Point72 Ventures leads investment in U.K. fintech firm

STAMFORD — Point72 Ventures, the venture capital business founded by billionaire hedge fund investor Steven Cohen, has announced it is leading an eightfigure investment in a financialtechnology startup.

The £13.5 million investment — which equates to nearly $19 million, based on the British poundU.S. dollar exchange rate as of Monday — completed the “Series A” fundraising for London-headquartered Trade Ledger.

In their announcement, Ventures officials said they viewed Trade Ledger as “part of an important wave of companies that are disrupting legacy financial technology and, in doing so, are moving the financial services industry forward.” Trade Ledger aims to help lenders provide credit to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by showing them the information they need to make sound decisions.

“Trade Ledger’s data-driven lending capabilities coupled with their embeddable, flexible platform are bringing significant new opportunities to the business lending market, particularly the small and medium enterprises that are the engine of the global economy,” Alex Tarhini, operating partner at Point72 Ventures, said in a statement. “Its customers already include the top global credit providers, and we believe it will continue to grow rapidly.”

The new funds would help grow sales, marketing and customer-delivery teams, according to Trade Ledger officials.

“This new investment will enable us to triple our customer base during 2021,” Trade Ledger CEO Martin McCann said in a statement. “Adoption of our technology is critical for the postpandemic recapitalization of the economy and we are driving growth as fast as our capital allows, to be able to support this critical economic need, particularly for SMEs. New digital solutions based on real-time business data are the only way to address it.”

Among other recent transactions, Ventures last month announced it was co-leading a $7 million investment in Swapp, a construction-planning technology firm based in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Ventures has made numerous other deals in the past couple of years. Those earlier investments include $20 million in commercial real estate brokerage HelloOffice and $16 million in Bayzat, a United Arab Emirates-based HRservices startup.

Ventures was founded in May 2016, about two-and-a-half years after Cohen founded the main investment firm that he runs today, Stamford-based hedge fund Point72. Ventures’ launch responded to the large volume of deals pitched to Cohen.

In total, Ventures has made more than 50 investments.

Ventures employs more than 25, with offices at Point72’s headquarters at 72 Cummings Point Road, in Stamford’s Waterside section, as well as others in New York City and Palo Alto, Calif. It operates separately from the hedge fund, but its insights are shared with the latter.

Cohen has come under major scrutiny in recent weeks amid criticism of hedge funds for their alleged role in the market frenzy surroundings stocks such as GameStop. Cohen has denied that his firm committed any wrongdoing.

Point72 last month made a $750 million investment in hedge fund Melvin Capital, which sustained heavy losses from GameStop’s short-lived price surge.

In addition to leading Point72, Greenwich resident Cohen has become well-known to baseball fans through his acquisition last year of the New York Mets.