RateSetter snaps up £13m from Woodford and Artemis
RATESETTER has snapped up a further £13m equity capital from City investors, which brings the peer-to-peer platform’s valuation up to £200m.
The consumer and business lender announced on Tuesday that City heavyweight Neil Woodford’s fund Woodford Investment Management and asset management giant Artemis were among the existing investors who bought additional stock from the company.
The fundraising round follows RateSetter’s recent hire of investment veteran Paul Manduca as chairman, which fuelled expectations of IPO plans.
Its chief executive Rhydian Lewis (pictured) recently confirmed the firm has long-term plans for an IPO in order to solidify its position as an “investor brand”.
“We hope to list the business – as an investor brand, we this would be natural step – but this is some way away,” Lewis said.
“We don’t hope to sell the business to a bank, and we don’t think that banks would necessarily consider buying a major P2P business at present.”
The platform is still awaiting full authorisation from the Financial Conduct Authority as a P2P operator and is the only ‘big three’ player that hasn’t received the City watchdog’s landmark stamp of approval, after Funding Circle won the badge last week.
Ratesetter has so far channelled £1.9bn of funds to consumers and small- and medium-sized firms and posted revenues of £18.5m in the year to March 2016. It also posted pre-tax losses of £4.9m over the same period, which it attributed to a new fee structure and investing in the business.
