A SCOTS university fintech start-up is bidding for a US patent for technology allowing companies to get an instant valuation at the touch of a button, in real time
University of Strathclyde’s Listings Ledger is seeking to establish itself as a leader in the field by combining both Companies House and stock market information.
The start-up has former employees of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bloomberg on its board.
It says the UK’s thousands of private companies and entrepreneur-led businesses will be able to access its valuations after filing for the significant patent.
The fintech innovation uses publicly available information from Companies House and combines that with financial information from stock markets which it says “allows entrepreneurs and owners to realise the value of their equity more easily”.
It also enables employees to engage in more efficient bonus schemes and for smoother access of SMEs to corporate finance.
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The firm said that “in essence, the technology creates a virtual stock market for the UK’s private companies”.
The technology was developed by a team based in Strathclyde’s Business School, one of the country’s foremost centres for fintech research and development.
The university, a top ten UK institution for licence royalty income, said that while the first market for development is the UK, the company plans to expand its offering rapidly into other countries including Ireland and in Europe, while the US patent will add protection.
It said the roll-out is backed “by a global trend towards open digital government and a philosophy that promotes transparency, accountability and value creation”.
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It added it is currently recruiting developers and hopes to grow its team substantially by the end of the year, eventually creating hundreds of jobs in Glasgow.
Daniel Broby, co-founder, said: “Scotland has always been at the forefront of financial innovation, and as a Scottish-based company we are proud to be driving technology that will benefit company owners, financial institutions and the wider UK economy.
“This patent application is the culmination of a great deal of academic research into this developing and ground-breaking technology.”
Matthew Welstead, chief product officer, formerly of Goldman Sachs, said the applications “are wide-ranging, cutting out hours of costly manual calculations”.
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