ThinCats

ThinCats
Date: December 2015
Deal Size: £Undisclosed
About the client: ThinCats is Europe’s largest SME secured lending platform, a peer-to-peer online provider, having lent more than £150 million to UK businesses since its foundation in 2010.
About the transaction: Akur Capital originated the transaction, which has been widely credited as the UK’s first major peer-to-peer M&A deal. This follows Akur’s brokering of a £50 million underwriting facility onto the ThinCats’ lending platform, announced in February 2015.

Concurrently with completing the ThinCats acquisition, ESF Capital has announced plans to make ThinCats the first of a series of deals in the European business lending sector, providing acceleration capital to peer to peer businesses in the form of strategic and operating resource, investment capital and speciality lending capital.  ESF Capital represents a European specialist investment firm.

Kevin Caley, Co-Founder and Chairman of ThinCats commented:
“We are grateful to the Akur team for their crucial role in both the underwriting and M&A transactions with ESF and for their support and advice over an extended period of time.  From the early stages of identifying and introducing potential partners through to structuring and finalising both deals, we have been impressed with Akur’s commitment, professionalism and sector expertise throughout the process.”

Lead: David Shapton
Peer to peer lending

 
 

Chris Young…

Chris is focused on listed closed-ended funds, specialising in both equity and debt capital fundraising. He has over 16 years’ experience in both sales and research. With relationships across many of the large institutional investors in the sector, he has worked across IPOs, secondary fundraisings, placings and sales. He began his career in the City as an investment funds analyst at Credit Lyonnais in 1999, and has subsequently held positions at Lazard Panmure Gordon, Arbuthnot Securities, and most recently as a specialist salesman within the investment funds team at Westhouse Securities. He is focused on private and public real estate and REITs, infrastructure and utilities, emerging markets, private equity and alternatives. Tel: +44 (0) 20 3780 8746 Mob: +44 (0) 7471 141 303 Email: cyoung@akur.co.uk