Investing

Lithuanian agricultural investment platform HeavyFinance has raised 50 million euros in funding. This will be used for a private credit fund to advance agricultural decarbonization in Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Portugal.

The French crowdfunding market has recorded a decline of 11.3 percent. In total, more than 2 billion euros in funding was collected last year. The decline was mostly caused by the real estate crisis, as real estate crowdfunding dropped 28 percent.

In early 2023, international crowdfunding platform Invesdor merged with Dutch sustainable crowdfunding platform Oneplanetcrowd. In November, the technical steps involved with the merger were completed. We spoke with Maarten de Jong, one of the founders of Oneplanetcrowd, about the merger and plans for the upcoming year.

The recently launched peer-to-peer investing platform Maclear offers European investors the opportunity to invest in businesses based in Switzerland or the European Union. To attract more investors, it currently offers a bonus to new customers.

Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have rapidly gained popularity in the United States with 30.7 percent share of market turnover in 2022. However, their growth in the United Kingdom has been comparatively slower, with an average traded value on the London Stock Exchange of 8.03 billion British pounds in September, which accounts for roughly 10 percent of total average daily turnover.

German alternative financer Auxmoney has acquired a majority stake in Lender & Spender, a Dutch peer-to-peer investment platform. It is Auxmoney’s first acquisition, but it is already thinking about further growth through future acquisitions.

So far, 43 European crowdfunding platforms have been approved for the new European Crowdfunding Service Provider license. There is a large portion of platforms on the list coming from the Netherlands (12 of them).

Equity crowdfunding platform Crowdcube has joined RetailBook, a new retail investment platform. Crowdcube users can now participate in IPOs on the same terms as institutional investors.

After being founded in 2014, Estonian real estate investment platform Estateguru has financed 719.1 million euros worth of loans. However, it has also announced that it has 450 outstanding defaulted loans, worth 125 million euros.

Estonian real estate investment platform Reinvest24 has announced a strategic partnership with Shojin Property Partners. Shojin Property Partners is an FCA regulated investment company from the United Kingdom. Through the partnership, Reinvest24 can now enter the real estate market in the United Kingdom.