Despite the challenging environment, the EIF significantly increased its activity both in numbers and in volumes of transactions committing a record EUR 12.9bn through 412 transactions in 2020, compared to EUR 10.2bn in 382 transactions in 2019.
Of the EUR 12.9bn, the EIF committed close to EUR 3.6bn in the form of equity investments, helping many first time and emerging managers to close their funds, and more than EUR 9.1bn in guarantees and securitisation for the benefit of European SMEs, often encouraging the expansion of these financial instruments to new regions and new markets. Inclusive finance also remained important to our strategy as over EUR 150m were committed to this segment.
Much emphasis was placed on helping Europe’s SMEs survive the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic and in sustaining European competitiveness through supporting the development of new technologies, with a growing emphasis on the digital and green transformations.
