Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme offers unprecedented conditions to tech and manufacturing SMEs including about €9bn (£7.5bn) of available funding.

It is a truism that banks no longer play the dominant role of funding small businesses. Where competition is allowed to flourish and markets rule this funding gap is be filled by innovative new platforms. The United Kingdom is a country leading this change.
From Peer-to-Peer lending to Equity Crowdfunding, many in the UK have embraced the opportunity offered by alternative forms of finance.

Some interesting facts from this info graphic include:

Leaseurope, the European Federation of Leasing Company Associations, was founded in 1972. Since April 2006, Leaseurope, represents as an umbrella body both the leasing and automotive rental industries in Europe, and is composed of 44 Member Associations in 33 countries.
Leaseurope's mission is essentially to represent and promote the interests of its members as the expert and natural voice of the European leasing and automotive rental industries.

Some start-ups have found the crowdfunding experience much tougher than they expected.
Crowdfunding websites have caught the imagination of millions of web users, providing businesses and creative ventures with a platform to appeal for money.