This paper studies the relevance of bureaucrats in businesses on the allocation of finance across firms. Using a novel firm-level database containing information about the ownership structure of firms operating in 24 European countries during the period 2010-2016, we show that firms with public authorities as direct shareholders get subsidised access to financial resources compared to private-owned enterprises. A 1 percentage point increase in government direct shareholding reduces the average cost of production through the financial channel by 0.02 percent. Back-of-the-envelope calculations show that the fiscal burden of the SOE financial subsidy ranges from 0.001% to 0.955% of GDP. Counterfactual analyses conducted to quantify the aggregate productivity gains from removing state-ownership distortions show that a reform reallocating resources from unproductive state-owned enterprises towards more productive firms can yield productivity gains ranging from 19.1% to 83.7%.