Looking Glass Investments (LGI), a fixed-income alternative investment firm focused on marketplace lending, announced today that Main Street Capital Corporation (NYSE: MAIN), a Houston-based capital solutions partner for lower middle market companies seeking to grow or transition ownership, purchased an equity stake in LGI and invested directly in private investment vehicles managed by LGI.
Matthew O’Malley, President and Chief Operating Officer of LGI, stated:
“By any measure, Main Street is a top-tier business development company and their investment represents an important recognition of what we have accomplished. Main Street’s investment capital will be used to support the ongoing development of our underwriting technology, our data management, and our rigorous investment research process managed by our team of Ph.D. economists.”
Dwayne Hyzak, President and Chief Operating Officer of Main Street, explained:
“We are pleased to become a strategic partner with Looking Glass Investments. Looking Glass has built superior predictive analytics models supported by efficient technology. As this asset class continues its explosive growth we believe LGI will emerge as the premiere manager in this space.”
LGI then revealed that the increased level of federal and state regulation after the Great Recession placed traditional banks in position to essentially discontinue unsecured lending products. Marketplace lending has addressed this demand in a way that has brought positive feedback from regulators, such as the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, which wrote last year, “Individuals who either cannot get loans from traditional banks or who wish to consolidate their credit card balances at lower interest rates find peer-to-peer (marketplace) lending an attractive alternative.”
O’Malley added:
“The partnerships we have established with Lending Club, Prosper, Funding Circle, and Peerform over many years places our firm in a position to grow with the market. These platforms, among many others, have created a market for investors and consumers which we believe will drive significant growth in the U.S. and around the world. This is the future of finance.”