Abstract: More and more Chinas small and medium-sized listed companies provide external security for their subsidiaries， and set out to establish their relationship with banks. In order to explore the relationship between external security， bank-enterprise link and enterprise growth， the empirical data from Chinas listed companies were tested. The results showed that SMEs acts of providing external security for others as well as the amount that SMEs provide had a negative effect on the growth of SMEs， whereas the listed companies tended to build up a bank-enterprise relationship by employing professionals with banking experience as their senior executives， which could not only exert a positive effect on enterprise growth but also have a positive moderating effect on the relationship between external security and enterprise growth. Thus， it can be concluded that building up bank-enterprise relationship may improve the effectiveness of enterprises external security.

Key words: external security, bank-enterprise relationship, moderating effect, small and medium-sized listed company