Author: Philip Lane

• Friday 2^nd March 2012, Radisson Blu Hotel, Golden Lane, Dublin 8, 9am-5.30pm.

The Central Bank of Ireland will host a conference on SME lending on March 2^nd 2012. This conference will combine work by Central Bank of Ireland researchers on the Irish SME lending market with research from international experts in the area.

The conference will comprise four sessions as follows:

Session 1: The Irish SME segment in context – importance in the Irish economy, allocation across sectors, competition in lending, loan performance.

Session 2: Keynote Speech: Gregory Udell (Kelley School of Business, Indiana University)

Session 3: Credit Access – the role of relationship lending, securitization, foreign ownership.

Session 4: Loan performance and default modelling.

Confirmed presenters and papers:

Tara McIndoe Calder, Fergal McCann, Reamonn Lydon, Martina Lawless (Central Bank): The importance of SMEs in Irish economic activity

Stuart Fraser (Warwick Business School): SME access to finance: disentangling risk aversion from true credit risk.

Fergal McCann, Tara McIndoe-Calder (Central Bank): modelling borrower-level determinants of default in SME loans.

Sarah Holton, Martina Lawless, Fergal McCann (Central Bank of Ireland): SME credit access in the European crisis.

Thorsten Beck (University of Tilburg): The impact of foreign bank ownership on SME lending methods.

Santiago Carbó-Valverde (University of Granada): SME credit access: the role of securitization.

A full and precise program will be provided nearer to the event. Admission to the conference is free, but must be reserved by emailing patricia.kearney at centralbank.ie with “SME conference” in the subject line.

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