geo/europe-and-central-asia
Crowdfunding of renewable energy projects is growing fast in Europe. If this grassroots movement gets organized in time to access the big money available in the next round of cohesion funding, it could have far reaching effects on the European energy sector.
This European Small Business Finance Outlook provides an overview of the main markets relevant to EIF (equityguarantees/securitisation, microfinance). It is an update of the European Small Business Finance Outlook from June 2013.
This short clip describes what leasing is and how it contributes to the European economy by supporting business investment. It shows how leasing is particularly well suited for SMEs, supports manufacturer sales and encourages sustainable investment and a more efficient use of resources.
While currently a marginal source of financing, crowdfunding is a rapidly growing new form of financing where a large number of people contribute money directly, or through a crowdfunding platform, to a campaign that is typically advertised over the internet. The Commission has taken some initiatives on crowdfunding in 2013 in the form of soft measures. The Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan included awareness-raising, facilitating web entrepreneurs' access to finance, and calling on Member States to adapt their financial legislation to accommodate crowdfunding.
From start-ups and venture capital firms to corporates, established financial institutions and private equity firms, Anthemis is catalysing and accelerating positive, disruptive change across the financial industry.
Convinced that reviving the moribund securitization market is the best way to channel funding to small and medium size enterprises, the ECB is now championing the financial technique at the centre of the systemic collapse five years ago. Convinced any U-turn is justified to support the small companies that might drive Europe's economic recovery, the ECB now finds itself at war with regulators still determined to clamp down hard on securitization.
2013 is likely to mark a turning point for the EU SMEs. After five years of an uncertain economic environment, 2013 is expected to be the first year since 2008 with a combined increase in aggregated employment and value-added of EU’s SMEs. The total employment in the EU SMEs is expected to increase by 0.3% and value-added by 1% as compared to 2011.
MyMicroInvest is a venture capital platform for start-ups and SMEs in Europe. MyMicroInvest uses the techniques of crowdfunding to give people the opporunity to select and invest alongside professional investors in high potential companies
Access to finance is still among the top concerns of the EU's small and medium sized enterprises and younger and smaller firms are the most badly affected, according to the "Access to Finance" survey released today by the European Commission and European Central Bank. About one third of the SMEs surveyed did not manage to get the full financing they had planned for during 2013 and 15% of survey respondents saw access to finance as a significant problem for their companies.
The new publication ‘Investment and Investment Finance in Europe’ by the Economics Department of the European Investment Bank (EIB) offers an analysis of the impact of the economic and financial crisis on investment and the financing of investment in Europe.
This publication contains an essay by EIF’s Research & Market Analysis entitled ‘Bottlenecks in SME financing’; it can be found on chapter 9, pp. 277 ff of the book.
