A UK savings and investment app and a UK payments startup, two of the UK’s brightest startups, are the latest fintechs to embark on secondary share sales.
Moneybox and GoCardless are joining Monzo and Revolut in carrying out secondary share sales, which are proving very popular at the moment.
Secondary sales are common in startups, as they allow existing shareholders to cash out some of their investment and for new investors to come on board.
Moneybox, founded in 2015 and which has more than one million customers, today said its value has nearly doubled to £550m, after a £70m investment from tech investor Apis Global Growth Fund III and Amundi, a European asset manager, which have joined its investor roster.
The investors are ploughing in £70m, which will mainly be facilitated through a secondary share sale, with existing investors selling 10-15 per cent of the current share capital, Moneybox said.
Moneybox’s existing investors are Fidelity International Strategic Ventures, Oxford Capital, Breega, Burda, and CNP.
As part of the secondary share sale, Moneybox’s 35,000-strong shareholder community, including crowdfund investors, retail investors and employee shareholders, will all have the opportunity to sell 10 per cent of their holding, said Moneybox.
Ben Stanway, co-founder and executive chair, Moneybox, said the share sale would be “able to facilitate this secondary share sale to recognise the hard work of our team and also our investors, many of whom have supported us since inception. We want to enable our shareholder community to realise some of the value of their investment at this important juncture”.
Moneybox made a pre-tax profit of £27m in the year ending May 2024, compared to a £4.1m loss the year before. Revenues were up from £29m to £77m in the period.
Companies House data also shows the Moneybox chairwoman Laurel Powers-Freeling resigned as director last month.
Powers-Freeling, a former boss of Marks & Spencer Financial Services, was an independent non-executive chairwoman appointed in October 2021.
Moneybox said Powers-Freeling had stepped down following her three-year contract ending, as she moved to heading up the new Bank of England (BOE) and Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) cost-benefit analysis panel.
She is being replaced by Ben Stanway, Moneybox co-founder and co-CEO.
Separately, GoCardless, a payment platform that lets businesses collect one-off and recurrent payments, such as subscriptions and membership fees, via direct debit, rather than credit cards or bank transfers, is also undergoing a secondary share sale, according to a report.
Sky News has reported that the share sale at GoCardless,which was valued at around $2billion in 2022, will result in a £100m-plus windfall for its employees.
It said that GoCardless, founded in 2011, was in the advanced stages of co-ordinating a secondary share sale.
Sources said the sale could see up to $200m of stock changing hands.
Existing investors in GoCardless include Accel, Balderton and Notion Capital.
GoCardless declined to comment.
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