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MCI leads £7.2m round for MarketInvoice

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Listed Polish private equity firm MCI Capital has led a £7.2m investment round for London-based peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform MarketInvoice.

Existing backer Northzone also took part in the fundraising round, which will finance product development and marketing activity.

On completion of the deal, MarketInvoice will also move into new London headquarters and make two senior hires. The business will appoint Lisa Gervis – formerly vice-president of marketing at Elevate Credit – as chief marketing officer, and former Experian regional sales manager Ruper Thorpe as director of sales.

Capital for the transaction was drawn from the MCI TechVentures Fund, a 2008-vintage €80m vehicle. The firm’s senior partner Sylwester Janik will take a seat on the MarketInvoice board.

The investment comes shortly after NVM Private Equity injected £2m into another London-based P2P lending platform, Lending Works. There have been a number of similar deals across Europe in recent months including a €2m round for Latvian business Mintos and a £17m in series-B round for LendInvest.

MCI stated it was specifically attracted to the fintech market in light of the recent Brexit vote, with an anticipated economic slowdown and troubled banking sector being of benefit to alternative financing companies.

Notably, there have also been a number of UK deals made by non-sterling buyers in recent weeks, with the currency having taken a significant hit since the Brexit vote. The highest profile examples of this include the £921m trade sale of Terra Firma-backed Odeon & UCI Cinemas Group to US buyer AMC Theatres and the £200m sale of Vitruvian Partners’ Inspired Gaming Group to US holding company Hydra Industries Acquisition Corp.

Previous funding
Northzone first invested in MarketInvoice in December 2014, taking part in a £5m funding round alongside Indeed.com co-founder and former CEO Paul Forster. The following August, Northzone and Forster provided the company with an additional £10m of growth capital.

Company
Founded in 2011, MarketInvoice is headquartered in London with an additional office in Manchester. The company operates an online platform that allows businesses to sell outstanding invoices to investors with the aim of raising capital.

People
MCI Capital – Sylwester Janik (senior partner).
Northzone – Jeppe Zink (partner).
MarketInvoice – Anil Stocker (co-founder, CEO).

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