Mezzanine Financing: Application Practices and Leadership Aspects

Abstract

Mezzanine financing instruments are quite common throughout the world, the practice of their application began to appear in Russian Federation. The potential of mezzanine lending is due to the current volatile economic situation, when it is difficult to apply traditional financing methods. Our paper presents a comparative study of mezzanine financing in Russia and other countries, from the point of view of determining the level of development of mezzanine lending in Russia and the manifestation of characteristic patterns that lead, ultimately, to their own, different from other countries, direction of the formation of the market of mezzanine products. We discuss the main approaches of Russian and foreign researchers to the concept of "mezzanine financing", determine the possible forms of its application in practical activities, and analyze the existing practice in Russian Federation and other countries and make conclusions and implications. IntroductionMezzanine financing is a hybrid form of debt and equity financing, which is usually used to finance the expansion of companies. Despite the fact that mezzanine financing has become a practice in the United States, to date, mezzanine financing instruments have still not found wide application in a number of countries. At the same time, gradually and in the countries of Eastern Europe, the mezzanine is being transformed from a niche instrument used in a limited number of types of financing, into the main, widely used form of borrowed financing and a supplier of growing capital (Amon and Dorfleitner 2013; or Dec and Masiukiewicz 2017).Considering mezzanine financing as a concept, Leach and Melicher (2014) note the possible goals of financing to expand production, marketing costs, improve products, etc. (Leach and Melicher 2014). The mezzanine financing mechanism is based on the use of classical sources of financing -bank loans, corporate bonds and ordinary shares (Tetřevová and Svědík 2013; Svědík and Tetřevová 2014; Tetřevová and Svědík 2018). According to Anson et al. (2010), mezzanine financing instruments are inserted into the company's capital structure between the "floor" of capital and the "ceiling" of senior debt. The classification of mezzanine financing is based on various criteria, in particular, a mezzanine loan and mezzanine capital (Meluzin and Zinecker 2009;Volkmann et al. 2010). According to Silbernagel and Vaitkunas (2008), mezzanine capital includes senior subordinated debt, convertible subordinated debt and repurchased preferred shares (Silbernagel and Vaitkunas 2008).Considering the analyzed concept from the point of view of Russian approaches, it should be noted that in Russia mezzanine lending is defined as an alternative to the project financing mechanism and is interpreted as a symbiosis of debt financing and equity financing (Petrikova 2014). Of course, the mezzanine is a type of financing, which is characterized by the simultaneous signs of debt and direct investment. In the context of modern realities, taking into account the increased risks...