The president of the European Investment Bank (EIB), Nadia Calviño, announced this Tuesday that the entity is preparing the creation of a European "mega-fund" investment ecosystem, with sizes between 5,000 and 10,000 million euros, aimed at supporting innovative companies and projects by entrepreneurs on the continent.
In a round table held in Madrid with women entrepreneurs, within the conference "Four Decades of Shared Prosperity, the EIB Group in Spain", Calviño stressed that Europe has "the capacity" and "the talent", although she warned that "there is still great regulatory fragmentation of financial markets, of capital markets" which hinders the development of this type of initiative.
The president of the EIB also alluded to the consequences of Brexit on the European financial framework. "We must also be aware of the impact of Brexit, because the great European financial market was London," she said, recalling the role the City played as the main reference center.
Given this scenario, she announced that the EIB Group will deploy new instruments to strengthen the financing of innovative companies and "multiply the impact of creating an investment mega-fund ecosystem that is sufficiently powerful," she emphasized.
Calviño explained that two of these mega-funds have already been launched in Spain in the last two years, but insisted that it is essential that "they are not 1,000 million euros, but 5,000, 10,000 million euros," so that they have real traction capacity.
The former Minister of Economy argued that these investment vehicles should serve to ensure that innovative companies find sufficient resources to grow within the European market and that, when "a young person with talent and a great idea comes along," they can receive the necessary financing to become "a world leader" without having to leave Europe.
According to her, the Old Continent has a solid base in research and in the initial stages of innovation, but it is still necessary to strengthen the "scaling" capacity of business projects.
In this regard, she remarked that the challenge is not limited to the financial sphere, as "there is a regulatory framework that also has to favor this scaling" and that "has to favor European champions," so that they can compete on equal terms globally.
Calviño has also highlighted the EIB's role in supporting new technologies, considering that they will be "the key to a decarbonized, efficient future, with lower energy prices," thus contributing to the green transition and the improvement of competitiveness.
To conclude, she has warned that some of the principles on which the community project has been built are being "questioned or even openly attacked" and has called for the defense of democratic values against those who "want to destroy the European Union project," vindicating the importance of protecting European integration.