SMES’ ACCESS TO FINANCE: AN OVERVIEW FROM SOUTHERN ITALY

In EU, despite Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) have a significant impact to the economy, they haven't adequate attention. Particularly, various researchers have focused their attention on larger and listed firms. This study aims to investigate the access to finance of SME. Access to finance is a key for business start-up, development and growth for SMEs, and they have very different needs and face different challenges with regard to financing compared to large businesses. The lack of equity invested in small firms makes these enterprise more dependent on other sources such as bank lending and other types of financial products. This paper describe the different ways to finance SMEs. The limitations of the paper are the result of its very nature: it is a largely conceptual paper. Empirical research is therefore needed to test and validate the essentially preliminary framework.