“That’s the only way to deliver genuine accountability,” Taylor said.
Headwinds that potential share buyers will want to consider include high consumer debt levels that have drawn attention from authorities, as well as potential competition from Goldman Sachs Group Inc.: that firm plans to bring its own online lending operation, called Marcus, to the U.K. in the near future, though it will focus on consumers rather than small businesses. And then there’s Brexit, which is only a year away.
Funding Circle, which is one of four companies Bloomberg News is following through the Brexit process, has felt little impact from Britain’s pending separation from the European Union so far. Its loan volume in the U.K. has soared 130 percent since Britons voted to leave the bloc in June 2016.
Funding Circle co-founders Samir Desai, James Meekings and Andrew Mullinger are poised to be worth millions after the offering. “Some people may still want to sit with a branch manager, but this is a game-changing way for businesses to borrow,” Desai, Funding Circle’s co-founder and CEO, told Bloomberg News in 2014. The company declined to make its executives available for this article.
Former bankers involved with Funding Circle include board members Bob Steel, CEO of Perella Weinberg Partners and the former vice chairman of Goldman Sachs, and Eric Daniels, the onetime head of Lloyds Banking Group Plc. Jerome Le Luel, the former risk analytics chief at Barclays Plc, is Funding Circle’s chief risk officer.
Policymakers have also embraced Funding Circle as bank lending to small business remained lackluster after the credit crunch. The European Investment Bank, an arm of the EU, placed 100 million pounds on Funding Circle’s platform in 2016, as did the U.K. government’s British Business Bank.
This article was provided by Bloomberg