On April 18, 2019, Mykhailo Merkulov, CEO of Arricano, and Ihor Baranov, director of capital markets at Arricano, took part in the EU4Business Networking Event and Workshop.
EU4Business and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) have organized the meeting of owners of small and medium-sized businesses and managers of big businesses to exchange experience in building partnerships with investors, experts from the European Union and the EBRD in a friendly atmosphere.
Top managers of Arricano in their speech, “April weather! A true story about 10 years of cooperation with the EBRD” told about Arricano, about the company's business strategy, interaction experience, conditions and mechanisms of cooperation with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
Ihor Baranov emphasized the advantages of cooperation with the EBRD with which Arricano has two loan agreements for $139 million (2008) and for $25 million (2014), “Implementing development policies through the project financing, the Bank allows us to implement the projects that would have been difficult to finance through local banks. The availability of own long funding resources allows the Bank to provide long-term loans to the client. As a result, the current debt load of the project decreases, which is extremely important during the period of implementation and launch of the project and stabilization of cash flows.”
Mykhailo Merkulov noted that the cooperation with investors is a unique experience that makes possible not only a systematic approach to business development, strategic and tactical thinking, organization of enterprise development processes, focus on the planned business indicators, but also change in the paradigm of thinking and development of mutually beneficial partnerships. “To get a reliable financial partner for the development of your business, you should be ready to build long-term relationships based on transparency and mutual understanding,” CEO Arricano says. - Cooperation with the EBRD and other foreign investors is beneficial and productive, despite the difficulties in implementing such transactions. There are more pluses than minuses. At a minimum, you can get a unique experience of structuring transactions with an international lender.”
The participants of Networking Event and Workshop also got acquainted with the case related to the attraction of a strategic foreign investor by the owner of Ecosoft company, Andrii Mitchenko, and the practical recommendations of Volodymyr Pavelko from Kyiv-Mohyla Business School.
It should be noted that EU4Business, the initiative of the European Union to support small and medium-sized businesses in the Eastern Partnership countries, is aimed at obtaining financing for SMEs, training, and technical support. The project has been operating in Ukraine since 2016.