Long-term Finance for Infrastructure and Growth Companies in Europe

Published 4 Mar 2015

Long-term Finance for Infrastructure and Growth Companies in Europe makes a positive, powerful and evidentially based case for the benefits that long-term investment can bring to Europe. 

The report sets out detailed recommendations about how EU institutions, Member States’ governments, regulators and the industry can facilitate the promotion of long-term investment in infrastructure and higher growth companies and the lessons that can be learned from international best practice.

The report uses an econometric model developed by Accenture to quantify the impact on output and employment of an increase in infrastructure investment in the EU. Positive effect arise from additional spending in both the short and medium-term. More specifically, the findings show that increased spending on infrastructure would create an additional 125,000 jobs in a year in the EU and growth would increase by an average of 0.2 percentage points.

Key recommendations are: 

  • European Commission: deliver a transparent Infrastructure Plan with new instruments for long-term investment, promote international investment in EU projects and remove the bias towards debt over equity.
  • Member States’ Governments: make infrastructure planning transparent, reduce uncertainty and political risk, support growth companies to become ‘investor ready’
  • Central Banks: develop central credit registers and credit scoring standards and remove obstacles to securitisation to improve growth companies’ access to finance.
  • Financial Regulators and Supervisory Authorities: ensure capital ratio requirements enable long-term finance, support the MiFID SME Growth Market classification.
  • Financial Services Industry: create innovative products and instruments to increase non-bank finance for infrastructure and growth companies, work with the European Commission and Member State Governments to develop the project pipeline.