About EIF

• EIF makes venture capital investments to support the emergence of a performing and homogenous European venture capital market.

• EIF’s SME guarantee instruments to a wide range of intermediary banks and financial institutions facilitate SME access to debt finance.
  
  

EIF’s resources

EIF’s shareholders are the European Investment Bank (EIB), the European Union represented by the European Commission, and a number of European banks and financial institutions from the public and private sector.  
EIF carries out its venture capital and guarantee activities using either its own funds or funds entrusted by mandates. The principal sources of mandated funds are the main shareholders, the EIB (EUR 4bn) and the European Union (EUR 1.1bn), whilst up to EUR 1bn is derived from EIF’s partnerships with public and private bodies.

Modus operandi

EIF acts independently and, uniquely for a European body, acts commercially under market conditions, with a statutory obligation to targets appropriate returns for its shareholders.

European Investment Fund

• optimises the impact and benefit of its operations, in close association with the financial sector.
• plays a catalytic role to attract private sector finance.
• contributes to the diffusion of best market practices in its business fields.

EIF has a AAA-rating from the principal rating agencies and has the status of a Multilateral Development Bank under the European Union solvency ratio directive, which allows financial institutions to allocate capital in respect of EIF guarantees at a rate of 0%.

EIF works in the enlarged European Union and has broken traditional finance boundaries through activity in Turkey, the Western Balkans and South-Eastern Europe.

Click here for information about EIF's establishment in 1994.