Page 10 - bne_Tech_11_2020

Investment
November 2020 www.intellinews.com I Page 10
EIB invests $80mn in Lithuania’s SME Finance
Lithuanian debt financing firm SME Finance
has been allocated €80mn in funding from the European Investment Bank (EIB) to help it service small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) throughout the Baltics.
SME Finance is reportedly one of the leaders of non-banking financing in Baltics, which helps business to grow by offering quick and easy funding solutions through invoice financing (factoring) and business loans. The diversity
of products and flexibility are the main keys of alternative funding, the company says on its website. Companies in the transport, retail, wholesale, production and services sectors are among its clients.
The funding is the largest investment EIB has awarded to a fintech lender.
Mindaugas Mikalajunas, CEO of SME Finance, called the investment “timely and much-needed”, as the partnership combines “next-generation financial technology with public financing” and will enable “SMEs and midcaps across the Baltics to more quickly access financing”.
Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have seen the largest decline in bank loans awarded to SMEs across the EU region during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The first wave of funding from the EIB will reach businesses by the first half of 2021. The maximum factoring limit granted to individual enterprises will be capped at €5mn.
Approximately 60% will go to Lithuanian businesses, with the rest to be awarded to Latvian and Estonian enterprises.
Ex-official’s electric vehicle start-up valued at $5.4bn
The UK-based Arrival electric vehicle start-up, founded by Russian businessman and ex-Deputy Minister of Communications Denis Sverdlov, announced this week that it intends to IPO on Nasdaq with a $5.4bn valuation, reports The Bell.
Set up only a year ago, the company has been turning heads and has attracted investment from car companies Hyundai and Kia, package delivery firm UPS and asset manager BlackRock. Russian oligarch Vladimir Potanin is also reportedly an investor.
Arrival will take advantage of an accelerated placement scheme via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) and start trading on the Nasdaq exchange at the start of next year. CIIG Merger Corp. – headed by Peter Cuneo, former chief of Black & Decker, Remington and Marvel – will serve as the SPAC.
Arrival hopes to raise an estimated $660mn, valuing the company at $5.4bn. Sverdlov controls 75% of Arrival – an unusually large share for
any company founder after several rounds
of investment with blue-chip companies,
The Bell comments.
Sverdlov is best known for founding Yota, one
of the first Russian mobile internet providers
to appear in the 2000s, and also launched
a Russian-made mobile phone with the distinctive feature that it had screens on both sides of the phone. Sverdlov then went on to become Deputy Minister of Communications.
The former official set up Arrival in the UK, not least because it will be a long time before Russia has a market – or infrastructure – for electric vehicles (EVs).