Of the 54 firms to have listed on Borsa Italiana’s secondary market for smaller firms, 18 have done so this year. The most unusual was Blue Note Milano, a jazz club,which last month sold 40% of its shares for €1.4m ($1.9m). In Europe, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) usually ask banks, not markets, for money. But new bank lending to small firms in the euro area plummeted 35% between 2008 and 2013 to €649 billion (see chart). It fell sharply in Britain too.