termination of JOP, fading out of JEV).

4. SMEs need company and income taxation systems, which strengthen their capacity for self-financing

Many EU Member States have company and income taxation systems with negative incentives to build-up capital within the company by re-investing their profits. This is especially true for companies, which have to pay income taxes. Already in the past tax-regimes was one of the reasons for the higher dependence of Europe’s SMEs on bank lending. In future, the result of rating will also depend on the amount of capital in the company; the high dependence on lending will influence the access to lending. This is a vicious cycle, which has to be broken.

Even though company and income taxation falls under the competence of Member States, UEAPME asks the new European Commission and the new European Parliament to publicly support tax-reforms, which will strengthen the capacity of Crafts, Trades and SME for self-financing. Thereby, a special focus on non-corporate companies is needed.

5. Risk Capital – equity financing

External equity financing does not have a real tradition in the SME sector. On the one hand, small enterprises and family business in general have traditionally not been very open towards external equity financing and are not used to informing transparently about their business.

On the other hand, many investors of venture capital and similar forms of equity finance are very reluctant regarding investing their funds in smaller companies, which is more costly than investing bigger amounts in larger companies. Furthermore it is much more difficult to set out of such investments in smaller companies.

Even though equity financing will never become the main source of financing for SMEs, it is an important instrument for highly innovative start-ups and fast growing companies and it has therefore to be further developed. UEAPME sees three pillars for such an approach where policy support is needed:

Availability of venture capital

? The Member States should review their taxation systems in order to create incentives to invest private money in all forms of venture capital.

? Guarantee instruments for equity financing should be further developed. Improve the conditions for investing venture capital into SMEs

? The development of secondary markets for venture capital investments in

SMEs should be supported.

? Accounting Standards for SMEs should be revised in order to ease transparent exchange of information between investor and owner-manager.

Owner-managers must become more aware about the need for transparency towards investors

? SME owners will have to realise that in future access to external finance (venture capital or lending) will depend much more on a transparent and open exchange of information about the situation and the perspectives of their companies.

? In order to fulfil the new needs for transparency, SMEs will have to use new information instruments (business plans, financial reporting, etc.) and new management instruments (risk-management, financial management, etc.).

Title:

Financing of SMEs

Abstract

The main sources of financing for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are equity, trade credit paid on time, long and short term bank credits, delayed payment on trade credit and other debt. The marginal costs of each financing instrument are driven by asymmetric information and transactions costs associated with nonpayment. According to the Pecking Order Theory, firms will choose the cheapest source in terms of cost. In the case of the static trade-off theory, firms choose finance so that the marginal costs across financing sources are all equal, thus an additional Euro of financing is obtained from all the sources whereas under the Pecking Order Theory the source is determined by how far down the Pecking Order the firm is presently located. In this paper, we argue that both of these theories miss the point that the marginal costs are dependent of the use of the funds, and the asset side of the balance sheet primarily determines the financing source for an additional Euro. An empirical analysis on a unique dataset of Portuguese SME’s confirms that the composition of the asset side of the balance sheet has an impact of the type of financing used and the Pecking Order Theory and the traditional Static Trade-off theory are rejected.www.fuguangzhuzao.com

For SME’s the main sources of financing are equity (internally generated cash), trade credit, bank credit and other debt. The choice of financing is driven by the costs of the sources which is primarily determined by costs of solving the asymmetric information problem and the expected costs associated with non-payment of debt. Asymmetric information costs arise from collecting and analysing information to support the decision of extending credit, and the non-payment costs are from collecting the collateral and selling it to recover the debt. Since SMEs’ management and shareholders are often the same person, equity and internally generated funds have no asymmetric information costs and equity is therefore the cheapest source.

2. Asset side theory of SME financing

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In the previous section we have suggested that SME’s in Portugal are financed using internal generated cash, cheap trade credits, long and short-term bank loans and expensive trade credits and other loans. In this section the motives behind the different types of financing are discussed.

2.1. Cheap Trade credits

The first external financing source we will discuss is trade-credits. Trade credits are interesting since they represent financial services provided by non-financial firms in competition with financial intermediaries. The early research within this area focused on the role of trade credits in relation to the credit channel or the so called “Meltzer” effect and in relation to the efficiency of monetary policy. The basic idea is that firms with direct access to financial markets, in general large well known firms, issue trade credits to small financially constrained firms . The more recent research breaks the role of trade credits into a strategic motive and financial motive for issuing and using these credits.

Strategic motives

The first theory centers on asymmetric information regarding the firm’s products. Trade credits are offered to the buyers so that the buyer can verify the quantity and quality before submitting payments. By offering trade finance the supplier signals to the buyers that they offer products of good quality. Since small firms, in general, have no reputation then these firms are forced to use trade credits to signal the quality of their products. The use of trade credits is therefore driven by asymmetric information of the products and is therefore more likely to be used by small firms, if the buyer has little information about the supplier, or the products are complicated and it is difficult to asses their quality.

The second strategic motive is pricing. Offering trade finance on favorable terms is the same as a price reduction for the goods. Thus firms can use trade credits to promote sales without officially reducing prices or use them as a tool for price discrimination between different buyers. Trade credits are most advantageous to risky borrowers since their costs of alternative financing are higher than for borrowers with good credit ratings. Thus trade credits can be used as tool for direct price

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