The availability of external financial resources is an important factor for the activity of new businesses. This paper' describes the financial structure of over 360,000 joint-stock companies born in Italy between 2003 and 2010 with the aim of: (1) checking whether the scarcity of information on the business activity of these companies could make it difficult to obtain external funding; and (2) quantifying changes in difficulties in accessing credit during the crisis.
The analysis shows that one year after birth, the start-ups financed almost one third of their assets with internal resources and another third with trade debts; external debts contributed almost a fifth. About half of the companies have resorted to bank debts. For companies set up between 2008 and 2010, the recourse to external funding after a year of activity decreased significantly compared with that of companies launched in the period preceding the crisis.
