Nasdaq First North Granted SME Growth Market Status

Nasdaq announced that the equity segment of Nasdaq First North in Sweden, Denmark, and Finland has been granted the European Union’s ‘SME Growth Market’ status. SME Growth Markets are a new subcategory of multilateral trading facilities (MTFs) introduced by MiFID II to facilitate access to capital for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The SME Growth Market initiative aims to establish a pan-European regulatory standard for market operators, with certain regulatory alleviations aimed at giving European SMEs more efficient access to the public market. Market operators applying to become a SME Growth Market must be operated as MTFs, where at least 50 percent of the issuers should be SMEs as defined by the European Union (i.e. companies with a market cap of <€200 m). Nasdaq First North’s transition to SME Growth Market will become effective on September 1, 2019, and the equity segment of the market in Sweden, Denmark and Finland will then be referred to as Nasdaq First North Growth Market.