Reindustrialization, decarbonization, business creations in neighborhoods: the public investment bank Bpifrance experienced “record activity” in 2023, serving French entrepreneurs, according to its activity report published Thursday. The bank, created in 2013, invested 63 billion euros in financing the economy last year, an increase of 19% over one year. The amount of credits granted “to support businesses” has reached a “historic level”, at 18.7 billion euros (7.7%).
The activity largely concerned industry, for which it increased its actions. Looking at the farandole of “significant facts” noted by Bpifrance for 2023 on a table sums up the variety that makes it an ecosystem without much equivalent.
Between a Pitchbook ranking as the leading European investor in private equity by the number of operations last year, and an investment in the young and promising company Mistral AI (artificial intelligence), these “highlights” also include 1.5 billion euros for the French Touch plan to support cultural and creative industries, an “Entrepreneurship Neighborhoods 2030” program, aiming to bring out 100,000 entrepreneurs from neighborhoods in difficulty within five years, or the launch of a “Coq Créa” label » embodying the community of business creators.
Bpifrance also emphasizes having launched 400 “events”, often in the form of meetings between entrepreneurs in 2023. “It is a catalyst bank”, which “unites and contaminates” to spread the taste for entrepreneurship, summarized the press to the press. general director Nicolas Dufourcq. These meetings where “we go on stage, we have a drink afterwards”, are important according to him: “the more there is digital, the more physical we need”, he summarized.
This also involves putting young people on buses with the bank logo for a “Take the bus” operation intended to introduce them to factories or to launch “a mass door-to-door campaign” among 20,000 industrial companies for encourage them to accelerate their decarbonization, a program worth 7 billion euros compared to 6 in 2022.
For this year marking its tenth anniversary, “Bpifrance has fully played its role as a bank serving entrepreneurs,” underlined Nicolas Dufourcq. Bpifrance also welcomes a new record in innovation support activity with the acceleration of the deployment of the France 2030 plan in favor of industry, which has enabled a doubling of funding granted, to 9.42 billion euros (110%, and more than seven times the 2019 level).
Loan guarantee activity increased by 5% to 8.65 billion euros, in favor of 63,301 companies. Development capital investments amount to 1.7 billion euros in more than 200 companies. The rotation of the portfolio “maintains its good dynamic”, with one billion euros of disposals. The export activity, for its part, maintained “a sustained level” with 22 billion euros deployed. The activity report highlights the “increased dynamic” of support and advice, and “a strong mobilization of actions to support business creation”.
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The bank also launched last year a fund open to individuals wishing to invest in SMEs. “The French person who entrusts his savings to Bpifrance is around 50 years old and earns (for half of them, Editor’s note) less than 55,000 euros per year: it’s really popular, that’s what we wanted,” said Nicolas Dufourcq.
He said, “people need to be aware that there is now a public service for business creation. Anyone who wants to get started will be supported, there is the toolbox, the coach, the whole environment, the incubators, the accelerators…” For him, it is therefore “not possible to say that it is complicated to create your own company in France.
