Altran Technologies S.A., einem führenden globalen Engineering-Consulting Unternehmen, stehen mehrere Wachstumsmöglichkeiten offen: Einerseits eine regionale Expansion nach Tschechien und/oder Slowakei (internes Wachstum), andererseits die Akquisition fremder Unternehmen, darunter die deutsche Bertrandt AG (externes Wachstum). Ziel der Masterarbeit ist es, die beiden Möglichkeiten zu untersuchen und Altran diesbezüglich mit spezifischen Informationen und Daten zu versorgen. Zu Beginn wird ein theoretischer Hintergrund bezüglich Wachstumsstrategien und Unternehmensbewertung vermittelt. Nach einer kurzen Vorstellung von Altran, werden im darauf folgenden Kapitel die makroökonomischen Daten, die potenziellen Kunden (vor allem Unternehmen mit Sitz in Deutschland) und das Lohnniveau von Tschechien und der Slowakei analysiert. Im Anschluss findet eine Bewertung von Bertrandt mit der DCF- und Multiplikatormethode statt. Die BIP-Wachstumsraten beider Länder liegen klar über dem EU Durchschnitt und das Lohnniveau deutlich unter jenem von Deutschland. Darüber hinaus weisen beide Länder attraktive Treibstoff-, Gas- und Strompreise auf. Die Liste der potenziellen Kunden umfasst Firmen aus dem Automobil-, Luftfahrt-, Verteidigungs-, IKT-, Pharmazie-, Energie- und Transportsektor. Im Gegensatz zur Slowakei wird Tschechien als politisch instabil angesehen. Basierend auf einer umfassenden Analyse der vergangenen Entwicklung von Bertrandt in Verbindung mit neuesten Marktstudien, leitet sich aus der DCF Analyse ein Unternehmenswert von 699 Mio. ab. Multiplikatoren führen zu deutlich geringeren Werten in der Bandbreite von 335 bis 693. Mio. Trotz des stabilen Umfelds von Bertrandt, sähe sich Altran unweigerlich mit Restrukturierungsproblemen konfrontiert. ; Altran Technologies S.A., a French-based global engineering consulting company, has several growth opportunities: the expansion to the Czech Republic and/or Slovakia (organic growth), and/or the acquisition of other companies, one of them being Bertrandt AG, a German-based engineering consultancy firm (external growth). The goal of the masters thesis is to investigate these two opportunities by providing Altran with particular, required information. The introductory part of the thesis provides a theoretical background about the types of growth strategies and their implementation, and the basics about valuation, followed by a short presentation of Altran. Concerning the regional expansion, macroeconomic data on the two countries, a list of the potential clients (mainly German-based companies) as well as the salary and wage levels are presented. The following chapter addresses the valuation of Bertrandt by applying both the DCF and the multiples approach. The GDP growth rate of both economies lies clearly above the EU average and, as expected, the salary and wage levels are much lower than those in Germany. Moreover, both countries feature attractive prices for gasoline, gas and electricity. The list of potential clients includes firms from the automotive, aviation and defense, IKT, pharmaceutical, energy and rail sector. However, in contrast to Slovakia, the Czech Republic is considered politically unstable. Based on a thorough analysis of the past development of Bertrandt, in addition with recent market studies, the DCF analysis states an enterprise value of 699 million. Applying multiples resulted in clearly lower values, ranging from 335 to 693 million. Despite the politically sound environment of Bertrandt, Altran would inevitably have to cope with restructuring problems. ; Manuel Schöfl ; Abweichender Titel laut Übersetzung der Verfasserin/des Verfassers ; Zsfassung in dt. und engl. Sprache ; Graz, Univ., Masterarb., 2013 ; (VLID)516958
In light of recent EU policy initiatives such as the Capital Markets Union (CMU) action plan, this working paper provides unique insights from Venture Capital (VC) general partners/management companies, Private Equity Mid-Market (PE MM) managers and Business Angels (BA). Specifically, based on the first 2020 waves of the EIF VC, PE MM and BA Surveys, the report focuses on generating insights around three main topics of SME financing: Scale-up financing, Exit environment & Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) and policy-related implications of the above. The study attempts to piece together evidence from the three surveys, provides market insights from respondents in light of recent policy initiatives, and serves as an informative instrument to policy-makers and practitioners.
Young Innovative Companies (YIC) gained increasing attention from governments and scholars due to their expected high innovative performance and growth. Consequently, this study investigates whether Young Innovative Companies, as defined by the EU, grow more than other firms, both in terms of employment and in terms of sales. Using a database of Flemish firms over the years 2001-2008 reveals that these firms do grow significantly more than other firms. In addition, this study shows that YICs can be differentiated from New Technology Based Firms and small young firms in terms of growth, pointing to the importance of combining the individual properties characterizing YICs, that is being young ( 15%). In our estimations, we also take the underlying distribution of the growth variables into account by performing quantile regressions. The results of these quantile regressions reveal that YICs especially grow faster than the other, already fast-growing firms, indicating that they are high performers. In addition, we never find that these companies perform significantly worse than the other firms.
The existing literature ignores the fact that in most European countries the strictness of Employment Protection Legislation (EPL) varies across the firm size distribution. In Italy firms are obliged to rehire an unfairly dismissed worker only if they employ more than 15 employees. Theoretically, the paper solves a baseline model of EPL with threshold effects, and shows that firms close to the threshold are characterized by an increase in inaction and by a reluctance to grow. Empirically, the paper estimates transition probability matrices on firm level employment using a longitudinal data set based on Italian Social Security (INPS) records, and finds two results. First, firms close to the 15 employees threshold experience an increase in persistence of 1.5 percent with respect to a baseline statistical model. Second, firms with 15 employees are more likely to move backward than upward. Finally, the paper tests the effect of a 1990 reform which tightened the regulation on individual dismissal only for small firms. It finds that the persistence of small firms relative to large firms increased significantly. Overall, these threshold effects are significant and robust, but quantitatively small.
Based on a structural model for initial firm size, survival and firm growth we estimate firm-specific transition probabilities between size classes of the firm size distribution. This allows an assessment of the impact of different (counterfactual) economic policy measures on intra-distribution dynamics of the firm size distribution. We find that policies increasing the life span of firms reduce the exit hazard of young firms, but also reduce the probability to be a Gazelle. An increase in the industry-wide entry rate increases the exit hazards of incumbent firms and has no strong impact on the likelihood of firms to become Gazelles. Increasing market growth, by contrast, decreases the exit hazards for incumbent firms and slightly increases the likelihood of firms to be Gazelles. Finally, an increase in the birth size of firms increases the probability of young firms to be Gazelles with strongest effects for the smallest firms.
To facilitate the transformation of the German economy from the traditional manufacturing industries towards emerging new technologies, a new segment of the Frankfurt exchange was introduced in 1997 - Der Neue Markt. This study provides evidence that not only did many new firms obtain funding from the Neuer Markt, but that for the first time in recent history, Germany succeeded in enabling smaller firms to grow faster than larger firms. This suggests that the new policies were not only successful in promoting a new type of firm that otherwise might not exist, but in transforming the sources of growth and innovation within the German economy.
Portuguese strategic choices regarding innovation and R&D policy have, over the past two decades, produced various positive achievements, in which the regions of Lisbon and Algarve have taken the lead, and are the only ones in the country to converge towards the European average growth rate. Regarding the other Portuguese regions - despite significant national growth rates in the 1990s as well as a successful attempt to cope with the EMU -, these are lagging behind the EU average with respect to gross production, investment or employment generation. Meanwhile, one of the greatest public policy efforts was to diffuse much of the European funds across the entrepreneurial sector. After a long pathway, it is now timely to evaluate the firms' contribution to national and regional growth, their obstacles and impacts. For the purpose of this paper, innovation is used here as a major contributor to the policy evaluation process referred to above. Our investigation aims to explain the present performance of Portuguese firms located throughout the country and to explore those innovation determinants that have a region-specific connotation. To provide a thorough investigation, our analysis defines, on a regional basis, a set of firms' behavioural patterns regarding innovation. In our modelling, we employ a new methodology, viz. the External Logistic Biplot method, which is applied to an extensive sample of innovative institutions in Portugal. Variables such as 'Promoting knowledge', 'Management skills', 'Promoting R&D', 'Knowledge transfer', 'Promoting partnership & cooperation', and 'Orientation of public measures' have been identified as crucial determinants in earlier studies and are now used to describe regional institutional profiles. Such profiles exhibit a great variety in the way they combine these determinants to promote regional innovation. The creation of a gradient of capacity to dynamically innovate associated with each firm makes it possible to analyse the innovation gradient of each region in Portugal. Our paper presents and systematically investigates these findings and then reaches some policy conclusions.
This paper analyzes the medium-term growth performance of firms that exclusively received start-up assistance from programs administered by the Deutsche Ausgleichsbank (DtA), a state owned bank, within two years after startup. I apply a parametric selection approach that controls for two potential sources of self selection (receipt of assistance, complete interview data). The empirical analysis shows that firms receiving assistance perform better in terms of employment growth over a six year period.
Structural vector-autoregressive models are potentially very useful tools for guiding both macro- and microeconomic policy. In this paper, we present a recently developed method for exploiting non-Gaussianity in the data for estimating such models, with the aim of capturing the causal structure underlying the data, and show how the method can be applied to both microeconomic data (processes of firm growth and firm performance) as well as macroeconomic data (effects of monetary policy).
The promotion of self-employment as part of active labor market policies is considered to be one of the most important unemployment support schemes in Germany. Against this background the main part of this thesis contributes to the evaluation of start-up support schemes within ALMP. Chapter 2 and 4 focus on the evaluation of the New Start-up Subsidy (NSUS, Gründungszuschuss) in its first version (from 2006 to the end of 2011). The chapters offer an advancement of the evaluation of start-up subsidies in Germany, and are based on a novel data set of administrative data from the Federal Employment Agency that was enriched with information from a telephone survey. Chapter 2 provides a thorough descriptive analysis of the NSUS that consists of two parts. First, the participant structure of the program is compared with the one of two former programs. In a second step, the study conducts an in-depth characterization of the participants of the NSUS focusing on founding motives, the level of start-up capital and equity used as well as the sectoral distribution of the new business. Furthermore, the business survival, income situation of founders and job creation by the new businesses is analyzed during a period of 19 months after start-up. The contribution of Chapter 4 is to introduce a new explorative data set that allows comparing subsidized start-ups out of unemployment with non-subsidized business start-ups that were founded by individuals who were not unemployed at the time of start-up. Because previous evaluation studies commonly used eligible non-participants amongst the unemployed as control group to assess the labor market effects of the start-up subsidies, the corresponding results hence referred to the effectiveness of the ALMP measure, but could not address the question whether the subsidy leads to similarly successful and innovative businesses compared to non-subsidized businesses. An assessment of this economic/growth aspect is also important, since the subsidy might induce negative effects that may outweigh the positive effects from an ALMP perspective. The main results of Chapter 4 indicate that subsidized founders seem to have no shortages in terms of formal education, but exhibit less employment and industry-specific experience, and are less likely to benefit from intergenerational transmission of start-ups. Moreover, the study finds evidence that necessity start-ups are over-represented among subsidized business founders, which suggests disadvantages in terms of business preparation due to possible time restrictions right before start-up. Finally, the study also detects more capital constraints among the unemployed, both in terms of the availability of personal equity and access to loans. With respect to potential differences between both groups in terms of business development over time, the results indicate that subsidized start-ups out of unemployment face higher business survival rates 19 months after start-up. However, they lag behind regular business founders in terms of income, business growth, and innovation. The arduous data collection process for start-up activities of non-subsidized founders for Chapter 4 made apparent that Germany is missing a central reporting system for business formations. Additionally, the different start-up reporting systems that do exist exhibit substantial discrepancies in data processing procedures, and therefore also in absolute numbers concerning the overall start-up activity. Chapter 3 is therefore placed in front of Chapter 4 and has the aim to provide a comprehensive review of the most important German start-up reporting systems. The second part of the thesis consists of Chapter 5 which contributes to the literature on determinants of job search behavior of the unemployed individuals by analyzing the effectiveness of internet search with regard to search behavior of unemployed individuals and subsequent job quality. The third and final part of the thesis outlines why the German labor market reacted in a very mild fashion to the Great Recession 2008/09, especially compared to other countries. Chapter 6 describes current economic trends of the labor market in light of general trends in the European Union, and reveals some of the main associated challenges. Thereafter, recent reforms of the main institutional settings of the labor market which influence labor supply are analyzed. Finally, based on the status quo of these institutional settings, the chapter gives a brief overview of strategies to adequately combat the challenges in terms of labor supply and to ensure economic growth in the future. ; Die vorliegende kumulative Dissertation leistet einen Beitrag zur Forschungsliteratur im Bereich der Evaluation aktiver Arbeitsmarktpolitik in Deutschland. Der erste und größte Teil der Dissertation besteht aus zwei voneinander unabhängigen und in sich abgeschlossenen Forschungspapieren (Kapitel 2 und 4), die sich mit der Gründungsförderung für Arbeitslose im Rechtskreis des SGB III auseinandersetzen. Die Untersuchungen konzentrieren sich dabei auf das Instrument des Gründungszuschusses (GZ) in seiner institutionellen Ausgestaltung von 2006 bis 2011. Kapitel 2 führt zunächst eine ausführliche deskriptive Analyse der Teilnehmerstruktur des Förderprogramms durch, wobei explizit auf Unterschiede zwischen dem Gründungszuschuss und früheren Gründungsförderprogrammen eingegangen wird. Die komparative Analyse zeigt, dass die Teilnehmerstrukturen des GZ nicht die gleiche Breite an gründungswilligen Personen erreicht wie beide Vorgängerprogramme. Des Weiteren scheinen mit dem GZ geförderte GründerInnen eher durch sogenannte Pull-Faktoren motiviert, waren im Durchschnitt etwas risikobereiter, setzten aber relativ weniger Eigenkapital für ihre Gründung ein. Der zweite Teil der Analyse bezieht sich vorrangig auf die Nachhaltigkeit der Förderung durch den GZ. Hier kann gezeigt werden, dass 19 Monate nach Gründung noch 75% bis 84% der geförderten Personen im Haupterwerb selbständig tätig sind. Hinsichtlich der Beschäftigungswirkungen ist allerdings erkennbar, dass die Mehrheit der noch selbständig Tätigen 19 Monate nach Gründung keine Mitarbeiter eingestellt hat. Abschließend zeigt die Analyse hinsichtlich der Existenz potentieller Mitnahmeeffekte, dass diese im Rahmen des Gründungszuschusses eine geringere Bedeutung zu haben scheinen als bisher angenommen. Bisherige Evaluationsstudien zur Gründungsförderung für Arbeitslose verwenden in der Regel arbeitslose Individuen als Kontrollgruppe, um Arbeitsmarkteffekte der Gründung zu untersuchen. Dieser Ansatz hat den Nachteil, dass nicht untersucht werden kann, ob die Gründungsförderung erfolgreiche, innovative Unternehmen generiert, die mit denen von nicht-geförderten Gründungen vergleichbar sind. Kapitel 4 schließt diese Lücke mittels eines neuen explorativen Datensatzes der den Vergleich zwischen geförderten GründerInnen aus Arbeitslosigkeit und nicht-subventionierten GründerInnen, die bei ihrer Gründung nicht arbeitslos waren erstmalig möglich macht. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass geförderte gegenüber nicht-geförderten GründerInnen keine Nachteile hinsichtlich ihrer formellen Bildung aufweisen, aber geringere arbeits- und industriespezifische Erfahrung besitzen. Zudem befinden sich unter den geförderten GründerInnen häufiger Personen, die sich aus Mangel an abhängigen Erwerbsalternativen selbständig gemacht, und sich in geringerem Umfang auf die Gründung vorbereitet haben. Geförderte GründerInnen haben zudem einen erschwerten Zugang zu Krediten und Gründungskapital. In Bezug auf die Entwicklung der Unternehmung über die Zeit lässt sich feststellen, dass geförderte GründerInnen zwar 19 Monate nach Gründung eine höhere Überlebensrate aufweisen, jedoch in Bezug auf Einkommen, Unternehmenswachstum und Innovation schlechter abschneiden. Kapitel 3 leistet einen Beitrag zur wissenschaftlichen Betrachtung des Gründungsgeschehens im Allgemeinen. Vor dem Hintergrund, dass in Deutschland keine einheitliche und repräsentative Datenquelle existiert, die das gesamte Universum an Gründungen erfasst, gibt Kapitel 3 einen umfassenden Überblick über die wichtigsten deutschen Datenquellen zum Gründungsgeschehen. Zu einem besseren Verständnis des Forschungsgegenstandes bietet das Kapitel auch einen kurzen Überblick über institutionelle Rahmenbedingungen, Konzepte und Definitionen im Zusammenhang mit Gründungsaktivitäten in Deutschland. Der zweite Teil der Dissertation besteht zunächst aus einem Aufsatz, der zur Forschungsliteratur über die Determinanten des Suchverhaltens arbeitsloser Personen beiträgt. Ausgehend von der theoretischen Annahme, dass das Internet Suchhemmnisse auf dem Arbeitsmarkt abbaut, werden der Wirkungszusammenhang zwischen der Nutzung des Internets, Reservationslöhnen, Suchanstrengungen und der Qualität der neuen abhängigen Beschäftigung untersucht. Der dritte Teil der Dissertation (Kapitel 6) betrachtet abschließend einen anderen Forschungsbereich aus der Arbeitsmarktforschung, in dem es die Gründe für die milde Reaktion der deutschen Wirtschaft nach der Großen Rezession 2008/2009 beleuchtet und aufzeigt, welchen zukünftigen großen Herausforderungen sich der deutsche Arbeitsmarkt dennoch gegenübersieht.
