London fintech Primary Portal seals £5.3 million to tee up US expansion

Primary Portal has picked up £5.3 million in seed funds for its capital market deals aggregation and communication platform.

The round is led by Dutch Founders Fund and also includes the Amsterdam-HQed asset investment products company Flow Traders. 

Seed money secured, Primary Portal is lining up a US expansion to monetise demand in the world's largest IPOs arena, following its official launch there in November. Right now, the platform mainly deals with Europe and Asia and is already used by 50 banks and 1,000 active users.

A share of the seed funding will also help build out Primary Portal's product offer with new features, like feedback messages that enable comments and expressions of interest by institutional investors on deal flows.

According to the press announcement, Primary Portal's dashboard automates time-consuming workflows and integrates with tools already used by banks and investors. Clients gain an immediate overview of live IPOs on the market, recently priced ABOs, rights issues and other equity products. 

Headquartered in London, Primary Portal benefits from veteran equity deal making expertise on its founding team.

The startup was formed in 2020 by an equity syndicating alum from Goldman Sachs, John Bentinck van Schoonheten, together with Ilan Leshem, a former IHS Markit executive director for primary equity markets.

Such knowledge should go a long way to addressing the needs of capital markets, at a time when investors urgently require streamlined workflows, according to Dutch Founders Fund founding partner Laurens Groenendijk.

"This team has all the knowledge and experience needed to solve this problem of making capital markets more efficient. They are basically building the infrastructure to democratise investing in IPOs,” Groenendijk said.

As Primary Portal continues to target adoption for its core equity trading product, the startup is also looking to deliver bespoke iterations of the platform for key investors, tailored to their requirements.

Primary Portal's Bentinck said: "The big plan is to develop both our own products as well as the collaborations with others. We want to continue to bring the buyside and the banks together in one digital marketplace so that other companies that are working in the same environment can use that connectivity.”