Yes.

All right.

Thank you very much.

My name is Piotr Mikalowski and maybe at the beginning I should correct what has been said.

You presented

I mean

it was not my background

but I'm happy to present myself to give you

a minimum understanding of what I'm doing.

So I'm working for the European Investment Bank and as you know...

Oh yeah, mix the two.

No worries, no worries.

Let me maybe tell you a couple of words about the European Investment Bank first.

The European Investment Bank is a European institution

but we are a quite specific animal

in the sense that the bank belongs to all member states of the European Union.

The business model of the European Investment Bank is that we have a very strong credit

rating, which is a AAA.

And unfortunately

we don't receive any grants from the European Commission.

So our business model is that we are financing ourselves on the capital markets.

So we have access to cheap long-term money.

And since we are a public institution

our goal is to transfer this affordable access

to long-term capital to our beneficiaries

our clients from the public and private sector.

Most likely you must know from the European Investment Bank from big infrastructure projects.

We were financing in the past and we are still financing.

We finance road sector in the European Union

energy infrastructure

airports

railway

infrastructure as well.

But in 2015

the EIB has created a specific product to address innovative companies in

the European Union.

We have created an instrument which is called Venture Debt.

And let me try to clarify and explain to you what is the Venture Debt and what type of

private companies it is supposed to address and provide them with an interesting financial

solution to finance their growth.

So first of all, on this slide, you can see the life cycle of a company.

So you see the beginning when the company is created

there is an idea

there is the

so-called seed financing at this stage

which allows the company to create the first prototype

the first product

which could be already commercialized.

And at this stage

the company is starting the so-called early growth stage and the