Equity Capital Marketplace Appital today revealed it has obtained a £2.5m investment from Frontline Ventures and a number of seasoned capital markets angel investors. The investment will support Appital in bringing technological automation to equity capital markets and increasing efficiency.
With this funding, Appital will accelerate the development of its technology infrastructure, integration with market leading financial institutions and technology vendors. The investment will also enable the expansion of the engineering team to support the delivery of their market strategy.
Equity Capital Markets remain largely untouched by automation, hindered by opaque legacy processes. Appital’s trading platform enables the discovery of latent liquidity and offers the buy-side community the ability to gain greater exposure to relevant deal flow opportunities and interact with like-minded institutions in the liquidity formation process.
Appital recently partnered with Turquoise to deliver bookbuilding technology to buy-side custoemrs. The cooperation between the two companies brings together complementary capabilities to the benefit of issuers and investors and adds transparency and automation to the process of liquidity discovery. Institutional investors will be benefit from a more efficient way to access liquidity opportunities and trade in a market for size, at the best price. Appital users will also be able to execute all deals through the Turquoise MTF, via a single point of access and with seamless straight-through-processing (STP) to over 20 settlement venues.
Mark Badyra, Chief Executive Officer of Appital, said:
This is an exciting time for our business. We are delighted to have secured joint investment from Frontline Ventures and a number of angel investors to provide buy-side firms with new opportunities to discover and interact with latent liquidity. We enable buy-side firms to radically rethink their approach to interacting with the market, gain exposure to deal flow opportunities they have not been able to access before, and proactively drive liquidity in the market.
Shay Garvey, Partner at Frontline Ventures, commented:
Shay Garvey Source: LinkedIn
Appital offers a solution to one of the buy-side’s biggest pain points in equity capital markets: the lack of efficiency across existing bookbuilding and deal distribution processes. Their proven track record in gaining participation from major asset management firms is testament to the need for innovation in this segment of the market and we are delighted to support Appital’s vision.
Appital’s platform pro-actively drives the bookbuilding process and provides deal originators with opportunities to execute large volumes, often in excess of 5 days of ADV, with minimal market impact or risk of price erosion. Appital’s platform pro-actively drives the bookbuilding process, it provides deal originators with large volumes execution opportunities, often in excess of 5 days of ADV, with minimal market impact or risk of price erosion. The deal originators have real-time access to the entire life cycle of the bookbuilding process which allows them to make distribution adjustments throughout, deal participants set their own preferences to ensure they are only exposed and alerted to relevant liquidity.
Richard Worrell, Head of EMEA Equity Trading at Janus Henderson Investors, Chairman of the Investment Association Buyside Trading Committee, said:
Appital is an innovative company which has the potential to solve inefficiencies in accessing significant volume in less liquid securities. What’s more, the platform gives the buy-side greater control and transparency over their bookbuilding process.
During my career in Equity Capital Markets I have seen first hand that illiquidity is a systemic problem for the market, diminishing returns for investors as well as adversely impacting the cost of capital for issuers. Appital’s technology brings innovation for institutional investors and provides a significant step change in enhancing the execution of illiquid flow and ECM business across the market.
The technology infrastructure of Appital allows users to integrate into existing OMS and EMS systems and workflows. The platform provides full transparency and control over the bookbuilding, allocation and distribution process. It offers secure and fully automated end-to-end processes and delivers the visibility and transparency necessary for internal compliance, external audit and regulatory reporting.
Experienced writer and journalist, working in the global online trading sector, Steffy is the Editor of LeapRate. She has previous experience as a copywriter and has been with the company since January 2020. Steffy has a British and American Studies degree from St. Kliment Ochridski University in Sofia.
