KfW and the Capital Markets Union Foundation Project with TSI as the business agent hosted a joint polical lunch in Berlin on 26 January. The “Financing the Transformation of the German SME Sector” was discussed over lunch by Katharina Beck, Member of the German Bundestag (MdB) and member of the KfW Board of Supervisory Directors, and Prof. Horst Gischer, co-author of the report “Die zukünftige Vernetzung der bankbasierten Unternehmensfinanzierung in Deutschland mit den internationalen Kapitalmärkten” (in German only) with more than 30 attendees from the fields of politics, business and finance.
Currently, the sustainable transformation of the German economy poses challenges, especially for SMEs and their financing partners. SMEs need more access to bank balance sheets. However, the banks’ credit leeway falls short of the financing needs for investments in the sustainable transformation. This is also shown by the latest KfW Climate Barometer: in 2022, the momentum in financing, at 55 billion euros, fell well short of the required 120 billion euros per year by 2045.
Where is the additional momentum to come from? How can SME investments in sustainable transformation be financed? How can an appropriate networking of bank-based corporate financing with the international capital markets contribute to this?
In his opening statement, Prof. Gischer pointed out the necessity of securitisation to relieve the pressure on capital and thus to increase the banks’ credit leeway for the external financing of companies. MdB Beck also outlined starting points for strengthening internal financing. In the vivid discussion, there was consensus that securitisation may considerably contribute to financing the sustainable transformation of the German SME sector.
Open exchange and common understanding are the first steps towards meeting the upcoming challenges of SMEs in financing the sustainable transformation. In terms of economic policy, it is now time to concretise the announced solutions and finally implement them.
The short summary of the research report contains the central findings and recommendations of the authors Prof. Dr. Christoph Kaserer and Prof. Dr. Horst Gischer of the report “Die zukünftige Vernetzung der bankbasierten Unternehmensfinanzierung in Deutschland mit den internationalen Kapitalmärkten”: