Appital, the Equity Capital Marketplace, announced it has “secured an additional £1.7 million investment from Frontline Ventures and various angel investors to bring technological innovation and automation to equity markets.”
The investment “follows last year’s £2.5m round led by Frontline Ventures and additional funding from angel investors, bringing the total investment raised to date to £4.85 million.”
This comes “ahead of launching the world’s first algorithmic bookbuilding platform in partnership with Turquoise, the pan-European MTF, majority owned by London Stock Exchange Group.”
The Appital platform “enables the buyside community to originate and participate in liquidity discovery, price formation and execution opportunities in multiple days ADV in publicly listed equities.”
For the first time, institutional investors “have full transparency and maximum control over the bookbuilding and deal distribution process, and can actively drive liquidity in the marketplace.”
The latest funding “follows the successful integration with EMS providers FactSet, FlexTrade and TS Imagine, and executing brokers Bernstein and Instinet, in anticipation of Appital’s imminent launch.”
Through the partnership with Turquoise, buyside firms will be able “to execute all deals through the Turquoise MTF, via a single point of access and with seamless straight-through processing (STP) to over 20 settlement venues.” These are all crucial steps “to developing the necessary technology and market infrastructures to bring Appital’s innovative bookbuilding platform to equity markets participants.”
Shay Garvey, Founding Partner at Frontline Ventures, commented:
“We are very happy to extend our funding to Appital ahead of its launch. Appital has a proven track record in securing partnerships with major EMS providers, executing brokers and a trading venue to address the lack of efficiency and control over existing bookbuilding and deal distribution processes. Their traction with global asset management firms is clear evidence of the need for their innovative solution for equity markets. We are delighted to back Appital’s vision.”
Mark Badyra, Chief Executive Officer of Appital, said:
“This is a very exciting time for our business. In the run-up to our launch we have forged partnerships and built technology infrastructure to support a new buyside workflow, giving firms control over their bookbuilding processes and bringing a highly manual activity into an automated, algorithmically driven platform.”
Badyra added:
“We are thrilled to have secured additional investment from Frontline Ventures and our group of angel investors. In addition, we are very encouraged by the market response to our vision to bring buyside firms new opportunities to proactively source and interact with hard-to-find liquidity.”
Over 30 asset managers, collectively managing more than US$30 trillion, “have joined or are in the process of joining Appital.”
In addition, Appital is “proactively engaging with additional global, regional and specialist asset managers to increase the depth of available opportunities and liquidity within the platform.”
