Scotland attracts £37m investment in fintech over the past decade
Fintech in Scotland has attracted nearly £37m in investment over the last 10 years with an emerging ‘ecosystem’ which brings together start-ups, large firms, universities and the public sector, said the Scottish Government. Scotland is now a key location for many international firms, such as J.P. Morgan, HSBC, Morgan Stanley, NCR, Ingenico and Avaloq. J.P. Morgan’s European Technology Centre in Glasgow is a key strategic technology hub with 1,300 employees.Deloitte’s 2017 Global FinTech Hubs Federation report highlighted Edinburgh’s high concentration of key elements, and outside London and the South East, Scotland has the most complete financial and business services industry cluster in the UK. Economy Secretary Keith Brown has been […]
Robo-adviser Wealthsimple raises $51 million to expand service
Wealthsimple, a Toronto-based online wealth management startup, has raised $51 million in funding from Power Financial Corp (PWF.TO), as it seeks to compete in the increasingly crowded digital investment advice market. Wealthsimple, which is among the group of digital investment managers known as robo-advisers, will use the round of funding to add features to its service and expand to offer other financial products, it said.The company last year became the first foreign robo-adviser startup to enter the U.S. market and later in 2017 opened in the UK. It currently manages $1.45 billion for more than 65,000 clients in the three markets it operates in. Wealthsimple and other robo-advisers are seeking […]
Fintech Raisin crosses the channel to offer services to UK Savers
Savings marketplace Raisin has launched in the UK. The Berlin based Fintech has been expanding across the European continent but today they have crossed the British Channel to offer their services to UK savers. Raisin provides an interesting service that leverages technology to help savers to save more. Users of their site can shop around for higher interest rates on their money – regardless of their geographic location. Working alongside its first partner bank BACB, Raisin.co.uk offers savers the convenience of a single registration process to apply for multiple savings products. Raisin reports that it is currently on-boarding additional UK banks to the platform and will build a marketplace with […]
UK start-ups attract record £8.27bn investment
UK start-ups raised more money in equity investment last year than ever before, new research shows, as foreign investment cash flooded into the country. Data from the research firm Beauhurst, which specialises in tracking growth businesses, shows UK start-ups picked up £8.27bn worth of funding during 2017, more than twice as much as in 2016. Last year was also a record year for megadeals, with no fewer than 29 companies attracting investments of more than £50m. These businesses were led by Improbable, which raised £389m from the Japanese technology investor SoftBank Capital, and Farfetch, which raised £313m from the Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com. Other large funding rounds included TransferWise’s raise […]
Ant Financial plans equity fundraising at potential US$100 billion valuation
A fundraising would bring Ant a step closer to a hotly anticipated initial public offering by establishing a more current valuation. China’s Ant Financial Services Group is planning to raise up to US$5 billion in fresh equity that could value the online payments giant at more than US$100 billion, people familiar with the move said.A fundraising would bring Ant, in which e-commerce firm Alibaba Group Holding is taking a one-third stake, a step closer to a hotly anticipated initial public offering by establishing a more current valuation. Ant’s last fundraising in 2016 valued the owner of Alipay, China’s top online payment platform, at about US$60 billion. The new round should […]
Singapore notches record US$229m fintech funding in ’17: KPMG
BUOYED by US$122.75 million of funding in the fourth quarter, Singapore achieved a record high of US$229.1 million of fintech funding in 2017, according to KPMG’s Pulse of Fintech report. The record was attained despite a dip in the number of deals done throughout the year – from 37 in 2016 to 29 in 2017. Additionally, the smaller deal base in the past year meant that each was worth an average of US$7.9 million in 2017, bettering the US$5.9 million average in 2016. The high in fintech funding was mainly attributed to two of Asia’s 10 biggest deals – with a combined value of over US$130 million – taking place […]
Belgium’s crowdfunding market doubles in size in one year
Belgium’s crowdfunding market has doubled in one year to over 22 million euros invested in 80 funding operations, according to the annual barometer of the FinTech Belgium Federation, which represents professionals in this sector (start-up, scale-up and investors). Look&Fin is the biggest lender in this sector, providing a total of 15.2 million euros for 46 operations, and thus accounting for close to 70% of the market, followed by MyMicroInvest, which financed 19 operations for a total of 4.3 million euros. The last of the top three, Bolero, funded eight operations to the sum of 1.4 million euros. Meanwhile, the market for this alternative mode of financing has become more professional […]
Alibaba is picking up 33% of Ant Financial, its fintech affiliate that’s valued at over $60B
Alibaba has added an additional angle to the announcement of its latest financial report today with news that it is taking a 33 percent stake in Ant Financial, its fintech affiliate that operates Alipay and other financial services. The deal, which both parties said stems from an agreement made in 2014, will see Alibaba pick up newly issued shares in Ant, seemingly paving the way for a public listing. It will also mark an end to a profit-share agreement which saw Ant give Alibaba “royalty and technology service fees” equal to 37.5 percent of its pre-tax profits each quarter. The agreement will give Alibaba direct ownership of Ant, which is […]
