Funding Circle to float on stock exchange

Let's hope small private investors ('consumers' - some of whom might describe themselves as long-suffering) who have assisted in FC achieving it's amazing growth are given some sort of incentive / priority so that they too may benefit from the flotation when it comes.

Whilst it will be interesting to see whether FC offer their lenders any form of perk if they become shareholders, perhaps the bigger significance of this story is that FC floating is pretty much a pre-requiste in any plans AC have to float a few years down the line.  FC's valuation (vs loans written and other metrics) will become the yardstick against which other platforms will be judged.

I wonder whether AC had wind of this when they decided to return to seedrs recently for additional funding thereby delaying the day when the institutions first have their say as to AC's valuation.


Disclosure: I am an AC shareholder.

The smoke and mirrors PR machine for FC fails to mention the appalling record of failure to recover property debts and or the demise of the "highly experienced property team" which many believe was the direct result of investors asking very obvious questions on the now deceased FC Forum?

What a wonderful start to 2018 if Samir were to offer up some of his vast bonus to pay back just the Capital on these London Hotel equity release loans - which have now been in default since April 2016 -  and upon which their was clearly a failure of DD and failure to protect investors.

Adrian77 's wonderful FC Hitler in the Bunker video gets my vote for video of the year - it is the only good thing to have come out from the mismanagement of the suspect London Hotel loans.  the link is still avaibale on the London Hotel loans thread above (recent few pages).

Best wishes to all still with FC, for full payments of capital and interest, despite the new "invest in the darkness / unknown" schemes.

SXLR

Kerching indeed. I think many of the recent changes we have seen at FC have been made in order to fatten them up for the institutions. The small private investor has not been their top proirity for quite a while and will be even less so now.

Whilst being given a tour of FC HQ about five years ago I predicted that P2P Lenders will one day all end up being owned by the banks. My suggestion was greeted with laughter and scepticism but since then I've seen little if anything to change my mind.

P2P was great while there was all the excitement of it being new, different and on the side of the consumer versus the big boys. Sadly those days are long gone. The golden age of P2P has been and gone.

There's no animosity from me though. I've generally enjoyed the ride.

Plenty of food for thought here :-

I didnt think that FC made much of a profit as yet so they must be a bit difficult to value. The shares may thus provide a bit of a rollercoaster ride.

If they use some of the flotation money to lend out then they will not need as many investors like us and indeed rates could drop. Could that be true I am sure that this happened elsewhere with bond issues.