Nicolas Legendre: Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship recipient

Nicolas Legendre has been awarded a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship. This scholarship provides financial support to high-caliber students across Canada and enables them to fully concentrate on their studies.

Nicolas started his undergraduate studies in finance at the Telfer School of Management in 2010. After graduating in 2014, he continued his studies at Telfer for his Masters in Science of Management. He currently studies the financing of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Canada.

His Master's thesis investigated the credit availability for SMEs during the recent financial crisis in 2007-2008 and found that loan approval rates did not decline during the crisis. This finding questions the Canadian government’s monetary injection of five billion dollars in 2009 in an attempt to isolate SMEs from the liquidity shock of the crisis. Nicolas’ PhD thesis will address this issue by evaluating the efficacy of Canada’s credit guarantee scheme, a government initiative to facilitate financing to SMEs.

Therefore, his research holds important implications to policymakers while contributing to the on-going debate about interventions and the effectiveness of credit markets, potentially mobilizing Canadian research on an international level.