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Germany's Acatus raises EUR5.5m

Source: Acatus

Berlin-based FinTech Acatus announces the successful completion of a Series A financing round. The round is led by DIP Capital LLP and the venture capital fund coparion. The existing shareholders and business angels also participated in the round.

Acatus now has more than five million Euros at its disposal to drive further growth. CEO Dr. Marie Louise Seelig is looking forward to benefit from the expertise of new investor DIP Capital, which offers extensive experience in project financing and is strongly represented in the Italian, French, Spanish and UK markets, especially in the field of renewable energies. coparion is an experienced FinTech and Blockchain investor with an excellent network towards the origination as well as the investor side of the Acatus business.

Acatus is the first digital debt capital markets platform. The B2B-Fintech offers originators to sell debts in the form of bonds to existing or new investors. In contrast to conventional portfolio securitization, assets such as loans or insurance are converted into individual securities and placed directly on the international capital market by Acatus. The company thus enables both new business for banks and a transparent investment according to the individual risk-return profile of institutional investors such as pension funds, insurance companies, family offices or banks.

Marie Louise Seelig wants to create a strong, neutral and bank-independent platform to avoid potential conflicts of interest for both originators and investors: "To maintain the necessary independence and avoid potential conflicts of interest on the originator side, I gave up my leadership position as the founder of CrossLend and decided to establish Acatus with a strong network of experts as a bank-independent digital debt capital markets platform. Against this background, I am particularly pleased that we have brought on board two strong and experienced VCs that will enable us to continue our journey and offer both investors and originators the best service when it comes to capital market access and investments. With our flexible Debt Capital Markets platform, we have created a tool to make loans available to the debt capital market. According to the ECB, there are twelve trillion EUR in loans available in Europe which shows the extraordinary market potential here. At the same time, we are making the European financial market more flexible and transparent".

Riccardo Cirillo, Founder and Managing Partner of lead investor DIP Capital, is looking forward to the cooperation: "We’re delighted to have taken a leading role in supporting such a motivated team of ambitious entrepreneurs. Acatus has developed rapidly since its foundation and its skillful team has created a uniquely differentiated Debt Capital Markets platform to overcome the complex securitization process. Acatus’ platform enables its customers to optimize their loan financing processes and investments into an easily tradable and transparent form of securities. This creates added value for all parties involved and at the same time opens up the opportunities for new business which are all absolutely necessary features for a well-functioning, fungible, European Debt Capital Market".

Christian Schulte, Investor at coparion, sees great potential in Acatus: "We invest in a small but very experienced and powerful team. The two founders are experienced serial Fintech Entrepreneurs and former Managing Directors of large international commercial banks. Using their experience and their network, they can make a significant contribution to the digitization of the business. It is this perfect mix of expertise and drive, coupled with Acatus' bank neutrality, that convinced us that this team could create the leading digital European Debt Capital Markets platform. Acatus stands for an innovative idea that can revive the European financial market. The economic potential is enormous".
Acatus is also expanding its excellent network of business angels with additional former bank directors, partners in major international law firms and management consulting firms. Matthew Bosrock, formerly Global Head of Developing Markets and Franchise Development at S&P Global Ratings, also brings extraordinary rating expertise. Besides the further support from high-level business angels Acatus is getting support from fintech investors like Partech, Berliner Effektengesellschaft AG and Berliner Volksbank Ventures. Acatus is pleased with this display of trust and the constant support with expertise provided by the partners. Partech for example enriches the cooperation with its large portfolio of over 170 investments and extensive expertise in the FinTech market.

"The customers’ demand is very high. The financing comes at exactly the right time so that we can respond to market demand with rapid expansion," explains Acatus COO Dr. Daniel Wigbers.  

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