The equity’s research by the Italian medium-sized enterprises: Private Equity, Aim Italia-MAC or MTA?”

The goal of this research project is to verify which advantages and disadvantages are connected to different instruments to raise equity, through which Italian Medium-Sized Enterprises (MSEs) could face the global recession, credit crunch, possible entrepreneurial succession and the international competitive challenge. The project’s focus is on the necessary change in MSEs’ capital structure which should shift from a model based on the cash-flow and bank debt to a model with higher equity, which will enable them to face the credit crunch and the entrepreneurial succession as well as adequately promote innovation. It has been used an “objective and rationale” approach based on the analysis of institutional web-sites and on the information obtained during some explorative interviews with sector experts. Consequently, the research purpose is to build a theoretical framework, useful to compare three financial options (Private Equity, AIM Italia-MAC, MTA), that are still little exploited by Italian firms