Investing

Crowdfunding platform Seedrs has announced that it will start trading as Republic Europe. After tomorrow, the new branding will be used on the website and in emails. The new brand name is launching two years after Republic’s acquisition of Seedrs.

Estonian investment platform Income has reached a milestone. It has facilitated 100 million euros in investments into loans. It was able to do this within 4 years, since it was founded in 2020. The platform is currently managing 12 million euros in active outstanding investments.

Latvian company Mintos is adding a new product to its lending platform. It has launched passive real estate investing. Users can now invest in property and earn an income from rent payments and potential property value appreciation.

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.

Last Friday was the deadline for the new European Crowdfunding Service Provider deadline. Crowdfunding platforms that were not able to obtain the license are not allowed to publish new crowdfunding projects within Europe. Within the Netherlands, almost all of the biggest platforms were able to get the license in time.

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.