Sydney-based Blu Horseshoe has for the past four-and-a-half months been refining its platform, which presents investors with opportunities from companies looking at secondary raisings on the ASX.
To date, 118 deals have been completed in this ‘soft launch' phase, which has been marketed to a discrete set of partner clients. Blu Horseshoe has today extended the service to all capital-raising companies and qualified investors.
Blu Horseshoe chief executive Antony Tolfts said the platform was not a technology play, but rather a service-based financing tool using what had become easily accessible digital infrastructure. This allowed companies to offer investment opportunities to a broad range of institutions, brokers and sophisticated investors with equal access to the deals.
Tolfts said the format eliminated exclusivity on raisings that usually kept fund-raising companies away from the full scope of willing capital. He expected the service to enhance, rather than replace, traditional financing relationships.
More than A$60 billion was raised in the ASX secondary market in 2021. Tolfts said access to those deals for all investor types had been "patchy" and reliant on broker relationships, resulting in a "fragmented" system.
"The concept of a digital capital raising platform is not new, but we are doing things a bit differently," he said.
"Blu Horseshoe does not offer any other services besides the platform, nor do we compete with brokers by bringing our own deals to investors.
"The team comes from a deep financial services background, and while our technology is well designed and simple to set up and use, we're not positioning ourselves as a technology company - enabling investors to connect with issuers through a service-driven product is first and foremost."
The platform has built its deal volumes through strategic relationships with groups from the finance, technology and media sectors.
"Our goal when we opened the platform in June was to execute 60 deals in our first year," Tolfts said.
"We were able to achieve nearly double that in just over four months, and our pipeline is only getting stronger."
He said brokers and investors had embraced the model and allowed the firm to prove the concept in the Australian market. Blu Horseshoe also planned to expand internationally, though Tolfts would not be drawn on the timing of that move.
Tolfts has financial services experience with the Sydney Stock Exchange, Computershare, Barclay's Private Bank and HSBC. He is supported by operations chief Pathhik Vora, who has held roles at NZX, Ord Minnett, Pershing, JP Morgan, OpenMarkets and CommSec.
Blu Horseshoe's cornerstone investors included global media group Aspermont (publisher of MiningNews.net and Mining Journal), financial advisory firm International Pacific Capital, and Singapore-based brokerage Spark Plus.
