ETI is a recent category of business located between small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and large enterprises.
The French economic fabric consists mainly of very small companies (TPE) , SMEs and few mid-sized companies since there are only a few thousand in France.
The development of an SME into an ETI is considered to be an indicator of the company’s competitiveness and demonstrates strong internal growth .
This ETI classification is created according to the number of employees , turnover or the balance sheet total .
Criteria necessary for the ETI
Thus, a company is said to be of intermediate size if:
- It employs between 250 and 4,999 people.
- Its turnover does not exceed 1.5 billion euros or the total of its balance sheet does not exceed 2 billion euros.
There is, however, a special case. A company with less than 250 employees can be considered as an ETI, if the following conditions are met:
- Its turnover exceeds 50 million euros.
- The total of its balance sheet exceeds 43 million euros.
The limits of the ETI
There are advantages to becoming an ETI, the size of the company being a key factor in a structure’s ability to innovate and export. However, there are also constraints that mid-sized companies must face.
These constraints are not so much related to the very nature of the ETI status but rather come from the delicate positioning of ETI among other sizes of business.
Indeed, mid-sized companies suffer from an unfavorable tax situation. They do not benefit from the advantages of tax exemptions for VSEs and SMEs, nor from those of large companies which benefit from tax optimization capabilities.
