The missing middle in
European corporate debt.
Established, cash-flow-generating European mid-caps that need €20–100 million of debt fall between two stools: too large for retail platforms, below the public bond market’s radar. VanillaBonds arranges standardised, tradeable bonds for exactly that band — under the proven Nordic bond framework, executed with a licensed partner. The capital exists; the allocation is broken.
A structural gap — not a shortage of capital
Europe’s funding map has a hole in the middle, and each existing channel stops short of it.
Retail & crowdfunding platforms
Built for small tickets and retail investors — orders of magnitude too small for a €20–100m issuance, and without the qualified-investor base a deal that size needs to clear.
The public bond market
Benchmark economics — rating, prospectus, syndicate — start near €250m. Below that, the market barely looks. And banks are retreating from holding mid-cap credit: capital rules made it expensive, not the companies worse.
Slow, bilateral, locked
House-bank loans, Schuldschein and private credit — untradeable, single-lender, and reserved for credit that bank models read as investment grade. Investors reach the segment only through funds whose fees eat 1.5–2.5% of the return.
The diagnosis is top-down. The gap is bottom-up.
Europe’s own competitiveness agenda — from the Draghi report to the Savings and Investments Union — names exactly this problem: the continent doesn’t lack capital, it lacks an efficient market that turns savings into investment. Then delivery stalls. That stall is our reason to exist.
Arrange, don’t disintermediate
Platforms that tried to replace the banks failed — not on technology, but on missing investor networks and credibility. We do the opposite: an asset-light platform that structures standardised, tradeable bonds under the Nordic bond framework, anchored to a licensed host and arranger as key partner.
One standard
Nordic bond terms, proven at scale: senior secured, trustee-governed, majority decisions through collective action clauses, a fixed covenant menu. Standard documentation per deal, so counsel reviews the delta — not two hundred pages from scratch.
One process
Mandate to settlement in weeks, not quarters. €100,000 minimum denominations, qualified investors only, prospectus-exempt. ISIN and Euroclear/Clearstream settlement through established paying agents — tradeable from day one.
Facts, not judgments
Each deal ships with a dossier of verifiable facts — trade registers, confirmed collateral, annual accounts. It organises the facts; it does not render a credit judgment. Investors run their own credit work, faster, on comparable paper.
Institutional debt at an underserved ticket
Debt without dilution and without a single controlling lender — at a size that cannot pay for a bank’s bond desk today. Standardisation cuts the fixed cost per issuance; that is what makes the ticket viable.
Direct access, full coupon, an exit
Direct access to a segment that today runs through fund wrappers with a 1.5–2.5% fee layer. Buy at €100k denominations, keep the full coupon, trade out when needed — the exit private credit lacks.
Where we stand
We separate what we can already stand behind from what we still have to earn. Today: business plan and legal architecture drafted, the regulatory perimeter mapped (arranger model, qualified investors only), a verified dataset of 60 non-Nordic European issuers already using the Nordic format — and a working platform demo. Now running: structured validation interviews with credit funds, family offices and mid-cap CFOs.
The part we won’t pretend about
The hardest question isn’t finding the companies — it’s the first investor. We know who they are: professional investors who want this credit and can’t get near it today. What we haven’t proven is that one of them goes first. Wanting in isn’t the same as writing the first cheque — that is exactly the assumption we are testing now, and we’d rather kill the model cleanly than pretend.
Foundation
Company formation (Munich), core team lock-in, regulatory groundwork and validation interviews on both sides of the market.
Umbrella & pipeline
Appointed-representative agreement under an established licensed firm; first pilot-issuer origination; founding circle of investors.
First issuance
First live standardised bond placed and settled under the umbrella structure — the reference transaction for everything after it.
Own the rails
Own arranger licence, repeat issuers, new domains — a market-based financing rail, replicable sector by sector, country by country.
Open a door
We’re speaking with professional investors, mid-cap CFOs and partners across DACH and the Nordics. Three doors matter most right now:
- Professional investors — credit funds, family offices, ESG and specialist credit funds — for structured validation conversations at the €20–100m ticket.
- A Mittelstand CFO with a €20–100m financing or refinancing question, open to a pilot conversation.
- Licensed securities institutes open to an appointed-representative partnership, and practitioners in Nordic trustee & documentation work.