Rothschild-backed Augmentum Fintech sets course for £100m IPO with £18.5m Zopa stake

The private equity investment trust will exclusively focus on fintech start-ups and scale-ups.

Augmentum Fintech has announced it will launch an initial public offering (IPO) seeking a target of £100m placing with the possibility to increase this to £125m.

AltFi reported last month that the new closed-ended fund, specifically targeting UK and European fintech firms was looking to launch but now it seems plans are under foot for a March listing.

The new investment trust will have a premium listing on the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange and will invest in fast growing and high potential fintech companies in the UK and wider Europe, eventually comprising a portfolio of 15-20 investments in early stage (but not seed stage) and later stage fintech businesses focused on disruptive technologies in the banking, insurance and asset management sectors. Admission is expected in early March.

£2.7 million is to be invested by the Management Team and £10m by RIT Capital Partners, the investment trust chaired by Jacob Rothschild with a seed portfolio of assets valued at £33.3m to be acquired as part of the IPO; including an investment in P2P lending platform Zopa (£18.5m), Seedrs (£1.9m), Interactive Investor (£3m), BullionVault (£8.4m) and SRL Global (£1.5m).

The investment management team expected to be nearly fully invested within 12 months and then intends to generate returns for shareholders through exiting the investments over time and has committed to return to shareholders up to 50 per cent of the gains realised by the disposal of investments in each financial year.

 Neil England, Chairman of Augmentum Fintech, say investors will have access to a seed portfolio that still has significant upside potential.

“The substantial demand for post-seed venture capital funding in the European fintech market is being underserved and the Company will be well positioned to capitalise on the best opportunities available in the market and deliver attractive long term returns for investors,” he said.

Tim Levene, co-founder and principal of Augmentum Capital, the Company’s Investment Adviser, said: “Europe offers a large addressable and attractive fintech investment opportunity where we are blessed with a deep pool of talent and the Company is well positioned to capitalise on some of the most compelling opportunities available in the market,” he said.

“We expect to deliver attractive risk adjusted returns through a highly curated portfolio of high calibre fintech companies.”