Wisdom of crowds: startup brings crowd funding to litigation finance February 11, 2019 When Cormac Leech, chief executive of new crowd funding litigation platform Axiafunder, is questioned about the potential 20-30 per cent returns offered to investors on its website, he doubles down. “If anything I’d say its conservatively 20-30 per cent, we would aspire to do better than that actually,” he says. Any investment offering such stellar [...]
Property firm LMSL teams up with crowdfunding platform to launch £9m east London bond September 8, 2015 A property investor is offering small retail investors the chance to buy a slice of east London property after launching a £9m mini-bond via crowdfunding platform CrowdBnk. LMSL Group, which owns 160 rental properties in east London worth around £52m, said it aims to raise at least £9m to plough back into the ongoing regeneration [...]
How to upskill yourself: New trends like P2P learning make personal development far easier September 4, 2015 It's September. Fresh-faced graduates are buying their first suits, working out their daily commute and learning how to use the coffee machine. Insecurities start to set in: what do they have that you don’t? Will they get one comprehensive training session after the other while you’re stuck in the same daily routine? Or [...]
P2P investment: Taking on the banks September 3, 2015 Harriet Green talks to GLI Finance’s Louise Beaumont on how alternative finance is changing the landscape of fundraising for SMEs – and options for retail investors THERE is a sector of alternative finance which too often slips under the radar: the investment firms that put money onto crowdfunding and peer-to-peer platforms which then lend that [...]
Paypal’s new peer-to-peer payment service Paypal.me makes it even easier to send people money with just a link September 1, 2015 With just a tap of your phone – or even your watch – it’s never been easier to pay people back. Now Paypal wants to make it even easier, with a personalised URL. This could be a good thing in the age of an ever-growing “sharing economy”. Asking friends for money back after footing a [...]
Private equity gets boost from small Brit firms August 31, 2015 PRIVATE equity investment into UK small and medium sized firms hit a two year high in the first half of 2015, according to figures, underscoring the insulation small British outfits enjoy from global headwinds. Turmoil in the Eurozone sparked by the Greek debt crisis and ongoing fears over a slowdown in China have hit larger [...]
P2P lender Zopa has a new chief executive Jaidev Janardana as Giles Andrews steps aside August 30, 2015 Peer-to-peer (P2P) lender Zopa has announced that former chief financial officer Jaidev Janardana has been promoted to the top spot with immediate effect. Janardana will implement the lenders strategy for its next phase of growth, as it targets £1bn in new loans for 2016, and aims to build a brand that becomes a mainstream service for [...]
Including peer-to-peer lending in the new innovative finance Isa will provide boost for millions of Brits August 26, 2015 Something momentous has happened to the UK peer-to-peer lending industry, as the government finally confirmed its plans to introduce a new type of Isa covering peer-to-peer loans. This boost for the sector comes a decade after my company Zopa pioneered the concept back in 2005. Read more: Peer-to-peer lending isn’t shadow banking – it’s now [...]
Following the Kids Company fiasco, what does alternative finance such as peer-to-peer and crowdfunding offer charities? August 20, 2015 What's the connection between charities and alternative finance? Currently, the answer is not a lot – charities are often big, well-oiled machines, and peer-to-peer lending and crowdfunding platforms are still very new. But do the latter offer the former something? The ongoing Kids Company fiasco has put the charity model under scrutiny. And the [...]
Andy Murray invests in three British tech startups through Seedrs equity crowdfunding platform – Tossed, Trillenium and Fuel Ventures Fund August 19, 2015 Tennis ace Andy Murray is busy working on his investment portfolio off the courts, it seems – after he invested in three British startups through equity crowdfunding platform Seedrs. Murray, who is the world's fifth biggest earning tennis star and has millions sitting in the bank, became an investor in Seedrs itself and an advisory board [...]