Financing in SMEs: Case of the Baltic States

Ramona Rupeika-Apoga

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Procedía - Social and Behavioral Sciences 150 (2014) 116 - 125

10th International Strategic Management Conference

Financing in SMEs: Case of the Baltic States

Ramona Rupeika-Apogaa *

a University of Latvia, Riga,LV-1059,Latvia

Abstract

Access to finance represents one of the most significant challenges for SMEs' ent repreneurs. To ensure SMEs creation, existence and growth it is vitally important to understand the financing needs of SMEs and entrepreneurs, the main obstacles to finance availability and accessibility. The study indicates the difficulties in SMEs financing for the three Baltic States and provides the governments and other stakeholders with a tool to understand SMEs' financing needs. The study results highlight importance of alternative resources of external financing for small developing countries such as the Baltic ones and the need to support the design and evaluation of policy measures and to monitor the implications of financial reforms on SMEs' access to finance.

Peer-review under responsibility of the International Strategic Management Conference. Keywords: SMEs financing, access to finance, alternative finance recourses, the Baltic States

1. Introduction

2008-2009 financial crises has effected availability of external financing for SMEs more dramatically than large enterprises, in the form of higher interest rates, shortened maturities and increased request for collateral. As a result nowadays access to finance represents one of the most significant challenges for SMEs' entrepreneurs. In the Baltic States SMEs form the largest part of companies, providing the majority of jobs. Nevertheless, SMEs commonly follow "niche strategies," using high product quality, flexibility, and responsiveness to customer needs as a means of competing with large-scale mass

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +371 29331977. E-mail address: rr@lu.lv.

Peer-review under responsibility of the International Strategic Management Conference. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.09.013

producers (see, for example, Hallberg, 2000 and Snodgrass, 1996), many researchers have highlighted the shortage of financial resources and access to finance as one of the main barriers to SMEs innovation capacity. Baltic companies find difficult to obtain commercial bank financing, especially long-term loans, for a number of reasons, including lack of collateral, difficulties in proving creditworthiness, small cash flows, inadequate credit history, high risk premiums, underdeveloped bank-borrower relationships and high transaction costs.

Over the past two decades, the Baltic exchanges have strived to address their clients' needs by employing the latest developments and innovations, and in taking the lead in reforming the securities market. This process has been accelerated by integrating with one of the world's largest exchange operator and technology supplier across six continents, NASDAQ OMX Group. Altogether, above eighty companies are listed on two Baltic equities lists, which had a market cap of around EUR 5.8 billion in July 2013. The biggest equity market is in Lithuania, then in Estonia and the smallest in Latvia. For SMEs the equity market is more available than the bond market. Unfortunately, the choice of making company shares available for public purchase is in most cases only possible for already well known and with good reputation as well with high growth potential ones. Only in such cases companies can attract investors and to raise public interest. There are strict entry requirements imposed on companies wishing to go ahead with this process. Nevertheless such small listed company quantity and market cap shows that capital market availability is even more problematic than banking loans.

Alternative financing: business angels, venture capital funds, different government support programs and seed funding, can become the solution for funding attraction, especially for new SMEs as in the Baltic States as over the world.

The study starts with a literature review in order to highlight the importance of access to finance as a main challenge that face SMEs and the need of traditional and alternative funding, then will go on to development of hypotheses. The analysis conducted in this paper is based on data and statistics provided mainly by the Baltic States Central banks, Venture Capital funds and grants programmes, by certain empirical studies and by the World economic forum data base. Research methodology, analyses results and research model will take place at third section. The results of the analyses will be discussed and recommendation will be provided for companies' managers and academician at the last section.

2. Literature Review And Hypotheses

2.1. Access to finance as a challenge for SMEs' existence

Over 2007-2010 in most countries, SMEs faced more severe credit conditions that did large enterprises, in the form of higher interest rates, shortened maturities and increased request for collateral (OECD, 2012). After a slight improvement in 2010, credit conditions tightened in most countries in 2011, possibly triggered by an increased awareness of risk on the part of lending institutions. In the Euro area, trends in nominal interest rates reflected tensions on sovereign debt, which increased at the end of 2011, as the interest rate on national debt is usually a lower threshold for the cost of financing in the remaining sectors. A broad range of studies based on various surveys have highlighted that access to finance is one of the main challenges in the way of companies' growth and development, especially in the case of small and medium enterprises (Peachey, 2004; Beck, 2006; Beck, 2008; ECB, 2012). Numerous studies that use

firm-level survey data demonstrate that access to finance and the cost of credit pose barriers to SME financing (Scholtens, 1999; Schiffer, 2001; Galindo, 2003; IADB, 2004; Beck, 2006(a); Beck, 2006 (b)). Similar results were found also in other studies: access to credit is one of the biggest constraints for SMEs in Colombia (Stephanou, 2008); lack of access to finance together with management, labour skills and regulation are the main constraints to growth of SMEs in the UK (Binks, 1997); inability to raise external finance in Slovenia is one of the main obstacles for the SME sector underdevelopment (Hutchinson, 2006); lack to access of external finance is one of the main problems in most of Central and Eastern Europe (Anderson, 1997; Budina, 2000; Gros, 2000; Konings, 2003).

Economic activity survey data, done by Russian Rosstat in October 2013, highlighted that 5,6 thousand companies found the lack of access to finance as the third main obstacle to doing business (36% of respondents ), whereas the most important obstacles are insufficient demand in the domestic market (50%) and high level of taxation (41%). Only 25% of managers have mentioned too high loan interest rate as a problem for company development, placing the uncertainty of the economic situation (33%) and lack of skilled workers (27%) as more problematic ones. (Rosstat, 2013)

In a survey of entrepreneurs conducted by the Gaidar Institute (Russia) recently, only 4% of businesses complained about the unavailability of loans. That places this factor on the last - 14 position. On the first place was mentioned - weak demand (60%), followed by lack of clarity of government economic policy and staff shortages. (RBC, 2013)

Conducted literature and surveys review shows that importance of access to finance significantly differs by country development level, business environment and economic prospects.

H1: Access to finance is one of the main challenges for SMEs to doing business in the Baltic States 2.2. Alternative finance resources

When a company wants to raise money, one of its first decisions is whether to do so by bank lending or by issuing bonds and shares. In the 20th century, most company finance, apart from share issues was raised by bank loans. But since about 1980 there has been an ongoing trend for disintermediation, where large and credit worthy companies have found they effectively have to pay out less in interest if they borrow from the capital markets rather than banks. The tendency for companies to borrow from capital markets instead of banks has been especially strong in the US, whereas in Europe the most popular external resources of finances are bank loans, bank overdrafts, trade credits, when other resources as securities, venture capital and other funds are seldom used. In 2013, euro area SMEs reported smaller deterioration (-11%) in the availability of bank loans compared with previous year (-21%), a smaller deterioration in the availability of bank overdrafts (-12%, after -14%), while availability of trade credit remained broadly unchanged at -6%. At the same time, when looking at developments across euro area countries in detail, the picture becomes more mixed. On the one hand, SMEs in most countries indicated, on balance, a smaller deterioration in the availability of bank loans in the period from April to September 2013 compared with the previous survey round: the positive change was very strong in Portugal (2%, up from -32%), in Ireland (-7%, up from -22%), in Spain (-7%, up from -17%) and to a lesser extent in Greece (-33%, up from -40%). On the other hand, the degree of the reported deterioration increased in a number of other countries, in particular in Italy (-22%, after -7%), the Netherlands (-29%, after -23%) and Belgium (-22%, after -15%). Germany was the only country where SMEs continued to report, on balance, improved availability of bank loans (4%, after 7%) (ECB, 2013)

Availability of financial funds strongly depends on company development level, the bigger and familiar you are the broader choices you have. What is important, is that for new companies alternative resources: business angels, venture capital funds, different government support programs and seed funding are more available than bank loans. This field for the Baltic States is rather new, but it's new also for other countries. As a result all countries (more or less) are in the same conditions and hopefully this market segment will be the way for the Baltic States to become innovative driven economies.

H2: The importance of alternative financing for the Baltic States is growing

3. Methodology

3.1. Research Goal

In this study the author aims to highlight importance of alternative funds as a source of external financing for the Baltic States SMEs. The research indicates the difficulties in SMEs financing and provides the governments and other stakeholders with a tool to understand SMEs' financing needs that helps to improve the access to financing for companies and to support the design and evaluation of policy measures and to monitor the implications of financial reforms on SMEs' access to finance.

During development of the paper the generally accepted qualitative and quantitative methods of economic research were used including comparative analysis and synthesis, graphical illustration methods.

3.2. Sample and Data Collection

The analysis conducted in this paper is based on data and statistics provided mainly by the Baltic States Central banks, Venture Capital funds and grants programmes, by certain empirical studies and by the World economic forum data base.

3.3.Analyses and Results

Survey on the access to finance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the euro area conducted by ECB has highlighted that in 2013 "Access to finance" was second ranked most pressing problem faced by SMEs in the Euro Area (16%), with a wide divergence across countries, with similar results in previous years (see Fig 1).

On the high side, 32% of the SMEs in Greece, 23% in Spain and 20% in Ireland, Italy and the Netherlands mentioned access to finance as the most pressing problem, compared with around 8% of the SMEs in Germany and Austria on the low side (see Fig. 2).

Finding customers is the main concern for euro area SMEs (24% of euro area SMEs), whereas availability of skilled staff or experienced managers (14%) and cost of production or labour were mentioned as other very important obstacles for doing business.

Fig. 1 Country contributions to the most pressing problem faced by euro area SMEs, country contributions to percentage of respondents (ECB, 2013)

Germany -Spain -France -Euro area

Fig. 2. Access to finance in SMEs as the most pressing problem for euro area, percent of respondents (ECB, Statistical Data Warehouse)

Across euro area countries, when asked how pressing "access to finance" is as a problem in their current situation, a very large percentage of firms in Greece (61%), Spain and Italy (both 50%) and, to a lesser extent, Portugal (40%) reported that this is a very pressing problem (scale 7-10), while the corresponding percentage in Germany and Belgium is around 30% and in Finland it drops to 24%. At the same time, 55% of firms in Finland, 45% in Belgium, and 43% in Germany and Austria considered access to finance a not pressing problem (scale 1-3) (ECB, 2013).

In accordance with SME Finance forum data, access to finance is the major problem for % of all SMEs in Latvia and Lithuania (see table 1) and mostly companies are using loans (about 20% of all companies) or overdrafts (about 10% ). Almost half of the companies have stated that they don't need credit and companies that received loans had gotten them from private commercial banks (about 80%).

Table 1 Access to finance as major/ severe barrier in the Baltic States SMEs (SME Finance forum data)

Latvia Lithuania Estonia

Access to finance as major/ severe barrier 27% 25% 10%

Nr of Enterprises 120 071 210 916 75 637

The results of the conducted analysis support H1- Access to finance is one of the main challenges for SMEs to doing business in the Baltic States as well in Europe and that importance of access to finance significantly differs on country development level, business environment and economic prospects.

As was mentioned previously SMEs are mostly using bank loans and bank overdrafts, but importance of alternative financing resources are becoming more and more actual, especially for SMEs and new companies. Venture capital (VC) is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth start-up companies, that often focuses on knowledge-based or innovative industry sectors. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as biotechnology, IT, software etc. The typical venture capital investment occurs after the seed funding round as growth funding round in the interest of generating a return through an eventual realization event, such as an IPO or trade sale of the company. Venture capital is a subset of private equity. Therefore, all venture capital is private equity, but not all private equity is venture capital. (Private Equity.) In addition to angel investing and other seed funding options, venture capital is attractive for new companies with limited operating history that are too small to raise capital in the public markets and have not reached the point where they are able to secure a bank loan or complete a debt offering. In exchange for the high risk that venture capitalists assume by investing in smaller and less mature companies, venture capitalists usually get significant control over company decisions, in addition to a significant portion of the company's ownership (and consequently value). The investor will be seeking to make a profit on their investment by selling their stake in the business after between 5 and 7 years. Venture capital can be provided by a firm of venture capitalists or by an individual business angel.

Business angels are wealthy, entrepreneurial individuals who provide capital in return for a proportion of your company's shares. They take a high personal risk in the expectation of owning part of a growing and successful business. Even though business angels are wealthy individuals, the funding that they would be prepared to invest in a company is normally quite reduced in comparison to the funding that other sources, such as institutions or organisations, are willing to supply. It may prove difficult to identify a business angel as they are often hard to discover. However there are a number of initiatives which aim to establish contact between business angels and interested companies. Examples of such initiatives are national "Business Angel Networks" or the "European Business Angel Network".

Venture capital availability also characterises how innovative the country is. From the analysis of access to venture capital in the Baltic States (see fig.3) the author concluded that Estonian financial market is more innovative comparing with Latvia's and Lithuania's and, what is very positive, more creative than average EU-15 markets. It would be fair to say that Estonia was leading the group with more local VC's, angels and investments than in other Baltic countries, that partly can be explained by success of such companies as MicroTask and of course Skype. However in the last couple of years Latvia and Lithuania have made a lot of efforts to catch up and it's expected a lot of new companies will come in the future. The crisis in general affected negatively also this market, but it catalysed Lithuanian and Latvian markets to look for new non-traditional finance possibilities. Perhaps the most important reason for this is the JEREMIE initiative which in 2007 was started by the European Commission together with

the European Investment Bank and European Investment Fund (EIF). The EIF's main purpose is to provide funding for SME's and it is shareholders are the European Investment Bank, the European Commission and 30 privately owned financial institutions. The agreement for a JEREMIE holding fund was signed in July 2008 between Latvian Ministry of Economics and EIF. Similarly in October of 2008 the same agreement was signed in Lithuania in the amount of 290 million EUR. The funds will provide start-up and expansion financing to companies, taking equity stakes between EUR 0.3 - 3m. These initiatives resulted in two new funds in Latvia: Imprimatur Capital and BaltCap; and four funds in Lithuania: BaltCap, Business Angels Fund, LitCap and Practica Capital. These are early stage funds, that invest into ICT but not all of them are focused just on the ICT sector (Sarle D.).

Estonia, on the other hand did not join the JEREMIE initiative but the Estonian Parliament created their own national development fund called Arengufond with an ability to make venture capital investments. Nevertheless the country has a number of private VC's and angels such as: MTVP, Ambient Sound Investment, and recently established business angels network EstBAN. Speaking about seed funding, Latvia with Lithuania are ahead comparing with Estonia.

In some market segments the competition among venture investors is rather tight, involving five and more market players. Financing can be provided to business projects worth over 50 000EUR and can succeed hundreds of millions. Although the overall market in the Baltic States is small, it is also one of the reasons for growth. Since the companies realize very quickly that the home market will simply be too small to generate decent revenues, they have to become global, which is also why international VC's and investors are interested in the region.

Grants are generally used to fund the early stages of a project. If it is a research project, it is best to apply for a grant, as investors, are they venture capitalists, business angels or banks, will generally not be interested unless the outcomes of the project can be marketed and are expected to produce a profit.

There are a large number of grants available which are offered by governments, local bodies, sector-specific schemes or even Europewide programmes. In the Baltic markets offered grant schemes are not as broad as in other European countries, for example in UK, but this only question of time. Not only government support is possible to receive, national and regional authorities offer granting schemes as well. There are a number of free and subscription websites that list available grants and help

entrepreneurs to find the grant. The importance of SMEs involved in innovation within the European market has been recognised and important European entities, such as the European Commission, the European Investment Bank and the European Investment Fund, have generated schemes to support innovation within SMEs.

Applying for a particular grant it is important to understand, that grants are available according to certain criteria. These may be related to the industrial sector, the target group, particular development methods or processes, size of the project, etc. A lot of entrepreneurs in the Baltic States consider the applying process too bureaucratic: too much work for rather small financial support.

In table 2 the author reflected her personal knowledge of financial resources availability in the Baltic markets. The summary is general, and of course shifts in both directions are possible.

Availability of financial funds strongly depends on company development level, the bigger and familiar you are the broader choices you have. What is important, that for new companies alternative funds are more available: business angels, venture capital funds, different government support programs and seed funding. This field for Baltic States is rather new, but it's new also for other countries as a result all countries (more or less) are in the same conditions and as showed previous analysis the Baltic States so far showed rather good results and hopefully this market segment will be the way for Baltic states to become innovative driven economies.

Table 2 Access to finance for new and small/ unknown companies

Amounts (EUR) Bank loans Securities FF(family and friends) Grants Business angels Venture capital funds

Without collateral With collateral

<10 000 + + + + +

<50 000 + + + + +

<100 000 + + + + +

< 1 mln. + + +

Analysing availability of financial services in the Baltic States in general, the author concluded that in Estonia companies and individuals have better access than in Latvia and Lithuania, ranking Estonia in 43 place (2012), within 45 best countries, at the same level as Slovak Republic and Czech Republic, and not far from Japan's and Israel's levels. Whereas Latvia's and Lithuania's positions are 65 and 74 respectively, placing Latvia at the same level as Jamaica and Colombia, and for Lithuania - Uganda and Zambia. Whereas access to finance is significantly better in Estonia, the affordability of financial services is rather similar in the all Baltic countries, placing Latvia and Estonia in 58 and 59 places out of 144 countries, and Lithuania in 73rd place. By evaluating the positions of the Baltic States in the world countries ranks, Latvia shows an improved affordability of financial services when compared with access to services, whereas in Estonia the situation is opposite, as for Lithuania in both determinants situation is the same.

Conducted analysis supports H2 by emphasising the importance of alternative financing for the Baltic States.

4. Conclusion

Conducted empirical analysis proves that SMEs' access to finance in the Baltic States is one of the major obstacles to doing business in the Baltic States as well as in the rest of Europe and availability of

alternative financing for the Baltic States is improving. As a result H1 (access to finance is one of the main challenges for SMEs to doing business in the Baltic States) and H2 (the importance of alternative financing for the Baltic States is growing) are fully supported.

Availability of financial funds strongly depends on company development level, the bigger and familiar you are the broader choices you have. What is important, that for new companies alternative resources: business angels, venture capital funds, different government support programs and seed funding are more available than bank loans. This field for the Baltic States is rather new, but it's new also for other countries as a result all countries (more or less) are in the same conditions and hopefully this market segment will be the way for the Baltic states to become innovative driven economies. The Baltic States Governments responded to the global financial crisis and its effects on SME financing with a variety of instruments. The most popular measure was loan guarantee programmes, which expanded substantially over 2007-2011. Furthermore, new elements were added to these programmes, or new instruments were created outside of the traditional guarantee programmes. Other public instruments to enhance SME finance included direct loans, micro loans, export guarantees, and support for risk capital (equity) either in the form of co-financing or tax credits for investors.

Although there are the rather broad government support programmes the author considers that slow development of alternative funding is partly to do with:

• the slow implementation of activities;

• economic recession that supressed both lenders and borrowers;

• the lack of experience in both the Baltic administration and in the European Investment Fund in dealing with JEREMIE (in Latvia and Lithuania);

• inflexible rules for using European Investment Fund in Cohesion policy. The main caveats and directions for improvement for policy makers are as follows:

• business regulatory reforms including the reduction of administrative barriers and the strengthening of access to finance, as well as support for access to external markets and encouragement of greater inflows of foreign direct investment to export-oriented sectors;

• stronger supervision and regulation of financial intermediaries;

• revaluation of institutional and market infrastructure.

The current study is not free from limitations. Its current sample consists of World Banks Doing business and World Forum statistics of companies by years; therefore, these findings may have limited generalizability. Future studies that replicate the current proposal, including panel data of non-financial firms listed on Nasdaq OMX Stock Exchange, may provide a more complete picture or add further dimensions to the current findings.

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Financing in SMEs: Case of the Baltic States Academic research paper on "Economics and business"

Abstract of research paper on Economics and business, author of scientific article — Ramona Rupeika-Apoga

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Academic research paper on topic "Financing in SMEs: Case of the Baltic States"