‘exit strategy’ means a strategy for the liquidation of holdings by a venture capital or private equity fund in accordance with a plan to achieve maximum return, including trade sale, write-offs, repayment of preference shares/loans, sale to another venture capitalist, sale to a financial institution and sale by public offering, including Initial Public Offerings.

In particular, this would facilitate pan-European IPOs (Initial Public Offerings) and admission to trading to specialised stock markets for fast-growing SMEs.

Replacement capital: // Purchase of existing shares in a company from another venture capital investment organisation or from another shareholder or shareholders.

(26) The present directive is only a first step towards a higher degree of harmonisation for takeover bids.

2. Notes the initial steps taken by the Commission to improve transparency and Parliamentary accountability in the preparation of the GATS offer, but believes that further improvements are essential, making all EU requests and offers available to all members of the European Parliament and national parliaments and also informing and consulting the European Social Partners, through the social dialogue machinery, in order to permit informed public debate before any offer is made to the WTO; calls on the Commission to press for agreement ...[+++] within the WTO that requests and offers by all Member States should be public;

at the latest from the time when, by whatever means, the existence of a bid becomes known and at all events after receiving the information referred to in Article 6(1), first sentence, concerning the bid and until the result of the bid is made public or the bid lapses, the board of the offeree company shall abstain from completing any action other than seeking alternative bids which may result in the frustration of the offer, and notably from the issuing of shares which may result in a lasting impediment to the offeror to obtain control over the offeree company, unless it has ...[+++] the prior authorisation of the general meeting of the shareholders and the supervisory board (if any) given for this purpose, during the period of acceptance of the bid;