Smes And Basel Iii – Measures Of Improve

The entrepreneurial landscape has changed massively in the recent years. Increased competitive pressure, shortened product life cycles, complex customer requirements, increasing globalization and digitization are only some buzzwords. In this context, Industry 4.0 can be seen as a way to deal with these changes. Since Industry 4.0 not only affects individual parts of the value chain, but also changes the whole production process, a large part of the machinery, equipment and control processes will have to be renewed for this purpose. For companies, especially for SMEs, this means high investments over the next years. So, the question arises how to finance these investments. SMEs face two different problems. On the one hand, they need to invest, to remain competitive. On the other hand, they have a limited access to the capital market – compared to large enterprises. One reason for this limited access is the implementation of BASEL III, which is associated with stricter capital conditions and corporate ratings. The following paper will show which forms of financing SMEs are mainly used. It also demonstrates the level of information of SMEs about BASEL III and its associated ratings. Another important point of view is to find out whether companies are taking measures to improve these rating criteria. The findings presented in this paper were obtained with the help of an empirical study in which Austrian industrial companies in the SME sector were interviewed.