SMEs and alternative finance
- PDF, 4 pp.
The invisible private sector
Why Lebanese corporates remain opaque, captured and excluded from global markets
Outside a handful of listed banks, Lebanese companies are absent from international financial data platforms. The paper explains why: multiple sets of accounts, family control averse to outside equity, and a banking model that captured corporates as deposit clients instead of financing them through capital. It argues that transparency is the precondition for Lebanese firms to re-enter global credit and investment markets.
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- PDF, 3 pp.
Four thousand companies nobody can see
Why Lebanon’s private sector will not exit the credit crisis until it agrees to be measured
This paper argues that Lebanon's credit crisis is, at root, a disclosure crisis: Lebanese private companies are invisible to foreign lenders because their audited accounts never leave the building. Contrasting Lebanon with European public filing regimes, it rejects firm size as an excuse and proposes three steps: independent scoring of association members, distribution of scores through lenders' existing channels, and evidence-based sector reports.
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- PDF, 4 pp.
Profiling Lebanese SMEs
Constant risk characteristics
This issue profiles Lebanese SMEs through OFS's transaction advisory programme. It identifies recurring weaknesses: family governance, multi-generational succession disputes, overdraft-driven over-indebtedness, single-activity focus and assets long tied up as bank collateral. Arguing that multiple exchange rates make audited accounts unreliable, it shows how the advisory process, spanning investment foundations, risk factors and value creation, lets firms rebuild financial statements and prepare for equity or debt transactions.
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The need for rural entrepreneurship
This issue makes the case for rural entrepreneurship to curb migration and regional inequality. Citing a 2017 OFS study showing rural median monthly salaries of LBP2.28 million against LBP2.82 million in cities, it identifies scarce funding (55% of Kafalat's portfolio sits in Beirut and Mount Lebanon), red tape, weak infrastructure and lost skills as obstacles. It recommends tax-advantaged industrial parks, energy incentives using underused rural grids and national marketing.
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SMEs’ financial flexibility: solutions for a new economy
Banks–SMEs dynamics and alternative financing
This issue examines how Lebanese SMEs can secure funding after the banking collapse. It argues the damage is structural: 64 near-identical banks placed deposits with the state, disregarded concentration risk and left SMEs burdened by overdrafts costing up to 15%. With deposits down from US$187 billion to about US$103 billion, it surveys family-office investors, private funds and the Oxygen trade-finance fund, and proposes recapitalisation, trade-finance, education, energy and hospitality funds.
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