Retail investors are often expected to focus on tech stocks. However, stocks in financial services are more commonly owned by retail investors, by 61 percent. Technology is the second most owned sector, at 40 percent. Energy was third, at 35 percent.

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.

Latvian lending platform Mintos is launching a crowdfunding campaign on Crowdcube today. By doing so, the platform hopes to raise additional growth capital. It has plans for further international expansion and to launch new investment products.

Crowdfunding platform Seedrs has announced that an unnamed Championship football club will soon fundraise on the platform. The company wants to target more sport teams and expects that it will add more of these campaigns in 2024.

CoinMart, a Dutch cryptocurrency broker, has raised 2.8 million euros. The funding comes from IDG Capital, which is also announcing a partnership with the crypto broker. This brings the platform’s total funded amount to 14.3 million euros.

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.

Lithuanian property investment platform InRento has reached the milestone of 20 million euros in investments raised. Currently, users profit from an average annual return on investment of 11 percent. “In just a few years of our history, we have managed to earn a high level of investor confidence with an increasingly strong investment performance”, says Deividas Urbanovičius, Head of Investor Relations at InRento.