Topic 1 - Companies and bank financing
It is interesting to study the weight of bank financing for companies, for example, large companies with more than 1000 employees.
Problem: can a large company envisage significant external growth without recourse to bank financing?
It is crucial to investigate other possible solutions, the use of public savings, private fundraising, development entirely based on self-financing, etc. It would be interesting to find concrete examples of large companies that did not have (or did not want to have) access to bank financing in the context of major external growth operations and thus develop the challenges they were faced with and how they got around the difficulties.
Topic 2 - Financing small and very small businesses
The financing of small businesses, through their turnover, their total balance sheet, or their number of employees, has little in common with the bank financing of several million or billions obtained by the multinationals of the CAC40, for example. For these small structures, bank loans of small amounts are important, but there are also several “outside the framework” alternatives, less conventional, more original, but sometimes just as effective or even efficient. We can mention, for example, crowdfunding campaigns and give examples of TPE fundraising campaigns that have been very successful and allowed the growth of these very small structures in search of funding.
Topic 3 - The impact of central bank policy rates on corporate financing
Policy rates are set by central banks and depend on a number of variable factors, including inflation rates. These key rates get reviewed quarterly. They have been set at very low levels for several years, with some European central bank key rates having even been negative for several quarters. These rates have both a direct and an indirect impact on the financing of companies.
Problem: what are the consequences of an increase in key rates on corporate financing?
It will be interesting to look at not only the price dimension but also the volume dimension. A rise in key rates increases the cost of financing for companies, and can, therefore, slow them down in their investment or growth decisions. But an increase in key rates also reduces the ease with which central banks grant financing to private banks, and therefore by a cascade phenomenon, the ease or not for the latter to grant loans to their customers and, in particular, to their customers is considered to be at risk of default.
Topic 4 - IPO as a method of financing companies
Small or large companies may, at some point in their history, choose to opt for a public regulated and supervised mode of financing the IPO.
Problem: what are the challenges posed by an IPO in terms of corporate financing?
It will be very interesting in this instance to focus your research work on a concrete case of a company (preferably medium-sized) that opts for this means of financing and to study the consequences. One can, for example, choose the company Les Agencies de Papa, which carried out an IPO during the year 2021. The study of the impacts, the consequences, the difficulties encountered will be a fascinating and very concrete subject of the dissertation.
Topic 5 - Business financing and microcredit
Microcredit is a form of financing that began in the 1980s, expanded significantly in the 2000s, and today seems to be experiencing a kind of slowdown or stagnation. Nevertheless, it remains an original mode of financing, not always conventional, and often offers initial access to financing for micro-enterprises.
Problem: what are the levers of action for microcredit, for an individual project or a VSE? What are the pitfalls and difficulties to avoid?
Here, again, it will be interesting to start from a concrete case of financing through microcredit, or even to study several, some having succeeded and allowed access to larger credits, others having failed and recorded payment defaults on the part of subscribers.
Business financing is an extremely varied subject, with very diverse issues depending on whether you consider a recently established self-employed person looking for €500 to sell their manual creations on Etsy or a multinational that takes a bank loan from a pool to make a purchase or a historic growth transaction. The possibilities are diverse, immense, at very variable scales and very variable cost levels.
