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Contribution Details

Type Master's Thesis
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Title Alternative Finance in Europe with a Focus on Equity Crowdfunding
Organization Unit
Authors
  • Marisa Fruci
Supervisors
  • Thorsten Hens
  • Reto Wernli
Language
  • English
Institution University of Zurich
Faculty Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics
Number of Pages 58
Date 2020
Zusammenfassung Alternative finance is a topic that has been gaining a lot of attention in the last few years. The concept of alternative finance has been around for a while, but it has become more present and discussed since the financial crisis in 2007/2008 due to the increasing mistrust in banks. It is a feasible alternative especially for firms that have difficulties in receiving financing from tradi-tional banking instruments. There are various alternative finance sources and instruments that firms as well as individuals can use. One of the common sources is crowdfunding. Crowdfunding is a way to raise funds for innovative projects from the “crowd”, as the name itself says. The crowd is usually composed of many small investors in contrast to so-called “business angels” who are normally big investors supporting a start-up or innovative firm. This paper focuses on one specific type of crowd- funding: equity crowdfunding in Europe. While the crowdfunding volume in Europe reaches a decent percentage, equity crowdfunding has a relatively low market share, but with a promising growth in the future. The use of equity crowdfunding has been growing steadily in most European countries, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to further explore the topic. In addition, many aspects of the phenomenon remained unresearched today. This paper is structured in two parts. In the first part, I analyzed the application of alternative finance in Europe using the SAFE (Survey on the access to finance of enterprise) data provided by the European Central Bank. By conducting a trend analysis over 10 survey waves (from 2014 to 2018), no clear trend of an increased application could be proven. However, looking at the outcome in a holistic way, results showed that in the second half of the analyzed time, that is to say between 2016 and 2018, more firms used alternative finance sources in comparison to the first half of the analyzed time (2014-2016).
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