Hello my friends 🖐,
and welcome back to the Monday #TechWatchbySeb ☕️.
This week we will travel across the U.K 🇬🇧 and Austria 🇦🇹 after sharing insights on the Neobanking trend in Europe.
If there is one market that has seen incredible traction supported by the Covid-19 environment, it’s definitely NeoBrokers.
Neobrokers are apps or web platforms offering gamified tools for retail investors gamified tools to invest and trade on listed assets such as Stocks, ETF, Gold, Crypto and many other tools.
With the wish of the consumers to use pure-player online App but also supported by the financial schemes to support the economy, individuals were staying at home, confined with more savings to invest. This explains in part why US neobroker Robinhood managed to record impressive traction in recent months. Unfortunately, the platform’s popularity among novice investors backfired and generated bad press due to the Gamestop incident, which showed how much beginner investors could impact the stock market. The bad press generated by Robinhood’s response might have also hurt future prospects for other neobrokers.
It’s interesting to note that the European market for neobrokerage seems to count some very strong candidates. While it was hard to find any in-depth analysis of this market trend, the European venture capital scene has definitely shown interest in this segment, as illustrated by the following recent deals:
e-Toro announcing a merging with a SPAC, valuing the company $10 Bn
BitPanda, becoming the first Austrian Unicorn while raising $170M
NNextmarkets, the German neobroker just announced fundraising of $ 30M.
Also, looking at the main investors of those companies, I couldn’t find major names, but many are from outside Europe :
China Minsheng Financial Holdings 🇨🇳 supporting eToro during the recent rounds
Valar Ventures 🇺🇸 supporting BitPanda for the last 2 major rounds
Alan Howard 🇬🇧 supporting NextMarkets’ last round.
Definitely an interesting trend to track, and probably an area for new important Tech IPO in the next months or years.
#TECHWATCHBYSEB — WEEKLY ISSUE #16
🥇 e-Toro 🇬🇧 to get listed through a SPAC for $10 Bn
The UK broker e-Toro, a rival to Robinhood, plans to go public via a merger with a SPAC. This mega-deal is led by the well known Betsy Cohen.
The SPAC: FinTech Acquisition Corp. V values the combined company at about $10.4 billion. The companies are raising about $650 million in equity to support the deal.
🥈SumUp 🇬🇧 the #Paytech company raised $750M
SumUp just released this important round, oversubscribed, and includes very well known investors such as Goldman Sachs or Bain Capital. The company is reporting that the new round will accelerate further growth and the acquisition of new clients, organically and via M&A’s, and refinance existing debts.
Another very promising European Payment Company💪
🥉 BitPanda 🇦🇹, becoming the first Austrian Unicorn by Raising $ 170M
BitPanda, another European Neo-Broker making waves this week in the ecosystem while Raising this round, pushing the valuation above $1Bn. The company is already active in several European countries in France, Spain, Turkey, Italy and Poland, has developed a gamified platform that allows retail investors to easily invest in many different assets such as Cryptocurrencies.
That’s it for this week, wishing you a great week ahead🖐
Stay safe ❤️
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