More than three quarters of the European technology community is not worried about the availability of finance, according to a survey by law firm DLA Piper, despite the widely held concern that access to finance for many companies has not properly recovered since the financial crisis began in 2008.
More than a third of respondents, 36%, to the DLA Piper survey said financing and access to credit was improving in their sectors, while another 41% said they were indifferent to the funding squeeze. However, a still significant 23% of respondents said that their sectors were being hampered by the access to financing, the DLA Piper survey said. 
The mood contrasts to many weaker segments of the economy where pessimism has crept in. For example, on Monday, a report on small and medium-sized UK manufacturers found a third of companies were limiting their exports, which is the highest proportion of these companies battening down the hatches since October 2008, the month after US bank Lehman Brothers collapsed.
The DLA survey is the latest sign of renewed confidence creeping into the technology sector, which received a lift last week as US-based social network Facebook filed for its long-awaited initial public offering. The tech sector is also confident about the availability of quality talent, with 92% of respondents saying that the quality of candidates was either improving or had stayed the same, with 48% saying the quality of staff available was on the up.
DLA conducted 300 online interviews with executives from key European technology companies with a turnover of more than €10m, members of the investment community with a technology focus and government officies focused on technology policy making.
The survey also revealed that 73% of respondents ranked emerging markets in their top three areas for potential growth, followed by cloud computing (70%) and renewables/green technologies (67%). Social media and online channels were ranked in the top three by only 23% of respondents.
The results were presented at DLA’s inaugural European Technology Leaders Summit in London yesterday. In a video presentation Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission, expanded on her announcement at Davos that the Commission would be investing €10m in a Cloud Partnership this year which will create a market for public sector procurement of cloud services from 2013. "This is not about building a European super cloud, neither outright, nor by forcing the integration of existing public cloud infrastructures," she said.
Speakers variously identified Africa as having huge potential, particularly in mobile communications. Lord George Robertson, Former NATO Secretary General, highlighted Estonia as one of the few countries to have flourished in Europe recently and drew attention to the number of start-ups there. Central and Eastern Europe was the region identified in DLA Piper’s survey as having the most potential for growth (57% ranked it in their top 3 countries/regions), followed by India (38%). But only 12% of respondents ranked China in their top 3 areas for potential growth.
Additional reporting by Toby Lewis.