A SCOTTISH university start-up is hoping to help revolutionise private business with a fintech breakthrough that will allow thousands of firms to access an instant valuation in real-time.
Listings Ledger Plc’s fintech innovation uses public information from Companies House and financial data from stock markets to present an up-to-date valuation, allowing entrepreneurs and owners to realise the value of their equity more easily.
The University of Strathclyde start-up has now filed for a patent in the US. Its technology also enables employees to engage in more efficient bonus schemes and for smoother access of SMEs to corporate finance, effectively creating a virtual stock market for the UK’s private companies.
The technology was developed by a team based in Strathclyde’s Business School, one of the UK’s foremost centres for Fintech research and development.
While the first market for development is the UK, the company plans to expand its offering rapidly into other countries, including Ireland and in continental Europe. Eventually, the start-up hopes to create hundreds of jobs in Glasgow.
The firm has attracted considerable talent to its board, including former employees of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bloomberg, and is currently recruiting developers and hopes to grow its team substantially by the end of the year.
Commenting on the announcement, Daniel Broby, director of the university’s Centre of Financial Regulation and Innovation and Listings Ledger co-founder, said: “Scotland has always been at the forefront of financial innovation, and as a Scottish-based company we are proud to be driving technology that will benefit company owners, financial institutions and the wider UK economy.
“This patent application is the culmination of a great deal of academic research into this developing and groundbreaking technology. That said, it’s merely a milestone in our ambitions for Listings Ledger.
“We want to give private firms and the entrepreneurs behind them the benefits and freedom that publicly traded companies enjoy, creating a new market and ecosystem that can allow companies develop more rapidly through more easily available financing, thereby benefitting the entire economy.”
Chief product officer Matthew Welstead, formerly of Goldman Sachs, said: “The applications of the Listing Ledger technology for investment banking and private equity investment are wide ranging, cutting out hours of costly manual calculations and opening up a whole new range of services and opportunities for financial markets.”
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