With the aim of making known the different financing options available to the companies of the middle market spanish, the Official Credit Institute (ICO) and the Cre100Do Foundation have recently organized a digital meeting.
In the framework of the session “ICO opportunities for the Cre100Do Community”, the president of the ICO, José Carlos García de Quevedo highlighted the role that the ICO plays as a strategic partner to promote the Business Growth. In addition, during his speech he stated that «In the ICO Group we work from public-private collaboration so that Spanish companies have a wide and diversified range of financial instruments to grow solidly, both in Spain and abroad, developing their competitiveness and acting as engines of generation of employment, innovation, developing new business models, products and solutions ».
The general director of Cre100Do, Rafael Vaquero, in the presentation of the event stated that «The purpose of this meeting is to establish a point of contact between the Cre100Do companies and the ICO. At Cre100Do we want to offer the community the possibility of knowing in greater detail how the ICO can be an ally in their financial needs, supporting long-term strategic projects aimed at topics as relevant as digitization, sustainability or business growth ”.
In this virtual session, two blocks of interaction were also held between representatives of the ICO and representatives of Cre100Do companies in which they have been able to share their experiences. On behalf of the ICO, Rosario Casero, General Director of Business and Guillermo Jiménez, General Director of Axis, ICO Group risk / private capital manager, and as representatives of the Cre100Do community, Guillermo García, economic and financial director of Grupo Sampol, and Emi Takehara, director of structured finance at Grenergy.
Complementary financing model
Guillermo García, pointed out the transformation that the change of a financing structure rooted in traditional banking entailed for Sampol to a complementary financing model that helped give it visibility in the main markets and sectors in which the company operates: “ICO helped us to advance in the professionalization of the company, providing us with quality advice and being one of our anchor investors in our first bond issue at MARF. Every time we set ourselves a strategic challenge, we count on ICO as one more ally, support is key and we greatly appreciate their fantastic way of doing things ».
For her part, Emi Takehara, declares that regarding investors «You have to choose your travel companions very well. ICO has accompanied us in the execution of highly complex projects in our main markets in Latin America; participates in all phases of the project with great financial flexibility. Now we are starting a phase of financing large-scale plants and we have the ICO-Axis as an ally ».
In the first session “ICO programs to finance the activity of the Spanish middle market” Rosario Casero explained that the ICO makes available to SMEs and midcaps versatile financing options to accompany them in their different phases of development and contribute to their consolidation and internationalization.
He also commented that the ICO has made direct financing programs more flexible – which until now were aimed at large investment projects – reducing the minimum investment ticket so that they are also accessible to companies with between 250 and 3,000 employees. In this sense, specific instruments are being developed to promote business growth with special attention to SMEs and midcaps.
Finally, he recalled that the ICO completes its offer with complementary financing instruments that allow companies to diversify the channels through which they obtain resources to carry out their development plans and thus enhance their growth.
In the second block “The activity of ICO-Axis. Complementary financing and private capital ”Guillermo Jiménez, stated that ICO promotes business growth and the entrepreneurial ecosystem in public-private collaboration by catalyzing resources through venture capital funds and private capital managed by Axis, the venture capital subsidiary of the ICO group .
In this sense, he pointed out that Axis’ activity is also focused on promoting the growth, development and internationalization of Spanish companies through equity and quasi-equity instruments from a public-private partnership scheme.
