Hope you all had a great Labor Day weekend and are seeing the same surge in activity as us! Our CTO, Helen Altshuler, mentored the Consensus 2015 conference, guiding hackathon teams as they built digital currency applications using blockchain technology.
Looking forward, PeerIQ will be traveling to Miami this week for the annual ABS East conference. We look forward to reconnecting with ABS issuers, originators and new entrants, as well as many on this newsletter. Please drop us a note if you’ll be there.
In the meantime, here are our notable articles of the past week, led by a bevy of fundraising news:
A Startup Out To Displace Wall Street Banks Just Hired Ex-SEC Chairmain Arthur Levitt (Business Insider, Sep 9, 2015) Arthur Levitt joins SoFi as an advisor providing his field expertise to this growing industry.
Blythe Masters Enters Wall Street’s Bitcoin Tech Race With Her First Issuance of a Crypto-Security (NY Business Journal, Sep 9, 2015) Blythe Masters’ Digital Asset working with Greg DePetris’ Pivit to make blockchain innovation by bringing efficiency, speed and security.
Visa Veteran Backs Marketplace Lender (FT, Sep 8, 2015) Hans Morris, former president of Visa, joined a $35m round of equity finance for CommonBond, a student loans specialist.
Zencap Secures €230 Million from Victory Park Capital (Market Watch, Sep 1, 2015) VPC announced a long-term, strategic partnership with Zencap, the fastest growing online lending marketplace in Continental Europe.
Fundbox Secures $50 Million More To Power Small Businesses (Tech Crunch, Sep 10, 2015) Fundbox, an invoice financing start-up, closed $108 million in funding, led by Spark Capital, along with Bezos Expeditions (the Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ fund).
Funding Circle Partners With H&R Block (P2P Banking, Sep 11, 2015) Partnership will allow small businesses to access loans up to $500,000.
Victory Park Capital to Issue at Least £200 Million in Shares. Will Invest in Direct Lenders (CrowdFund Insider, Sep 8, 2015) 500 million shares may be issued in the coming months and the funding raised is invested in Marketplace / P2P lending sites.