The Austrian Finnest and the Finnish platform Invesdor are pooling their offerings to offer more different services in online financing.
A new giant emerges among the European providers for online investments: The Austrian Finnest GmbH and the Finnish Invesdor Oy are merging their businesses and forming the new Invesdor Group.
Finnest.com is a SME financier in German-speaking countries, invesdor.com is the leading platform for digital equity in the Nordic countries. In recent years, investments have doubled annually on the previously separate platforms and currently total more than 130 million euros.
A new giant is born
The service portfolio resulting from the pooling of offers ranges from equity and bonds to IPOs, borrower’s note loans, syndicated loans and mezzanine capital to other debt instruments. The typical financing volume is between € 250,000 and € 25 million per issuer.
“Together, we will be the first pan-European digital investment and financing platform for companies in all stages of life, from startups to large corporations,” said Lasse Mäkelä, CEO of Invesdor Group. “We offer one of the widest ranges of fully digital financial instruments currently available in the market. Invesdor Group serves successful companies as well as private and institutional investors from across Europe”.
The new company is based on more than 50,000 private and institutional investors from 150 countries. With the merger, one wants to “redefine cross-border investment opportunities,” it says from the companies: investors from the Nordic countries get direct access to medium-sized companies in German-speaking countries, investors outside Scandinavia can invest in the local growth companies.
Invesdor offers SaaS tools for banks
Technically, the platforms of Finnest and Invesdor are seamlessly integrated. The new Invesdor Group employs around 40 finance and technology experts. The two brands Invesdor and Finnest will continue to operate under their respective names and will also offer new services. The Invesdor Group will be headquartered in Helsinki, with offices in Vienna, Stockholm and Bratislava.
The group is already working together with banks. They use Invesdor Group’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) tools to digitize their internal processes, such as credit, equity and bond market activities. The partner banks include, for example, Raiffeisen Bank International and Nordea.
Speedinvest F: Shaft of consolidation rolled
Investors in the Invesdor Group include Taaleri Oyj, a Helsinki-based wealth management company listed on the US Nasdaq, and global VC firm Maxfield Capital, as well as Vienna-based VC Speedinvest F. Laut Stefan Klestil, partner of Speedinvest F, is looking for companies as well as investors for successful digital alternatives to the traditional models: “In the FinTech industry, the wave of consolidation has come – and the Invesdor Group is now clearly in the front row”, he says.