CNV Continues to Promote Financing for SMEs through Capital Markets

Over the past few years, the Argentine Securities and Exchange Commission (the “CNV” after its Spanish acronym) has been fostering small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs) access to capital markets. In this context, Productive Financing Law No, 27,440, passed in May 2018, includes in its recitals an objective to “strengthen financing for SMEs and the growth of the national securities market… particularly the SMEs.”

Along these lines, the CNV approved a special regime of access to the capital markets for small and medium-sized enterprises (the “PyMES CNV,” after its Spanish acronym) which includes a simplification of the informative regime.

Subsequently, under Resolution No.696, the CNV approved the “PyME CNV Guaranteed” regime for the issuance of non-convertible simple negotiable obligations into shares, guaranteed by mutual guarantee entities, financial institutions and/or guarantee funds. Access to both regimes is mostly online.  

Before the Resolution was approved, the maximum amount in circulation for “PyMES CNV” and “PyMES CNV guaranteed” was ARS 200.000.000 (two million Argentine pesos). Currently, with the approval of the Resolution, the CNV has established different maximum amounts for each aforementioned regime. The maximum amounts approved by the Resolution are ARS 500.000.000 (five million Argentine pesos) for the “PyMES CNV” regime and ARS 300.000.000 (three million Argentine pesos) for the “PyMES CNV Guaranteed” regime. 

Currently, the financing of SMEs in capital markets is equivalent to 40% of the total. This amount can be expected to rise once economic conditions improve.

This Resolution and the previous rules passed by the CNV have opened a new chapter in SME financing. Now, SMEs will be able to finance their projects in the mid- to long-term in a simpler and more agile way.