Jungjingong, 1.5 Trillion Won Floods 'Scale-up Finance' Applications... Record High

Support for Funding of Promising Growing SMEs
Issuance of Securitized Bonds Worth Approximately 280 Billion KRW in October

The Small and Medium Business Corporation announced on the 9th that a total of 278 companies applied for participation in the '2024 2nd Scale-up Financing', with applications amounting to 1.5737 trillion KRW, more than five times the initially planned issuance scale of 280 billion KRW.

Scale-up Financing is a program that supports small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that find it difficult to issue corporate bonds based on their own credit to raise funds through the direct finance market. In particular, it induces the scale-up of SMEs by supplying large-scale funds by combining private capital and government finances. SMEs can raise the necessary funds by structuring the corporate bonds issued through Scale-up Financing into securitized securities and selling them to private investors or the Small and Medium Business Corporation.

Small and Medium Business Corporation

From 2019 to 2023, the Small and Medium Business Corporation selected 458 small and medium venture companies with innovative growth potential through Scale-up Financing and supported the issuance of corporate bonds worth approximately 1.3387 trillion KRW. As a result, 28 companies achieved sales of over 100 billion KRW, and 7 companies were listed on the KOSDAQ market. For example, Bankware Global, a core banking solution company, received support for corporate bond issuance through Scale-up Financing in 2020 and 2023 to invest in new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain and to enter new businesses, and secured new overseas sales channels in Japan, China, etc., and was listed on the KOSDAQ market in August this year.

The Small and Medium Business Corporation collaborated with private organizations such as the KOSDAQ Association, KONEX Association, and INNOBIZ Association from the application stage to promote joint business briefings in order to focus support on SMEs operating in innovative growth fields and super-gap and new industry fields this year. Kang Seok-jin, director of the Small and Medium Business Corporation, said, “This year, Scale-up Financing plans to support the issuance of corporate bonds worth about 280 billion KRW in October,” adding, “We will support large-scale fundraising for excellent SMEs in innovative growth and super-gap and new industry fields so that they can leap forward to become mid-sized companies.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.