Prodigal Prospa returns to investors for equity
Online small business lender Prospa has gone back to the drawing board following a dramatic false start to its mooted ASX listing. Following the 11th-hour shelving of its initial public offering last month, Street Talk understands the company is considering a range of options including a private raising The company’s co-founders and joint chief executives Beau Bertoli and Greg Moshal are working through how an additional pre-IPO raising would look and the quantum of funds required to fund Prospa’s near-term growth ambitions. The deal size is expected to be at least $40 million, correlating with the amount Prospa’s existing investors were originally looking to inject into the IPO. The private raise is one of several options being canvassed by Prospa. […]
More jobs for Australians as Silicon Valley Fintech opens APAC headquarters in Victoria
An announcement made by the Victoria Government focused on Melbourne being the new Asia-Pacific Headquarters of a Silicon Valley fintech innovator. Victoria’s growing fintech sector will be boosted as Nomis Solutions, a Silicon Valley fintech innovator, has announced that Melbourne will be the location of their Asia-Pacific Headquarters. This move will be creating 50 jobs in over five years. Nomis Solutions’ cutting-edge approach to big data as well as its personalised customer solutions and market analysis are being used by more than 10,000 bankers worldwide. The support of the Andrews Labor Government has secured Nomis Solutions’ base of operations in Melbourne. The Victoria Government is growing the state’s reputation as […]
Airwallex in the money with $108m raise
Melbourne-based fintech start-up Airwallex has closed the second-largest fundraising round in Australian start-up history, taking in $US80 million ($108 million) for a Series B round led by Chinese conglomerate Tencent Holdings, alongside Sequoia Capital China and Melbourne’s Square Peg Capital. The company, which was founded by five Chinese-Australian 30-somethings, has built a system to enable cross-border payments by combining payments and foreign exchange transfers into a single transaction. In 2017 it raised $US19 million ($26 million) from the same investors, but it has now also added two more backers from China’s booming venture capital scene in Hillhouse Capital and Hong Kong-based Horizons Ventures, as well as Indonesia’s Central Capital Ventura. […]
Prospa float reveals a new world of online business financing
Online small business lender Prospa is set to hit the ASX on June 6 with a market capitalisation of $576 million. It’s a lofty valuation for a relatively new business lender with a net loan book of $200 million and a statutory net profit in the 2017 financial year of just $1.2 million. But the number – settled after an institutional book build for Prospa shares last Thursday – points to the aggressive growth aspirations for the Sydney-based group, which is raising $146 million in an initial public offering fully-underwritten by Macquarie Capital and UBS. In its prospectus filed with the corporate regulator on Monday morning, Prospa said it expects to originate […]
Ex-NAB execs raise $15m to disrupt home loan market with new start-up Athena
Macquarie Capital and Square Peg are the lead investors in a $15 million funding round for fintech start-up Athena, which aims to use the latest technology to steal a march on the big banks in the competitive home loans market. The firm purports to connect home buyers with loans backed directly by the superannuation industry and was founded by former NAB bankers Nathan Walsh and Michael Starkey. They have built a cloud-based digital home loan platform, which they claim will save some borrowers currently with the big four banks up to $100,000 over the life of a loan. The latest capital raise, which also had participation from Apex Capital and […]
