Virtual IFB

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Investing in Employee Ownership Transitions – An Emerging Impact Investment thematic

We invite you with great pleasure to another exciting Impact for Breakfast session, this time showcasing the emerging field of financing SME transitions to employee ownership. Valloop (a specialist SME investment fund that transitions SMEs to employee ownership), the UK’s Employee Ownership Association and Innovest Advisory (a specialist impact advisor to the private funds industry) will discuss the frontier impact investment thematic of employee ownership.

In Europe, 99% of all businesses are SMEs, supporting 60% of employment and over 50% of all GDP[i] and tens of thousands of SME owners will seek to sell their businesses by 2030.  Many of these owners would like to sell their firms to their employees but will face significant challenges as the required financial products to enable them to do so do not exist.

As such employee ownership investing represents a rapidly growing, underserved and commercially viable alternative asset class gaining interest among impact investors globally.

The conversation will present the current issues SMEs face in transitioning to employee ownership models and explore how impact capital can play a central role in financing the transition. Specifically, we will also explore the growing desires of SME owners for financing to support employee ownership transitions and the positive social impacts generated through financing such transitions for the businesses, communities and employees. Finally, the discussion will present concrete examples of funding models that are aimed at supporting the needs of the market, carefully crafted to create greater financial and social value than traditional approaches.

Speaker:

• Stephen Greenwood, Founder and CEO, Valloop
• Baroness Sharon Bowles of Berkhamsted, Member of U.K. House of Lords
• Deb Oxley, Chief Executive of the Employee Ownership Association in the UK
• Justin Sykes, Managing Director, Innovest Advisory

Date: Wednesday, June 23, 2021
Time: 10 am - 11 am CET

Please find more details and the registration link here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIvfuqgqTkqEt2qaosZznS4QmDkYbtXXREg

We look forward to seeing you all virtually!

[i] https://globalnaps.org/issue/small-medium-enterprises-smes/ and https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/smefinance