Successful business transfers: Essential for creating opportunities and preserving employment

This week, the European Association of Guarantee Institutions (AECM) is organising its annual general assembly combined with a seminar on the transfer of businesses, followed by a global summit of SME guarantee organisation leaders.

This three-day event in Porto brings together AECM members and policy makers from around the globe to discuss the European and global situation of SME's access to finance and the specific role that guarantee institutions play.

AECM members have been among the most important intermediaries for the distribution of financial instruments to SMEs under the CIP programme and currently account for 37% of all amounts signed under COSME.

At the event, director of the COSME programme, Kristin Schreiber, spoke about the economic importance of business transfers. Around 450,000 firms with 2 million employees transfer ownership across Europe every year, usually because the owner is retiring. Successfully transferred companies preserve on average 5 jobs.

The Commission supports business transfers through the Entrepreneurship Action Plan 2020 and the Loan Guarantee Facility of COSME provides opportunities for supporting business transfers financially.

More information

Transfer of businesses in the EU

The AECM seminar (21-25 June 2016)

COSME is the EU programme for the Competitiveness of Enterprises and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) running from 2014 to 2020 with a total budget of EUR 2.3 billion. At least 60% of the programme will be devoted to easing access to finance for SMEs in Europe, with two financial instruments. The COSME Loan Guarantee Facility supports guarantees and counter-guarantees to financial institutions to help them provide more loans and lease finance to SMEs. This facility also includes securitisation of SME debt finance portfolios. The COSME programme also invests through the COSME Equity Facility for Growth in equity funds that provide risk capital to SMEs mainly in the expansion and growth stages. The COSME programme builds on the success of the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP) (2007-2013) which helped to mobilise almost EUR 21 billion of loans and more than EUR 3 billion of venture capital to over 381,000 SMEs in Europe.

Businesses can contact selected financial institutions in their country to access EU financing: http://www.access2finance.eu/

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