Summary of the impact

According to the European Commission, over ninety nine per cent of Europe's businesses are SMEs. Their success is crucial for local enterprise, employment and taxation revenue. However, such organisations face major obstacles to accessing additional equity that typically are not faced by large corporations. This research has changed the way some Italian SMEs make decisions about the relative proportion of short-and long-term debt through adopting an optimisation model developed at Leicester's School of Management and which is now being rolled out in Italy and the UK. The Italian firms involved have reduced their cost of borrowing and enhanced their reputation with banks, hence making it easier for them to access more credit.