Mergers & Acquisitions

SmartAsset Acquires DeftSales to Help Advisors Grow their Practices

SmartAsset Acquires DeftSales to Help Advisors Grow their Practices
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions, SmartAsset
  • Financial advice platform SmartAsset has acquired advisor prospect engagement company DeftSales.
  • The company has integrated DeftSales into its SmartAdvisor advisor growth solution, renaming the technology DeftSales by SmartAsset.
  • The new tool helps advisors respond to leads instantly, enabling them to engage warm leads before another advisor follows up first.

Financial advice platform SmartAsset is acquiring prospect engagement company DeftSales this week for an undisclosed amount.

Founded in 2020, DeftSales offers tools that integrate with a range of CRM platforms to automate financial advisors’ business development outreach and provide analytics insights on client engagement. The technology helps advisors respond to leads instantly, enabling them to engage warm leads before another advisor follows up first.

“We are enormously excited to announce the acquisition of DeftSales and we look forward to integrating their solutions with our own SmartAdvisor platform,” said company CEO and Founder Michael Carvin. “The feedback from advisors using DeftSales has been incredibly clear – by automating many tasks, it dramatically decreases the work required to be successful in converting SmartAdvisor prospects into clients.”

SmartAsset has integrated DeftSales into its SmartAdvisor advisor growth solution, renaming the technology DeftSales by SmartAsset. The new solution integrates SmartAsset’s compliant user interface with DeftSales’ automated campaigns and analytics. DeftSales by SmartAsset offers automated emails and text messages, FastCall technology that enables advisors to follow-up on leads while they are busy with a current client, and an analytics dashboard to monitor engagement efforts.

DeftSales Co-Founder and COO James Fason will join the SmartAsset team as Director of Engineering.

SmartAsset has a mission to help people make smart financial decisions. The company’s educational content, calculators, and tools reach 75 million people each month. In 2021, the New York-based company raised $110 million in funding, boosting its total funding to more than $161 million. And the company is still growing. SmartAsset has brought on 27 new hires so far this year.

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko

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SoFi Shifts Focus to MortgageTech with New Acquisition

SoFi Shifts Focus to MortgageTech with New Acquisition
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Mergers & Acquisitions, SoFi

SoFi is saying, “Welcome home!” to Wyndham Capital Mortgage this week. The California-based fintech acquired the mortgage lender yesterday in an all-cash transaction for an undisclosed amount.

Headquartered in North Carolina and founded in 2001, Wyndham Capital has worked with more than 100,000 borrowers.

SoFi, which is acquiring Wyndham Capital’s technology and its employees, expects the purchase will broaden its mortgage-related offerings and minimize its reliance on third-party partners and processes. 

“At SoFi, we’re on a mission to help people get their money right and purchasing a home is often one of, if not the, biggest financial decision individuals make in their lives,” said SoFi CEO Anthony Noto. “Today’s acquisition of Wyndham Capital will not only allow us to scale and keep pace with accelerated growth, but also allow us to foster that growth in a way that brings value to our members through sales and operational efficiencies and helps members get their money right when it comes to one of life’s most significant financial milestones.”

SoFi, which presented at Finovate’s developers conference in 2017, launched in 2011 to disrupt the student lending market. Since then, the company has added a variety of banking products– including personal loans, auto refinancing, credit cards, investing, checking, savings, insurance, and others– to become a more holistic banking option for consumers. SoFi sealed its status as a bank last January, when it received approval from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Federal Reserve to become a bank holding company.

It’s a reasonable time for SoFi to double-down on mortgages to diversify from its flagship offerings, student loans. The company may be starting to feel heat from the loss of revenue from its student loan refinancing tools. In fact, SoFi went to such an extreme last month as to sue the Biden administration for its continued pause on federal student loan repayments. The fintech argues that the moratorium, which has been extended eight times over three years, has no legal basis.

SoFi estimates it has lost $6 million in profits from the latest extension and, expects losses to total $30 million if the moratorium continues through August. “In essence, SoFi is being forced to compete with loans with 0% interest rates and for which any ongoing repayment of the principal is entirely optional,” SoFi argues in the lawsuit.

The lawsuit is currently being challenged in the Supreme Court and is expected to be resolved by June.

Photo by Curtis Adams

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Acorns Acquires U.K.-Based GoHenry

Acorns Acquires U.K.-Based GoHenry
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions
  • Acorns is acquiring U.K.-based kids financial wellness tool GoHenry.
  • Financial terms of the deal were undisclosed.
  • The deal is expected to facilitate Acorns’ international expansion and will build its presence in the youth market.

Automated savings and investing app Acorns announced today it acquired kids money management app GoHenry. Financial terms of the deal, which also includes GoHenry’s European arm Pixpay, were not disclosed.

The benefits of today’s acquisition are multi-faceted. GoHenry; which operates across the U.K., Italy, France, and Spain; will help California-based Acorns initiate its international expansion. The deal will also broaden Acorns’ offerings to include financial wellness and education and will boost the two companies’ combined subscriber number to almost six million.

What’s more, GoHenry’s customer base– which consists of six-to-eighteen-year-olds– brings a younger set of users to the Acorn brand. This is expected to bring more users to Acorns Early, a product that Acorns launched in 2020 to offer friends and families a way to invest in a child’s future.

“All kids around the world deserve access to responsible money management tools and financial education,” said Acorns CEO Noah Kerner. “GoHenry’s mission driven approach is perfectly aligned with Acorns, which we expect will help us accelerate our roadmap and deliver financial wellness to the whole family through all of life’s stages.”

GoHenry was founded in 2012 to help kids learn how to save, invest, and spend responsibly. The company offers a parent-controlled debit card and tandem mobile app that helps kids track their allowance, spending, budgets, and savings accounts. The company launched in the U.S. in 2018 and expanded to Italy, France, and Spain after acquiring PixPay last year. Prior to today’s acquisition, GoHenry had raised $121 million from Edison Partners, Revaia, Citi Ventures, Muse Capital, Nexi, and more.

“Since we started on our mission to make every kid smart with money ten years ago, we have helped millions of young people do exactly that and this new relationship with Acorns will enable us to reach many millions more,” said GoHenry Co-Founder Louise Hill.

In the U.S., GoHenry will operate as GoHenry by Acorns. GoHenry and PixPay will operate under their own brand names in the U.K. and Europe. “It’s business as usual for our team and customers in the U.K. and Europe (under Pixpay) with the added opportunities and global reach that this new strategic alignment will bring,” added Hill.

Also founded in 2012, Acorns helps users round up their purchases and automatically invest their spare change. The company has raised $507 million, including its $300 million Series F round received in 2022 after cancelling its previously planned SPAC merger.

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Mangopay Acquires Payment Orchestrator WhenThen

Mangopay Acquires Payment Orchestrator WhenThen
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions
  • Mangopay acquired Whenthen for an undisclosed amount.
  • The acquisition comes four months after Mangopay bought fraud detection and prevention company Nethone.
  • The two acquisitions are facilitating the launch of Mangopay’s five new products, including Fraud, FX, Orchestration, and Integration; and two new solutions, including Rental Marketplaces and Retail Marketplaces.

Payment technology company Mangopay announced it has acquired payments orchestration startup WhenThen, and has already merged the Ireland-based company’s technology into its own. Financial terms of the deal are undisclosed.

Under the agreement, WhenThen’s employees and products are now operating under the Mangopay brand. WhenThen Co-founder Kirk Donohoe has been brought on to Mangopay’s team to serve as Chief Product Officer.

WhenThen was founded in 2021 to help merchants integrate, test, build, and orchestrate payment experiences through its no-code editor. The company offers a range of payment solutions, including Checkout, Tokenization, Fraud, and PaymentOps.

Mangopay offers a modular approach to e-wallet, payments, and multi-currency payout technology; as well as solutions for C2C, B2C, B2B, and crowdfunding marketplaces. With WhenThen’s technology integrated into its own tools, Mangopay customers will be able to build and configure payment flows such as smart routing, increase local conversion rates, add new payment methods at checkout, store and access customer card data, and leverage payment insights via an operations dashboard.

“Acquiring WhenThen enables Mangopay to rapidly accelerate its payment capabilities whilst providing the best payment experiences in the market,” said Mangopay CEO Romain Mazeries. “It represents a strategic asset for our growth plans, following the acquisition of Nethone in 2022 that strengthened our fraud capabilities.”

Today’s announcement marks Mangopay’s second acquisition. The company bought fraud detection and prevention company Nethone in November of last year. The two purchases have already helped Mangopay broaden its offerings. The company is planning to launch five new products, including Fraud, FX, Orchestration, and Integration; and two new solutions, including Rental Marketplaces and Retail Marketplaces.

Mangopay was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in Luxembourg. The company counts Vinted, LeBonCoin, Chrono24, and Wallapop among its clients.

Photo by Keira Burton

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J.P. Morgan Acquires Aumni, Investment Analytics Provider

J.P. Morgan Acquires Aumni, Investment Analytics Provider
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, JP Morgan Chase, Mergers & Acquisitions
  • J.P. Morgan is acquiring investment analytics tool Aumni.
  • While terms of the deal are undisclosed, CNBC reports that J.P. Morgan will pay around $232 million for Aumni.
  • J.P. Morgan expects the buy will bolster its private markets platform for companies, their employees, and investors.

J.P. Morgan has agreed to acquire Aumni, an investment analytics tool for private capital markets. Announced today, the deal is expected to close in the first half of this year. While financial terms of the deal are undisclosed, CNBC reports the deal will be valued at $232 million.

Aumni’s investment analytics platform leverages AI to extract and analyze deal data buried in legal agreements. The company serves 300 institutions, including venture capitalists, family offices, and university endowments helps firms compile investment data reports, facilitate limited partner reporting, identify co-investors, generate equity financing summaries for each investment in their portfolio, and more.

Founded in 2018, the company has evaluated more than $600 billion in capital across more than 17,000 private companies. Aumni counts names such as Sapphire Ventures, Khosla Ventures, and Berkeley Law among its clients.

“We’re thrilled to see this collaboration come to fruition as J.P. Morgan first invested in Aumni in 2021 and quickly realized shared synergies of providing more transparency to the private markets,” said J.P. Morgan Head of Digital Investment Banking, Head of Digital Private Markets Michael Elanjian. “Aumni’s market-leading data structuring and portfolio monitoring solutions, combined with the capital raising and cap table management services of Capital Connect and Global Shares, further enhances the ecosystem of digital solutions that J.P. Morgan is building for companies and investors in both growth and later-stage private markets.”

J.P. Morgan expects the buy will bolster its private markets platform for companies, their employees, and investors. Also contributing to the mission of building a private markets platform are the firm’s launch of Capital Connect, a match-making platform that connects entrepreneurs with venture capitalists and limited partners; and its acquisition of share plan management software company Global Shares.

“Together, we can create a best-in-class suite of services for private market participants, enhancing the experience for all current and future clients,” said Aumni CEO Tony Lewis. Aumni will maintain its headquarters location in Utah and will continue to serve its existing client base.

Photo by Yash Savla on Unsplash

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CoreLogic Acquires Digital Mortgage Platform Roostify

CoreLogic Acquires Digital Mortgage Platform Roostify
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Alumni profile, Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions, Roostify

Almost a decade after the company made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring, digital mortgage platform Roostify has agreed to be acquired by property information, analytics, and data-enabled solutions provider CoreLogic. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“We believe that this is an important transaction for the industry,” Roostify co-founder and CEO Rajesh Bhat said. “From inception, Roostify’s mission has been to accelerate and streamline the home lending journey. Bringing together the power of CoreLogic’s data and analytics suite with the Roostify digital lending platform allows us to accelerate the journey towards a truly data driven digital origination experience in one single platform.”

The integration of the two technologies will help clients secure key data about both borrowers and properties at the beginning of the lending process. This not only saves time and money, but the transparency also helps ensure that lenders receive the information they need as early as possible – before processing and underwriting – in order to minimize errors and make loan conditions clear to all parties. The result is an improved customer experience with less processing and lower underwriting expenses.

Founded in 2012, Roostify currently helps home lenders process more than $50 billion in loans every month. With clients ranging from TD Bank and Santander to CIS Home Loans and First American Mortgage Solutions, Roostify helps lenders close more loans, improve margins, increase the ability to scale their operations, and maximize customer satisfaction. The San Francisco, California-based company offers a 45% decrease in time to close for a customer within 90 days of go-live, an application submission rate of 85%, and only 14 days on average between submission and delivery to underwriting.

“We sit on an incredible amount of data, analytics, and essential workflow solutions that when properly integrated to the loan lifecycle, can deliver a better mortgage experience for borrowers as well as lenders,” CoreLogic President of Mortgage Solutions Jay Kingsley said. “The Roostify acquisition will unlock our ability to quickly execute on this mission.”

Roostify has raised $65 million in total equity funding, securing investments from Mouro Capital, Cota Capital, and USAA among others. Ten Coves Capital led Roostify’s most recent fundraising, a $32 million Series C round in January 2021. Dan Kittredge, Managing Partner at Ten Coves Capital praised Roostify as “well-positioned to accelerate the digitalization of home lending infrastructure,” especially given the fact that “the mortgage lending industry has been relatively slow to embrace digital technologies.” Kittredge added, “the opportunity to re-design the future of home lending through technology cannot be overstated.”

Photo by Pixabay

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Market Data Firm QUODD Acquires Competitor Xignite

Market Data Firm QUODD Acquires Competitor Xignite
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions, Xignite
  • QUODD has agreed to acquire fellow market data company Xignite.
  • Combined, the two companies will serve more than 2,200 firms, ranging from large banks and wealth management platforms to smaller digital investment tools.
  • Financial terms of the deal were undisclosed.

Two market data firms are combining this week, as QUODD Financial Information Services acquires Xignite. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

QUODD said the purchase reinforces its commitment to become “the premier cloud-based global financial market data and content provider.” Company CEO Bob Ward added, “Xignite is well known for being an early adopter of delivering high-quality market data solutions via the cloud as well as for its extensive API-driven data catalog. I look forward to working with Stephane Dubois, CEO of Xignite, and his team to help us fuel our next chapter of growth delivering the most accessible and reliable data for our customers.”

Combined, Xignite and QUODD will serve more than 2,200 companies, ranging from large banks and wealth management platforms to smaller digital investment tools. QUODD will leverage Xignite’s technology to enhance its QUODD Fuel, which will integrate Xignite’s content catalog; and Universe+, which will leverage Xignite’s market data.

QUODD’s technology enables clients to stream, embed, look up, and download pricing data for global equities, fixed income, indices, options, futures, and end-of-day pricing for global mutual funds. The company is owned by NewSpring Holdings’ Financeware, a probability-analysis technology and marketing strategies provider, which acquired QUODD in 2019 for an undisclosed amount.

NewSpring Holdings has lofty ambitions for the Xignite buy. “Our goal for the combined organization is to create the industry’s leading provider in centralized market data augmented with superior customer service, anchored in the strength of long-standing relationships and supported by leading technologies, which is why this transaction was a perfect fit,” said NewSpring Holdings General Partner Jim Ashton. “2022 was another year of strong organic growth for QUODD and, combined with Xignite, we are continuing to raise the bar in transforming the digital adoption of financial data for market participants.”

Founded in 2000, Xignite offers market data APIs to its brokerage, wealth management, and fintech clients. The company’s APIs offer a range of market data– including real-time stock prices, historical stock prices, options prices, futures prices, mutual fund prices, ETF prices, foreign exchange rates, bond prices, and more. Combined, the company’s customers use Xignite’s APIs more than half a trillion times each month.

Photo by Pixabay

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SEON Acquires Complytron to Further Fight Fraud

SEON Acquires Complytron to Further Fight Fraud
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions
  • Fraud prevention fintech SEON has acquired anti-money laundering (AML) due diligence software company Complytron in a deal today.
  • SEON is leveraging Complytron’s expertise to launch a new AML API, which will help companies comply with the European Union’s Sixth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (6AMLD).
  • Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Two Hungary-based fintechs have combined this week. Fraud prevention company SEON acquired due diligence software company Complytron for an undisclosed amount.

Complytron was founded in 2019 after the founders received Google DNI funding for Source Code Leak, a project that used digital fingerprinting software to form connections between seemingly unrelated companies. The group found a commercial use for the software in helping firms comply with AML requirements. The company has received a total of $275k (€257k) funding from a Seed round in 2020.

SEON is leveraging the purchase to launch its new anti-money laundering (AML) API, which incorporates Complytron’s AML expertise. The new API aims to help clients comply with the European Union’s Sixth Anti Money Laundering Directive (6AMLD) by enabling them to check customer names against politically exposed persons, relatives and close associates, and crimes and sanctions lists.

“Our goal at SEON has always been to deliver the best products to our customers with maximum efficiency,” said SEON CEO Tamas Kadar. “Rather than building an AML solution from the ground up, it made perfect sense for us to integrate Complytron’s proprietary algorithms and worldwide databases – as well as the expertise of its talented team.”

The new API offers continuous monitoring that makes it easy for users find and block suspicious customers, add them to monitoring lists, and export the data for Suspicious Activity Reports. The AML API is currently available for all SEON clients, including those using the free version, which the company released last year.

In combining its flagship fraud prevention tools with the new AML API, SEON aims to help companies reduce information silos, run more thorough onboarding checks, and centralize customer data. The company is calling the integration a “crucial first step” in the process of creating a complete risk management toolkit.

Since it was founded in 2017, SEON has raised a total of $108 million. Earlier this year, the company partnered with Bulgaria-based tbi bank, which will deploy SEON’s fraud detection tools.

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko

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Marqeta Acquires Fintech Infrastructure Company Power Finance for $275 Million

Marqeta Acquires Fintech Infrastructure Company Power Finance for $275 Million
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Marqeta, Mergers & Acquisitions
  • Marqeta is acquiring credit card program management platform Power Finance.
  • The company will add Power Finance’s credit card program management capabilities to its own card issuing platform.
  • Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Global card issuer Marqeta agreed to acquire credit card program management platform Power Finance. Terms of the deal, which is scheduled to close in the first quarter of this year, were not disclosed.

Power Finance was founded in 2021 by CEO Randy Fernando and CFO Andrew Dust to offer credit card program management services to companies seeking to create new credit card programs. The company’s platform takes care of credit card management, customer experience, application decisioning, transaction processing, and more. And because Power Finance is pre-integrated with third-party data vendors, it saves companies time when setting up KYC and underwriting processes.

“Companies like ours were made possible because of the path Marqeta blazed in modern card issuing, demonstrating the possibilities in payments with flexible and modern payment infrastructure,” said Fernando. “At Power, we built a full-stack, cloud-native credit card issuance platform, and by becoming a part of Marqeta we have the ability now to bring this innovation to a much larger market at global scale.”

Once the deal is finalized, Fernando will lead the product management of the Marqeta credit card platform.

Marqeta will leverage the acquisition by adding Power Finance’s credit card program management capabilities to its own card issuing platform. “It will allow us to accelerate processing revenue derived from credit programs, and improve our competitive positioning when competing for new deals, offering our customers a holistic credit card program management solution,” Marqeta said in a blog post announcement.

Marqeta launched its card issuing platform in 2010 to enable clients to manage their own card programs. The company offers configurable and flexible payment tools and customizes payment cards for their end customers. Earlier this month, Marqeta launched a Web Push Provisioning Solution to enable consumers to transact from their mobile wallets without having to download a separate mobile app.

Marqeta is a publicly traded company listed on the NASDAQ under the ticker MQ. The company has a market capitalization of $3.54 billion.

Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich

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OneSpan to Acquire Document Storage Company ProvenDB

OneSpan to Acquire Document Storage Company ProvenDB
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Mergers & Acquisitions, OneSpan
  • OneSpan is acquiring blockchain-based document storage company ProvenDB.
  • The purchase will help OneSpan add document storage to its existing product offerings.
  • Terms of the agreement, which is expected to close this quarter, were not disclosed.

Digital agreements security company OneSpan agreed to acquire blockchain-based document storage company ProvenDB. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Headquartered in Australia, ProvenDB was founded in 2018. The company provides a blockchain-based database that enables users to store data, cryptographic signatures, documents, and more. The company also offers a product that adds proof, trust, and integrity to clients’ existing databases.

Under the agreement, ProvenDB will enhance OneSpan’s Transaction Cloud Platform to public and private blockchains. Integrating ProvenDB’s technology into OneSpan’s existing offerings will also add a new product offering that provides customers with secure vaulting capabilities and helps OneSpan secure digital agreements.

“Digital artifacts are simply too easy to fabricate, tamper, or delete in the era of Web3 leading to security breaches and loss of trust in digital information. In this world of evidence tampering and deep fakes, it is critical that we have non-repudiation and copies of the original artifact with an immutable chain of custody throughout the entire customer journey,” said OneSpan President and CEO Matthew Moynahan. “Securing business processes end-to-end leveraging blockchain technology will play an increasingly critical role in preserving the integrity of digital transactions and agreements to fuel this modern digital era. We have an ambitious plan to disrupt the digital agreement market and ProvenDB will accelerate that plan. OneSpan’s mission, the focus of our entire go-to-market strategy, is to restore trust and confidence in today’s most critical customer experiences, such as revenue-generating transactions or customer and vendor onboarding, and ensure that their integrity is never in question.”

The transaction is expected to close the first quarter of this year.

Founded in 1991 and formerly known as VASCO, OneSpan offers a range of digital identity and anti-fraud solutions. The Chicago-based company authenticates four billion users each year and counts 60% of the world’s largest banks as clients. OneSpan went public in 1997 and has a current market capitalization of $540 million. Matt Moynahan is CEO.

Photo by MART PRODUCTION

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Australian Billionaire Richard White Acquires KYC/KYB Specialist Kyckr

Australian Billionaire Richard White Acquires KYC/KYB Specialist Kyckr
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Alumni News, Daily news, Kyckr, Mergers & Acquisitions
  • KYC/KYB specialist Kyckr has agreed to be acquired by tech entrepreneur and billionaire Richard White.
  • Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
  • Kyckr is an alum of our developers conference, FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2016, where the company presented “Corporate Identity on the Blockchain.”

Kyckr, a technology company that provides corporations with authoritative real-time data on potential and existing customers and suppliers, has agreed to be acquired by Richard White, an Australian technology entrepreneur. White, who founded Australian technology company WiseTech Global in 1994, will acquire the company via his personal investment vehicle RealWise KYK AV Pty Ltd. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

“The Kyckr team is delighted to have the strategic guidance, support, and vision that successful tech-entrepreneur and founder Richard White provides,” Kyckr CEO Ian Henderson said. “We are embarking upon an exciting evolution of our powerful offering to broaden its scope by building an integrated global software solution to enable businesses to navigate the highly complex and dynamic compliance and counterparty risk challenges that they face in an increasingly interconnected and digital marketplace.”

Kyckr specializes in providing businesses with real-time access to aggregated corporate Know Your Customer/Know Your Business (KYC/KYB) and Ultimate Beneficial Owner (UBO) data from more than 300 company registries and primary sources worldwide. This reach enables Kyckr to conduct real-time due diligence on more than 120 million companies around the globe. White noted that this capacity was especially important in a world with ever-expanding compliance laws and regulations on one hand and innovative financial criminals on the other. He described the contemporary challenge of KYC/KYB compliance as “increasingly high-risk, complex, time-consuming, and costly.”

White’s WiseTech Global bills itself as the “operating system for global logistics.” In a statement, White compared Kyckr’s ability to automate manual processes and aggregate data from real-time sources to the way WiseTech’s CargoWise solution has replaced legacy logistics systems with integrated technology. Both solutions, White indicated, are designed to “drive productivity, reduce compliance risk, and facilitate planning, visualization, and control.”

A Finovate alum since its appearance at our developers conference FinDEVr SiliconValley in 2016, Kyckr has raised more than $18 million in funding to date. The company maintains offices in the U.K., Ireland, and Australia.

Photo by Pixabay

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Fidelity Acquires Equity Management Company Shoobx

Fidelity Acquires Equity Management Company Shoobx
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Daily news, Fidelity, Mergers & Acquisitions
  • Fidelity Investments has acquired equity management company Shoobx, marking Fidelity’s first acquisition since 2015.
  • Terms of today’s deal were not disclosed.
  • The acquisition will help Fidelity expand its offerings for startups and early-stage companies.

Fidelity Investments announced this week it has acquired equity management company Shoobx. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed and the deal marks Fidelity’s first acquisition since it purchased eMoney Advisor in 2015 for $250 million.

Ultimately, the move will help Fidelity expand its offerings for startups and early-stage companies. In fact, today’s acquisition contributes to Fidelity’s growing portfolio of tools that support the startup ecosystem. Fidelity Labs, the organization’s innovation arm, has invested in several startups and fintech companies, and has developed its own technology to improve the investment process.

Fidelity will integrate Shoobx’s technology into its Stock Plan Services business, an arm that offers equity compensation plan recordkeeping and administration services. Part of Fidelity’s Workplace Investing division, the Stock Plan Services is a workplace benefits provider that serves almost 700 companies with 2.5 million end users holding $250 billion in plan value.

Shoobx was founded in 2013 and helps private companies streamline compliance related to incorporation, raising capital, and exiting so that they can focus on their business. That’s because Shoobx helps them manage their shareholders, the shares they own, and information such as the share class, the price paid for the shares, and any information on options or warrants.

“Given the success of our commercial relationship with Shoobx and the increasing demand from private companies to support them as they scale and grow, including helping their employees manage their financial well-being, acquiring Shoobx was a natural next step in our relationship,” said Fidelity Workplace Investing Head Kevin Barry. “Together, we will accelerate the development of new and innovative solutions designed to help private companies confidently navigate the complex journey all the way through to an exit or IPO.”

Fidelity and Shoobx first partnered in 2021 to provide an equity management solution to the private market. At the time, Fidelity offered a Shoobx-branded tool that combined Fidelity’s equity compensation and benefits administration with Shoobx’s equity management capabilities, board management tools, and data room solutions.

Photo by Startup Stock Photos

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