20/1/2015 Raizers Targets Ambitious PanEuropean Equity Crowdfunding | Crowdfund Insider

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Raizers Targets Ambitious PanEuropean Equity Crowdfunding

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January 20, 2015 @ 10:14 am By Therese Torris

The 28 countries of the European Union are a

very long way from offering a homogeneous regulation environment for crowdfunding. This isparticularly true of equity crowdfunding which touches on multiple heavily regulated areas offinance such as investment advice, securities trading, retail banking and corporate finance.

Few European countries have, like France, issued new regulations that are specific to investmentcrowdfunding. Most have, like Germany and the UK, rather tried to fit crowdfunding into theexisting legal framework of capital investment and granted exemptions such as simplifiedprospectus. In the Review of Crowdfunding Regulation published at the end of 2014, the chairmanof the European Crowdfunding Network, Olivier Gadja, goes as far as claiming that a harmonizedsingle European market for crowdfunding “may even be further [away] than last year [in 2013]”.The reason? As crowdfunding was taking off, growing 100% or 200% a year in leading marketssuch as France and the United Kingdom, entrepreneurs and finance regulators havepragmatically negotiated legal frameworks at country level.

The result is now a hodge podge of disparate

regulations that may make European equity crowdfunding harder to navigate than the traditionalbanking sector – after all the latter has years of European harmonization work behind it!

In this context, setting up an equity crowdfunding platform with panEuropean ambitions is adaunting task.

Yet, that is exactly what a team of three entrepreneurs are setting out to do by launching Raizers,a new equity crowdfunding platform with a presence in France, Switzerland and Denmark. I spokewith Grégoire Linder, one of the cofounders.

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20/1/2015 Raizers Targets Ambitious PanEuropean Equity Crowdfunding | Crowdfund Insider

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Therese: You just launched Raizers, a new

equity crowdfunding platform last week. Why are you launching as a European platformwith a presence in three countries from the start?

Grégoire: We believe that there is a strong demand for crowdfunding investment atEuropean level.

Crowdfunding is about offering more and better opportunities to retail Investors, giving themthe ability to participate in the capital of startups and small companies with high growthopportunities. This means giving them access to investing in companies outside of their owncountry. Investors who are ready to take risks should be able seize international opportunitiesand diversify their investments outside of their home country. This is part and parcel of thedemocratization of capital investment through crowdfunding.

From the point of view of the businesses seeking to raise capital through crowdfunding, it isalso important for them to be able to address European investors. Performing smallbusinesses don’t serve only their local country. On the contrary, they expand as quickly aspossible into other countries throughout Europe. They can only benefit from having investorsin every market they serve.

Therese: What made you choose the three countries of France, Switzerland andDenmark?

Grégoire: Our choice has been guided first by how we built our team. To be truly panEuropean, you have to be represented in the countries you serve. It is necessary to know thelocal environment and communicate in local language with investors and businesses. We arean international team of three cofounders with complementary skills. I am based

in France and have a rather general

management experience, Maxime Pallain is based in Switzerland and has a more financialbackground and Jesper Fjordbak is based in Denmark and is more digital.

The countries we’re operating in are at different levels of maturity, which will allow us to rollout progressively.

In France, equity crowdfunding has already emerged. We’re one of the five equitycrowdfunding platforms [1 ] that areregistered as “Conseil en Investissement Participatif(Crowdfunding Investment Advisor)”, the new company status that was created by thecrowdfunding regulation that went into force on October 1 , 2014. We’re up and running inFrance with a first investment opportunity.

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20/1/2015 Raizers Targets Ambitious PanEuropean Equity Crowdfunding | Crowdfund Insider

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In Switzerland, there is no fully digital and

open equity crowdfunding platform yet. Existing initiatives are more online business angelclubs than open crowdfunding platforms. There is not either a specific regulation or a projectof regulation for crowdfunding. We’re working towards launching the platform in the first halfof 2015 with a status of intermediary within the existing regulatory framework.

The Danish market for crowdfunding investment has been hampered by regulation, or ratherby the lack thereof. There currently is no equity crowdfunding platform there. But this shouldchange soon because crowdfunding at large, for example Kickstarter, is now growing fast inDenmark; and because the Danish government is expected to release a favorablecrowdfunding regulation, similar to that of France. This could happen as soon as February.We would then be able to launch in the summer.

Therese: What about the competition? Who else is in the game to become a panEuropean

equity crowdfunding platform?

Grégoire: British competitors like Crowdcube and Seedrs are certainly the most advancedequity players in Europe. Together they do more business than the entire rest of Europe. Atany point in time Crowdcube lists more investment opportunities than all French equityplatforms together. Both Crowdcube and Seedrs are going international. They offer to Britishinvestors the opportunity to invest in foreign businesses, and they are open to foreigninvestors as well. Seedrs claims that one in three of their investors comes from outside theUK. Crowdcube has opened shop abroad by launching Crowdcube Spain and CrowdcubePoland last year.

But we’re not afraid of the competition. The equity

crowdfunding market is still emerging. There still is plenty of unsatisfied demand becausebanks are not doing their job: they’re not lending enough money to small and midsizebusinesses and they’re not offering highgrowth investment opportunities to small retailinvestors. Hence, there still is plenty of room for new entrants like us. We’re intending todifferentiate ourselves by specializing in the financing of B2C businesses that the generalpublic can more easily relate to.

As European entrepreneurs, we can’t wait for the perfect, harmonized regulatoryenvironment to operate internationally. We’re used to dealing with cultural diversity andregulatory complexity. It is the cost of doing business here.

[(1) The five French equity crowdfunding platforms registered as CIP are WiSeed, Anaxago,Sowefund, Lumo, Raizers.]

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20/1/2015 Raizers Targets Ambitious PanEuropean Equity Crowdfunding | Crowdfund Insider

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Therese Torris is an entrepreneur and consultant in eFinance and

eCommerce based in Paris. She started covering crowdfunding and P2P lending as aForrester Research director when Zopa was created in the United Kingdom. She publishes aFrench personal finance blog, Le Blog Finance Pratique and curates crowdfunding and peertopeer lending news on Scoop.It.

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This entry was posted in Featured Headlines, Global, Opinion, Politics and tagged anaxago,crowdcube, denmark, europe, france, grégoire linder, jesper fjordbak, lumor, maxime pallain,raizers, regulations, seedrs, sowefund, switzerland, therese torris, uk, united kingdom, wiseed.

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