Financing SME Growth: The Role of the National Stock Exchange of Australia and Business Advisors

Abstract

Lack of access to finance presents a major setback to the development of the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) sector in Australia. Demand and supply of finance to the sector entails more complex issues than apply to large firms. SMEs have a pecking order of preference for finance; they prefer internal equity to debt and debt to external equity. Nonetheless, a significant number of growing SMEs require external equity. Using the grounded theory method, interviews with six owners and 13 accounting and legal advisors indicate entrenched lack of knowledge about initial public offering (IPO) and the National Stock Exchange of Australia (NSX) among SME owners and their advisors. The study finds that the NSX's poor performance is attributable to lack of visibility, low listings, lack of underwriters, thin trading, inefficient processes and poor location. The NSX is entrenched in a vicious cycle of poor performance that threatens its viability. It is unable to attract sufficient listings to generate the income required for effective operation. Greater exposure of small business advisors to the IPO process should increase demand for public equity through the NSX.

What are the determining factors in the capital structure decisions of small and medium-sized firms in Cabinda, Angola?,

“…Previous studies on capital structure decisions of SMEs have considered specific factors of the firm (Dwyer & Kotey, 2015;Matias & Serrasqueiro, 2017;Palacín-Sánchez, Ramírez-Herrera & di Pietro, 2013;Sardo & Serrasqueiro, 2017), factors related to the firm's managers (Dasilas & Papasyriopoulos, 2015;Lee, Sameen, & Cowling, 2015;Matemilola, Bany-Ariffin, Azman-Saini, & Nassir, 2018), and also macroeconomic factors (Adair & Adaskou, 2015;Matias, Baptista, & Salsa, 2015;Mc Namara, Murro, & O'Donohoe, 2017).…”

“…Some studies (Burgstaller & Wagner, 2015;Dwyer & Kotey, 2015;Haro-de-rosario et al, 2015;Serrasqueiro & Nunes, 2012) state that older firms are seen as already stabilized firms and, consequently, have a greater possibility to choose between short or long-term debt, as these firms obtain a large part of external resources with longer repayment terms to finance their growth, in comparison with firms whose age is younger, as older firms are exposed to a relatively minor degree of information asymmetry and bankruptcy risk.…”

The role of the Australian financial sector in supporting a sustainable and inclusive recovery

“…The National Stock Exchange (NSX) and Sydney Stock Exchange have simplified listing rules, including lower thresholds, to attract smaller companies. The NSX is larger but nevertheless has only around 50 listings, low liquidity (falling to an average of two trades a day in 2019 but increasing since), past governance concerns and little visibility (Dwyer and Kotey, 2015;ASIC, 2017). Consultations in 2012 and 2015 found no support for a junior board on the ASX (ASX, 2012;PC, 2015).…”

Debt Characteristics Knowledge of Entrepreneurs in the SME Sector of the Czech Republic

“…The search for finance is impeded by business characteristics such as size, age, profitability and growth objectives. [7] Other researches show that the access to finance and credit costs is not a small constraint on financing SMEs [1; 2]. Binks and Ennew [4] consider in their study lack of access to finance together with job skills, management and government regulations to be the main constraints on the SMEs growth.…”