Seedrs Secondary Market opened this week and following the trades, Seedrs has posted on its blog that it claims the title as the UK’s biggest marketplace for private companies.
Of note, is the fact that private companies who haven’t raised on Seedrs before can list shares on the Secondary Market. This was announced last year in a deal with Capdesk, an equity management platform. All firms using Capdesk are able to trade their securities on the Seedrs Secondary Market but it is not quite clear if Capdesk firms have utilized the marketplace as of yet. To quote Seedrs:
“In the years since launching, we saw increasing demand from companies wanting to bring other shareholders under the Seedrs Nominee. A lot of CEO’s and CFO’s want to simplify and clean up their cap-table. So we’ve built a feature that does just that. This now allows us to host share sales for shareholders who might not have invested initially on the Seedrs marketplace. Last year, we partnered with Capdesk. This tech-enabled partnership makes the listing and sale process even easier for shareholders looking to sell their holdings. We now have a simple process that enables us to execute share transfers for investors in any private company in the UK (and soon, in Europe).”
Seedrs says that it will empower firms to allow their employees to sell shares or options on the marketplace – an important feature for private firms that may reward employees in shares or share options. Seedrs states that they will soon launch their first-ever employee options share sale.
Seedrs is now pitching the secondary market to any UK private firm that is eligible. The company says that a “secondary share sale by a high-growth private company can expect to receive the same interest as a primary share offering.”
Seedrs reports that since launching their Secondary Market they have facilitated the sale of £10 million worth of securities in private companies. £2 million of those shares were sold in the first 2 months of 2021 after trading an average of £500,000 per month in 2020. So the marketplace is heading in the right direction while providing liquidity for a traditionally illiquid asset class.