GROWTH CAPITAL FOR GLOBAL CHALLENGERS AND LOCAL LEADERS

Catalyst Romania is the first private equity and venture capital fund designed for Romania. Initially sponsored by 3TS Capital Partners, one of the leading private equity and venture capital firms in Europe, Catalyst Romania is mainly funded by the European Investment Fund (EIF), through the JEREMIE initiative, co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund. Catalyst Romania is currently managed by a local team based in Romania and aims to make early stage venture capital investments in Romanian SMEs from the Technology, Media and Telecom sectors, with investments in the range of €200,000 up to €2,000,000. Together with EIF as the largest contributor of Catalyst, there are also other investors in the fund: BT Asset Management (BTAM), a company member of Banca Transylvania, 3TS Capital Partners and some other private investors.

About JEREMIE Initiative (the acronym comes from "Joint European Resources for Micro to Medium Enterprises" or "Joint European Resources for Micro to medium Enterprises in") is the name used in the programming period 2007-2013 to define financial instruments co-financed by structural funds. In Romania, the Jeremie initiative has been managed by EIF and has benefited from a total contribution of 225 million Euro from the Sectoral Operational Programme “Increase of Economic Competitiveness” 2007-2013. In Romania, apart from private equity, the JEREMIE initiative has so far supported almost 600 Million Euro in new SME loans through the guarantee facility implemented through three local banks and has recently launched a funded risk sharing instrument operated with four Romanian banks. The financial instruments planned for the programmatic period 2007-2013 have been successfully used. On the official website of the European Investment Fund ( www.eif.org) new instruments supported by different Operational Programmes will be announced (for example the Regional Operational Programme and Competitivity Operational Programme), to present the new available fund-of-funds instruments.