Deal values FNZ at $3.35b
The employee-owners of a financial technology company founded in New Zealand have sold a two-thirds stake in a deal that values the whole enterprise at $3.35 billion.
The two-thirds stake in FNZ was bought by United States sustainable investment firm Generation Investment Management, whose chairman is former US vice-president Al Gore, and Canada’s La Caisse de de´poˆt et placement du Que´ bec.
FNZ was founded in New Zealand in 2003 by Adrian Durham and New Zealand investment bank FNZC.
‘‘It is an exceptional company with a management team that has demonstrated its ability to innovate and grow in the fast-moving fintech sector,’’ Generation Investment cofounder David Blood said yesterday.
FNZ was owned by its employees, who bought it in 2009 after 60 investors, most of them New Zealand businessmen, decided to sell out for just
$12m, according to a Stuff report. Durham said in 2009 that the winning bid was made by its management team, which secured financial backing for a buyout from the European branch of HIG Capital.
FNZ provides digital platforms for giant global financial services companies to manage their clients’ money.
The company said it had more than
$670b in assets under administration held by about 5 million customers of some of the world’s largest financial institutions, including Standard Life Aberdeen, Santander, Lloyds Bank, Vanguard, Barclays, Quilter, Aviva, Zurich, UBS, BNZ, Findex and FNZC.
FNZ worked with financial institutions across the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia, it said.
The business has grown rapidly in recent years, as its institutional customers have used FNZ’s platform to improve transparency and choice and to drive down long-term costs for consumers of wealth management products across all market segments.
It has a total of more than 1400 employees in the UK, the Czech Republic, China, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.
The deal will enrich about 400 employees who hold FNZ shares, and who will continue to own about onethird of the company’s equity.
In announcing the deal yesterday, Durham said: ‘‘We started FNZ by asking: How can technology solve the problems faced by consumers of longterm savings products?
‘‘We saw investors being charged so much that their retirement income was halved by charges alone . . . Choice was non-existent and the entire value chain was managed using paper.
‘‘Our approach has entirely digitised the value chain, reducing cost and complexity for financial institutions and consumers alike.
‘‘Our clients have all moved to platform-as-a-service [PaaS], combining cloud-based software with transaction and custody services.’’
This approach had reduced total consumer costs in long-term savings by about 40 per cent over the past decade, he said.