L 161/96
EN
Official Journal of the European Union
16.6.2022
(20) ‘innovative mid-cap’ means a mid-cap that meets one of the following conditions: fulfils the criteria to be considered an ‘innovative enterprise’ within the meaning of Article 2 of the General Block Exemption Regulation; has recently been awarded a Seal of Excellence quality label by the European Innovation Council in accordance with the Horizon 2020 work programme 2018-2020 (43) or with Article 2(23) and Article 15(2) of Regulation (EU) 2021/695; or has recently received an investment from the European Innovation Council Fund, such as an investment in the context of the Accelerator Programme as referred to in Article 48 of Regulation (EU) 2021/695; and either has participated to any CASSINI (44) action (CASSINI Business Accelerator or Matchmaking), or has received investment from CASSINI Seed and Growth Funding Facility, or has been awarded a CASSINI Prize, meeting the evaluation thresholds set therein, or has been supported by space-related projects funded by Horizon Europe which has resulted in the creation of a start-up; (21) ‘leverage of private resources’ means the degree to which public investment attracts additional investment from private sources; (22) ‘loan instrument’ means an agreement which obliges the lender to make available to the borrower an agreed amount of money for an agreed period of time and under which the borrower is obliged to repay the amount within the agreed period; it may take the form of a loan, or another funding instrument, including a lease, which provides the lender with a predominant component of minimum yield; (23) ‘mid-cap’ means an undertaking that is not an SME and whose number of employees does not exceed 1 500, calculated in accordance with Articles 3 to 6 of Annex I to the General Block Exemption Regulation.
For the purpose of the application of this definition, several entities will be considered as one undertaking if any of the conditions listed in Article 3(3) of Annex I to the General Block Exemption Regulation is fulfilled; (24) ‘natural person’ means a person other than a legal entity who is not an undertaking within the meaning of Article 107(1) of the Treaty; (25) ‘new loan’ means a newly initiated loan instrument designed to finance new investments or working capital, to the exclusion of refinancing of: (i) existing loans or of (ii) other forms of financing; (26) ‘quasi-equity investment’ means a type of financing that ranks between equity and debt, having a higher risk than senior debt and a lower risk than common equity and whose return for the holder is predominantly based on the profits or losses of the underlying target undertaking and which is unsecured in the event of default; quasi-equity investments may be structured as debt, unsecured and subordinated, including mezzanine debt, and in some cases convertible into equity, or as preferred equity; (27) ‘replacement capital’ means the purchase of existing shares in a company from an earlier investor or shareholder; (28) ‘risk finance investment’ means equity and quasi-equity investments, loans (including leases) and guarantees, or a combination thereof, to eligible undertakings for the purposes of making new investments, to the exclusion of entirely private investments provided on market terms and outside the scope of the relevant State aid measure; (29) ‘small and medium-size enterprise (‘SME’) means an undertaking fulfilling the criteria laid down in Annex I to the General Block Exemption Regulation; (43) Commission Implementing Decision C(2017) 7124 of 27.10.2017 on the adoption of the work programme for 2018-2020 within the framework of the Specific Programme Implementing Horizon 2020 – the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (2014-2020) and on the financing of the work programme for 2018).
(44) The objectives of the CASSINI initiative include: 1) increasing the number of space-based start-ups developing innovative solutions using Union space technologies, 2) their success rate in establishing companies, and 3) easing access for space-based SMEs to risk capital.
The CASSINI actions cover the full entrepreneurial cycle and they are geared, by design, towards selection of the most innovative and competitive business ideas (i.e. external contractors apply market-driven criteria to provide mentoring and acceleration, and venture capitalists managing space thematic funds will decide autonomously in picking the ventures they want to invest in).
See also footnote 29.