The expert report dated 31.01.2025 prepared for the Federal Ministry of Economics on INVEST funding for mezzanine financing and non-exit-oriented companies and on the market practice of participation agreements is available to Download here.

In work package 1, all regulations with risk relevance are presented in the context of a financing round and also evaluated on the basis of statistical evaluations as to whether they are within the framework of market practice or reduce the risk of the investment in a way that is detrimental to funding. This applies both to equity financing and to the convertible loans that have been eligible for INVEST since 2017.

In work package 2, it was examined whether the provision of mezzanine capital should also be supported by INVEST in the future. Here, the possible mezzanine financing instruments and their design options were presented and the need for appropriate support on the part of investors to be supported and eligible companies was examined; remuneration components and their maximum and minimum limits with their interdependencies were also defined. On this basis, model contracts for three typical mezzanine forms of financing (subordinated loans, silent partnerships, profit-sharing capital) were made available as investments. Since doubts remained on the investor side about the suitability and incentive effect of INVEST funding of such financing, the BMWE decided not to open the INVEST programme to mezzanine capital.