Difficulties and risks of interSME cooperation : solutions provided by private-equity firms

This article analyses the difficulties and risks small to medium sized companies (SME) encounter while forming interfirm cooperation, and the roles private equity-firms play, reducing those risks. SME mainly face higher information asymmetries and uncertainty compared to bigger companies. Private equity-firms help reduce both factors and to establish a situation of trust between the future interfirm cooperation partners. They thereby prevail the transaction to fail. A multiple case study of explanatory design, conducted on the French private equity market, details these major results.