South African private equity firm Brait in £1.3bn Virgin Active takeover April 16, 2015 High end gym chain Virgin Active was yesterday sold to a South African private equity outfit, scuppering longstanding plans by the company to float on the stock market. Brait, a private equity firm based in Johannesburg, will take an 80 per cent controlling stake in the group, which has 1.3m members and 267 clubs. [...]
Beyond the frontier: Emerging Crowd founders take crowdfunding to emerging markets April 15, 2015 Next week, a new crowdfunding platform is set to launch: Emerging Crowd. In the industry, it’s a first – because it will give retail investors in the UK the opportunity to directly buy shares and bonds in emerging market SMEs. At the same time, it will be the first time that emerging market entrepreneurs will [...]
In the FinTech family: How crowdfunding is propelling peer-to-peer platform Assetz Capital forward April 8, 2015 Back in 2010, it became clear to the co-founders of Assetz Capital that the banking system was broken. So we set out to make a difference – not just to help restart business lending, but to make a long-lasting change for the better. The desire to develop a platform where businesses could access much-needed funds, [...]
Caught in the act: Why Facewatch has turned to crowdfunding April 1, 2015 I have always wanted to raise investment through crowdfunding, because so much of what my company Facewatch does is based around empowering individuals to help themselves and others to reduce crime. That’s why we want to encourage lots of ordinary people to share in what we believe is going to be a great British success [...]
Forget the media darling equity: Debt is the biggest area of UK crowdfunding March 31, 2015 City A.M. published an article last week entitled Crowdfunding: A brief history. It acknowledged that there are four types of crowdfunding – donation, rewards-based, debt and equity – and yet the entire piece focused on equity crowdfunding. At the end of last year, Cambridge University and Nesta released a report called Understanding Alternative Finance. It [...]
Crowdfunding: A brief history March 26, 2015 It’s transforming the prospects of small businesses, but it’s still early days for crowdfunding in the UK. By the middle of this month, the Scottish National Party had raised nearly £35,000 on crowdfunding website Crowdfunder. It’s not the only party to turn to crowdfunding to bankroll its General Election campaign – over the past three [...]
Private equity owner HgCapital sells spread betting giant Sporting Index March 23, 2015 Sporting Index, which has around 80 per cent of the spread betting market, was yesterday sold to an unnamed private investor. Private equity owners HgCapital bought the company for £76m from Duke Street Capital in 2005 and had decided to put it up for sale following the 2014 World Cup. Yesterday it agreed the deal, [...]
Let’s get ethical: Abundance’s Bruce Davis on what crowdfunding is offering investors with a conscience March 18, 2015 Are we becoming more ethically aware when making investments? According to recent research conducted for Triodos Bank, more than one in 10 Brits say that they plan to remove any investments they hold involving fossil fuels over the next 12 months. And among 18 to 34-year olds, the proportion rises to 40 per cent. But [...]
Alternative lending deals rocket 43 per cent amid M&A flurry March 14, 2015 Non-bank lending jumped last year, with 195 deals in the UK and Europe, up 43 per cent from a year earlier. Mergers and acquisitions activity drove around 51 per cent of the deals, overtaking refinancing, when considering deals since the tracker began at end of 2012. "With increased confidence in the markets and wider funding options, we [...]
Peer-to-peer needs its own Lending Isa: Anything else would fail consumers March 12, 2015 Politicians usually make decisions knowing that they can’t please all of the people all of the time. The Peer-to-Peer Finance Association’s recent survey of over 4,500 peer-to-peer (P2P) lending customers comes close to disproving that. Over 95 per cent of respondents support the chancellor’s commitment to include P2P lending within the Isa wrapper. It’s a [...]