June 28 (SeeNews) - The Zagreb Stock Exchange said on Wednesday it is planning to launch a new trading platform, Progress, for small and medium-sized companies at the beginning of 2018.
The platform, designed by ZSE with the aid of advisor KPMG Croatia, will enable small and medium-sized companies to fund business growth via the issuance of shares, the stock exchange said in a statement.
At first the platform will be open for Croatian companies only, but will later grow to encompass the region, ZSE noted.
The European Bank for Restructuring and Development backed the platform by providing funds through its Technical Cooperation Funds Programme.
"The Zagreb Stock Exchange is among the first in the region to develop a platform for financing small and medium-sized enterprises, enabling them easier access to financing instruments of the capital market, including access to equity and credit instruments", Vedrana Jelusic Kasic, EBRD director, regional head of Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary and Slovakia said.
"This initiative is extremely important because small and medium-sized enterprises, which make up the majority of all private companies in Croatia, have very difficult access to finance, especially after the financial crisis," she added.
The ZSE will also help the listed companies choose the right advisors and analysts to aid in the process of listing, and provide them with alternative sources of funding to subsidise such advisors.
In Croatia there are 13,440 companies that can be classified as medium and small, while 1,332 of them have capital between 2 and 20 million euro ($2.3 million to $22.8 million) and are the target group for Progress.
($=0.8789 euro)