Appital, the equity capital marketplace, has secured an additional £1.7 million investment from London-based Frontline Ventures in an effort to bring technological innovation and automation to equity markets.
The investment follows last year’s £2.5 million round led by Frontline Ventures and additional funding from angel investors, bringing the total investment raised to date to £4.85 million.
This comes ahead of the launch of Appital’s algorithmic bookbuilding platform in partnership with Turquoise, the pan-European multilateral trading facility (MTF), majority owned by London Stock Exchange Group.
The Appital platform enables the buy-side community to originate and participate in liquidity discovery, price formation and execution opportunities in publicly listed equities.
Appital’s latest funding follows the successful integration with execution management system (EMS) providers FactSet, FlexTrade and TS Imagine, and executing brokers Bernstein and Instinet, in anticipation of Appital’s imminent launch.
Through the partnership with Turquoise, buy-side firms will be able to execute all deals through the Turquoise MTF, via a single point of access and with straight-through processing to more than 20 settlement venues.
Shay Garvey, founding partner at Frontline Ventures, comments: “We are very happy to extend our funding to Appital ahead of its launch. Appital has a proven track record in securing partnerships with major EMS providers, executing brokers and a trading venue to address the lack of efficiency and control over existing bookbuilding and deal distribution processes.”
Mark Badyra, CEO of Appital, says: “We are thrilled to have secured additional investment from Frontline Ventures and our group of angel investors. In addition, we are very encouraged by the market response to our vision to bring buy-side firms new opportunities to proactively source and interact with hard-to-find liquidity.”
