Zombies and Japanese conditions are looming | 3 questions for Jonas Eckhardt | Creditshelf Magazine No. 8, March 2020


In the March issue of Creditshelf-Magazin for SME financing, Jonas Eckhardt, Partner at FalkenSteg Corporate Finance, answers questions about the current low interest rate environment.

In a short interview with Prof. Dr. Dirk Schiereck, member of the supervisory board of creditshelf AG and head of the corporate finance department at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Jonas Eckhardt gives an outlook on possible effects on companies in crisis, which are forced to resort exclusively to alternative financing instruments: Factoring, inventory financing and sale & lease back or even specialized private equity investors. In extreme cases, so-called zombies – companies without economic substance that are kept alive artificially through life-prolonging financing measures and thus prevent the final, in many cases, purifying exit from the market – are threatened to disappear.

He also ventures a medium-term outlook on the interest rate level in the European currency area and warns against Japanese deflationary conditions.

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