SHANGHAI:

A consortium partly led by the private equity arm of Standard Chartered PLC has invested $207 million in China's Dianrong.com, the peer-to-peer online lender said on Thursday, the latest international investor to take a fancy to the firm. P2P companies and other alternative lenders are growing by servicing small- and medium-sized firms, which are having increasing difficulty raising funds as China's commercial banks veer away from this riskier sector. The C-round financing for Dianrong was co-led by SCPE and China Fintech Fund.