Ariadne Capital Advises on More Than £50 million of Investment into European High-Growth Digital Enablers During 2013

LONDON, January 22, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --

Builds Senior Executive Team to Seize Financial Services Technology Entrepreneurship Funding Opportunity

Ariadne Capital, founded in 2000 and backed by 62 leading technology and private equity entrepreneurs, today announced more than £50 million of investments on which it has advised in 2013.  

In 2013,  Ariadne also expanded its team of Directors to include Paul Burniston as CFO and a Partner in the Ariadne Capital Entrepreneurs Fund. Burniston, who was COO at Interactive Investor for 9 years and AMP for 5 years, joined Amit Pau (ex AT&T, MD - Vodafone) who joined in 2012 and Ian Findlay, Director of M&A (ex EMAP) in 2008.

Backing financial services technology entrepreneurship

Building on its 13 year track record of backing high growth companies with disruptive economic models, Ariadne is currently focused on financial services technology firms both at the seed and early stage / series A through the Ariadne Capital Entrepreneurs Fund (target £50 million AUM) as well as advising later stage, globally expanding firms through Ariadne Capital Corporate Finance.  

Ariadne, which advised Monitise (NASDAQ MONIF) that today has a market capitalisation of £1.2 billion, co-advised on the £30 million funding round into Seamless, a rapidly growing Swedish mobile payments firm, listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange with a £174.30 million market capitalisation, which closed in November 2013.  

Ariadne is also  a shareholder in Moneydashboard which secured £2.7 million of funding from Calculus Capital in November 2013,  was the sole financial advisor to financial services price comparison engine BeatThatQuote on its 122 EBITDA multiple exit to Google in 2011, and was an advisor and shareholder to Zopa the peer to peer lending exchange in its early years.  

Financing that matches European ambition

Julie Meyer MBE, Chairman and CEO of Ariadne Capital says: "Europe has some outstanding entrepreneurs and management teams. I set up Ariadne Capital at the beginning of the post dotcom downturn to ensure that they get the financing that matches their ambition."

During 2013, Ariadne Capital also advised on:

• The £2.4 million funding of leading Finnish mediatech firm Scoopshot, which provides an assignment tool for photographers globally, by Conor Venture Partners and Finnish Industry Investment
• The funding of Cardiff-based Object Matrix, by leading tech investor, Bob Morton, which provides near-line plug and play storage solutions for major broadcasters
• The funding of Lime & Tonic, the global experience company with a city wide network
• The investment into PIE Mapping, a big data play in the transport market that provides routing solutions

It has also secured:

• more than £1.5 million of financing  through its EntrepreneurCountry Crowdcube Partnership for start-ups, and
• term sheets for a further £4  million of deals that will complete in early 2014

M&A is the new R&D

Ian Findlay,  Ariadne's Director of M&A, says:  "M&A is the new R&D, and early-stage firms can - despite their relatively low P&L value - have a disproportionate impact on the companies that embrace them. The key for us when advising a management team is to focus and articulate the `strategic fit` - the value that the young, digital firm brings to the larger enterprise which has the distribution required for the start-up to scale."

"We see a landscape of collaborative company-building between the Digital David's and the Goliaths who are the 'highway' for digital cars who need distribution, scale, reach and audience," Julie Meyer added.

Amit Pau, Director, Ariadne Capital and EntrepreneurCountry, adds: "Technology is no longer an industry; it is a layer across all industries," adds "Whether banks, telcos, retailers or newspaper groups, the 'digital enablers' that we fund - and secure funding for -are transforming the established industries."

NOTES TO EDITORS:

About Ariadne Capital

Ariadne Capital is the investment firm founded by Julie Meyer in 2000 with 62 other leading entrepreneurs such as the founders of Easynet, Hotmail, WorldPay, SES Astra, Staffware, Element 14, Brokat, ENBA, NetPartners, SportingBet and BetFair. Ariadne pioneered the 'Entrepreneurs Backing Entrepreneurs' model for the financing of entrepreneurship at the institutional level in Europe in 2000, has syndicated £300m of investments, manages the Ariadne Capital Entrepreneurs Fund whose Limited Partners co-invest actively in the portfolio, and has backed several explosive growth companies such as Espotting, Skype, Monitise, Zopa, BeatThatQuote and SoundOut.

Since 2008, Ariadne Capital has advised on more than forty transactions including:

•    22 funding rounds

•    10 sell-side M&A deals

•    7 buy-side M&A deals

For more information please contact:
Ariadne Capital Marketing
Tel:  +44(0)203-021 1641
E-mail:  marketing@ariadnecapital.com