London

This is a one-off survey, not intended to be repeated.  Access to finance is crucial to business success and an important factor for economic growth in Europe following the economic crisis in 2007. The purpose of the survey is to:Examine where there may be constraints on the availability of finance, and how those may be changing.Provide evidence on the need for finance (loans, equity and other) in the future, for example to promote growth.Identify the sources from which businesses would wish to obtain this finance.  It is important to be able to compare businesses that have shown sharp growth in recent years with those that have not; and to separate more recently formed businesses from others. As a consequence, the survey will collect information separately for "gazelles" (defined at page 3 below); other high-growth businesses that have been established longer than gazelles; and other businesses. Only businesses with an employment of 10-249 in 2005 and at least 10 employees in 2010 are being covered.

A loan, other than held for trading, is considered as non-performing if satisfies either or both of the following criteria: (a) It is a material loan which is more than 90 days past-due; (b) The debtor is assessed as unlikely to pay its credit obligations in full without realisation of collateral, regardless of the existence of any past-due amount or of the number of days past-due. Non -performing loans include defaulted and impaired loans and follow the harmonised definition of the European Banking Authority (EBA) used for supervisory reporting. The MIP indicator is defined as total gross non-performing loans and advances as % of total gross loans and advances (gross carrying amount), for the reporting sector "domestic banking groups and stand-alone banks, foreign controlled subsidiaries and foreign controlled branches, all institutions". Data on domestically controlled banks are consolidated across borders and sectors at the prudential perimeter of consolidation. Data source: European Central Bank (ECB)