Who is Who? European Tech lenders
Brief description of the main Venture Tech lenders in Europe: Banks, Funds, Alternatives, and other Institutional lenders.
European Venture Tech lending landscape is shaped by a wide range of players with different roles. Funds have been moving towards the banking territory increasing size and achieving competitive prices to Tech BlueChip lending while on the other hand, Banks have been willing to surf the Tech hype through a different number of initiatives.
In addition to this complex status-quo, Alternative lenders are offering structured finance to Tech SMEs and a whole new range of FinTech companies are successfully financing Tech businesses filling the gap historically unattended by banks or funds.
Despite this potpourri, Tech lending in Europe still remains at low levels. European Venture debt remains limited compared to the US where this asset class thrives and is present in c.20% of all VC transactions -vs. 5% in Europe- according to SVB. This is possibly due to the lack of maturity of the Venture Capital landscape in Europe and low competition compared to the US. Governments and other State-owned Institutions in Europe are doing a great job providing liquidity to Tech companies at an SME level and as a consequence the niche of Venture debt…