Раскрытые топики к ГОСу по Английскому / topic+14

Topic 14. Financing start-up business: problems, financial instruments used. Give examples of start-ups in different countries.

The commonest ways in which businesses can raise money are either through debt or equity. If you are in the start-up situation, it is very unlikely that you go and get a bank loan. Any bank loan will require a personal guarantee, or the guarantees of friends or family members, which tells investors that somebody else is at risk as well. You would definitely go more to private investors and equity.

The ability to start up a business depends not only on availability of capital but also on the country where a business is started up. In some countries there are special organizations that help people who wants to start up a new business to raise capital. For example the UK has a highly successful government-funded scheme to encourage young entrepreneurs, which called “youth entrepreneurship agency”. Applicants, chosen by the agency are tutored and advised, and the survival rate is running at 82 per cent.

In Italy few entrepreneurs start a business with bank support. They save their start-up capital, sometimes for years, and borrow from parents, other family members and friends. This is because Italy has almost no merchant banks. The fragmented banking sector is tightly regulated because of past banking failures. Banks have therefore become risk averse and reluctant to lend.

In Japan entrepreneurship doesn’t seem to be the part of the culture. But in the past few years a new generation of Japanese entrepreneurs has emerged. Only now is Japan starting to develop a business environment conductive to entrepreneurial growth. Entrepreneurs are leaving large companies to set up their own, something that is still rare in Japan. There are 3 main ingredients needed to foster venture business: risk money, a structural framework and an entrepreneur-friendly culture. The country has attracted the first, improving the second, but needs to move forward on the third. Now in Japan money flowing to new businesses rather than to mature industries. Japanese authorities have been scrambling to make the country’s legal and structural framework more venture business-friendly. Japanese culture is changing sufficiently to support more entrepreneurs.

Now we can say that in some countries the situation for entrepreneurs is changing for the better. Other countries are only on a path leading to development of a business environment conductive to entrepreneurial growth.