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Europe is beginning to build the funds its scale-ups need. But growth capital is only a bridge. Without sufficient liquidity, specialist investors and a credible European exit market, its most successful technology companies may still gravitate towards New York.
Jean-Christophe Laloux’s appointment may signal a new phase for the European Investment Fund: moving beyond filling individual financing gaps towards creating the structures, incentives and partnerships through which private capital becomes willing to carry European strategic risk.
When a platform can monitor performance, judge behaviour and withdraw access to income, it no longer acts merely as an intermediary. The Uber case reveals how employer-like power can emerge without a visible employer or accountable human decision-maker.
A serious financial architecture cannot be built on the assumption that institutions never fail. The Single Resolution Board exists to make bank failure manageable — preserving critical functions while ensuring that shareholders, creditors and institutions themselves can still bear the consequences.
EQT has identified more than 1,000 potential targets for the Scaleup Europe Fund. The deeper question is what happens next: whether Europe’s exchanges, institutional investors and regulators are ready when today’s scale-ups become tomorrow’s multibillion-euro public companies.
Europe wants deeper capital markets, but its banking layer remains indispensable. The EBA’s role is to keep that layer coherent across the Single Market — strong enough to absorb shocks, flexible enough to support growth, and connected enough to work with capital markets.
Europe’s capital markets do not operate independently. Beneath every share, bond and investment fund lies a monetary system that prices risk, provides liquidity and settles transactions. The ECB guards the stability on which this emerging market architecture rests.
Europe’s public bank is becoming more than a lender. As strategic risks grow, the EIB increasingly helps determine which infrastructure, technologies and industrial capacities can become financeable — turning public financial capacity into part of Europe’s industrial architecture.
The European Investment Fund rarely chooses individual winners. Its deeper role is to share risk, anchor investment vehicles and strengthen the transition from innovation to investability — helping private capital move where markets are not yet ready to move alone.
Europe’s scale-up problem is not only about capital. Siemens Energy’s Venture Clienting model shows how becoming an early industrial customer can validate technology, reduce market risk and give startups something investment alone cannot provide: a route into the real economy.
