The EIB has granted a EUR 200 million loan to Banco Sabadell for financing investment projects undertaken principally by SMEs (firms with up to 250 employees) and midcaps (firms with up to 3000 employees), mainly in the industrial and service sectors. Banco Sabadell will match the EIB loan with the same amount, meaning that a total of up to EUR 400 million will be pumped into such companies.
Projects eligible for financing will be located mainly in Spain and to a lesser extent in other EU countries. Around 30% of the overall amount is planned to go to projects located in convergence regions.
This credit line complements others provided previously by the EIB to Banco Sabadell and will strengthen the existing relationship between the two institutions.
As supporting small businesses to foster job creation is an EU objective, facilitating such firms’ access to finance with favourable interest rates and longer maturities in today’s difficult economic climate is one of the ElB’s investment priorities.
With today’s loan, since the beginning of the year the EIB has provided nearly EUR 9 billion for projects in Spain, around half of which has served to finance investment by smaller Spanish businesses, almost doubling last year’s support for this sector.