This analysis provides an overview of the main markets relevant to the EIF. It starts by discussing the general market environment, then looks at the main aspects of equity finance and the guarantee and SME securitisation markets. It also highlights important aspects of microfinance in Europe....

The collective sale of football broadcasting rights constitutes a cartel, which, in the European Union, is only allowed if it complies with a number of conditions and obligations, inter alia, partial unbundling and the no-single-buyer rule. These regulations were defined with traditional...

This report discusses the activity of credit guarantee schemes (CGSs) in Western Europe and presents an analysis based on a novel survey, conducted by the European Investment Bank (EIB) Group , among 18 credit guarantee organisations in 13 countries and 33 banks operating in 17 countries. The...

Financial regulation in sports is usually discussed in the context of representing an instrument against "financial doping". Notwithstanding the merits of this discussion, this paper takes the opposite perspective and analyses how market-internal financial regulation itself may anticompetitively...

This European Small Business Finance Outlook (ESBFO) provides an overview of the main markets relevant to EIF (equity, guarantees, securitisation, microfinance). It is an update of the December 2017 ESBFO edition. We start by discussing the general market environment, then look at the main...

The vast majority of firms in Europe are micro firms. Still, we know little about their financing patterns. Our paper aims to close this gap. Based on a large European firm-level data set, we find that micro firms differ in their financing patterns from small and medium-sized companies. Our...