The European Investment Bank (EIB) has indicated that it wants to expand the European Tech Champions Initiative (ECTI) in order to turn the continent into a powerhouse of innovation.
According to a report in Science Business, the EIB sees the move as part of a wider plan to support companies in scaling up by ensuring capital injections from within the continent and not from abroad. It is understood that the EIB’s president Nadia Calviño met finance ministers in Luxembourg last week to discuss increasing equity and venture debt investment as well as an exit fund to finance the acquisition and listing of start-up technology firms.
The EIB said in a statement that the finance ministers welcomed the action plan, which covers three areas:
- Improving market integration for green and digital bonds
- Closing the funding gap throughout the company and innovation cycle
- Mobilising large-scale investments for EU policy priorities
It is understood that these proposals will be further discussed and finalised by the EIB’s Board of Directors, in partnership with the Commission.
Coming under these aims will be the expansion of the ETCI. This was a fund set up last year, with €3.85bn of capital, to tackle what the European Investment Fund determines to be the ‘European scale-up gap’. Its original determination was to make between 10 and 15 investments in large VC funds of around €1bn each, eventually mobilising over €10bn in investments.
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It is unclear at this point how and by how much the ETCI will be expanded. The money from the fund originates from Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
There are other indicators that the EIB is stepping up investment to support technological development across the continent. Yesterday, it announced in a release that it had approved €5.8bn to upgrade energy and transport connectivity points originating from Europe.
The EIB said that of the funding, €2.2bn was partitioned for power and water projects, €1.8bn was for urban and educational initiatives, and €1.1bn was for the transport sector. Another €765m was slated for business innovation in Austria, Finland, Ireland, and Slovenia.
That final figure includes venture debt financing for manufacturing innovation and life science research and development in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain, as well as targeted business financing programmes to support young and female entrepreneurs in Nigeria and green business investment in Mexico.
