aws
January 2012: Austria Wirtschaftsservice. The first CdH event in the new year was a visit to Austria's national business promotion bank, aws.
aws offers a broad range of company-specific investment promotion programmes and services. They offer financial assistance and consultancy to companies, from the pre-seed phase up to the expansion stage. Financial assistance is offered in the form of loans, guarantees, grants (sometimes in exchange for equity), as well as consultancy services in these areas - also in relation to intellectual property.
DI Dr Gerald Ruppert warmly welcomed the trade delegates. The department which he heads, market & technology research, researches and analyses market and technology data, as well as other back ground information, for purposes such as the writing of business plans.
The complete aws portfolio was presented by Mag. Matthias Bischof, head of communications & international affairs. As Austria's national business promotion bank, aws is owned by three different government ministries (BMF, bmvit und BMWFJ) and it?s main goal is to increase the competitiveness of Austrian industry and commerce by encouraging private sector (start-ups), safeguarding and creating jobs, and also by assisting to stabilise financially difficult situations. Under this remit, aws handles more than 6,000 projects a year and distributes about 800m Euros in assistance each year.
Moreover, aws supports companies in their steps towards internationalisation. Wassislis Laitsos (of the enterprise & project finance unit) told the trade delegates that assistance to Austrian companies in the preparation and implementation stages of internationalisation projects was primarily by the provision of financing and the covering of economic risk through guarantees.
Another significant sector of aws' business is dedicated to intellectual property. Jaqueline Winter gave an insight into the wide ranging world of patent law with tips where and how to assert intellectual property rights. In this case aws offers not only financial support, but also know-how support ? from market research through to grants and commercialisation.
