The Australian Small Scale Offerings Board (ASSOB), Australia's capital raising platform for equity raisings for smaller companies, has set a target of list 100 companies to raise up to $100 million in the 2011-12 financial year. 

 

ASSOB has begun to accelerate its growth of new capital raisings in the past five years, having listed more than 200 companies to obtain in excess of $130 million in new equity capital.


 The CEO of ASSOB, Paul Niederer, said that the GFC had driven home to the small company sector the difficulties of obtaining finance from traditional sources.

 

"Unless you had an asset such as a house with which to anchor your loan, the banks were simply not interested in making non-asset based lending to smaller businesses. In effect, if business owners did not have a physical asset as collateral for a loan, they have generally found banks to be pretty unsympathetic to their financing needs."


ASSOB is now aiming to attract interest both from investors who are increasingly keen to access high potential  companies and from entrepreneurs who are recognising that obtaining equity capital gives them a firm basis to grow their businesses and to later approach debt financiers for supplementary finance.


Mr Niederer said that young, start-up and high growth companies in many sectors were turning to ASSOB including internet /IT businesses, green tech and clean tech as well as new media businesses.


ASSOB is now organising a series of capital raising forums throughout Australia at which entrepreneurs will have the opportunity to evaluate ASSOB's capacity to raise capital for their businesses.


Mr Niederer said that typically it takes around three to six months for companies to go through the process of raising equity capital with up to $800,000 being "a fairly common amount of funds raised in the first two stages of what is a very structured and well-tried method of attracting investors. Some companies have raised up to $5 million through ASSOB, and a number of them have then gone on to list on the ASX or the AIM market in the UK."


Mr Niederer said that ASSOB, which is itself listed on the National Stock Exchange (NSX), believed it had an increasingly vital role to play in financing the growth of innovative companies in Australia.

 

"If you exclude the mining sector, the reality is that future employment growth in Australia will depend on small businesses in this country, and the major constraint on them is finance to grow their businesses. This is where ASSOB can play a creative role in assisting these companies to realise their potential."

ASSOB's capital raising forums will be held in Melbourne on Thursday afternoon, May 19, and in Sydney on Wednesday, May 25, in Brisbane June 22nd, Adelaide 5th & 6th July, Perth 6th & 7th July.


For more details, visit ASSOB at www.assob.com.au  Tel 1300 722 954.