#Europe's #Unicorn herd grows almost 3X in 2021 vs 2020, 2X vs. 2019–and we’re not even half way through the year!

PitchBook reports 2021 has seen a record number of European startups achieve unicorn status as the increased participation of US investors pushes up valuations.

23 companies in Europe and Israel have become unicorns so far this year, easily beating 2020's total of eight, according to PitchBook data.

A record amount of VC capital has continued to flow to European startups, with €32.5 billion (around $39.3 billion) invested so far, putting the year on track to surpass last year's €37.6 billion.

The increasing participation of US-based investors has been a factor in the increase of investment. Nearly half of the top 10 backers of European unicorns in terms of deal count are based across the Atlantic.

Europe's tech startups tend to have lower valuations than US counterparts, offering more opportunities for higher growth rates.

"We expect transatlantic capital flows to continue to increase and strengthen valuations in Europe, as cash-rich US investors seek new companies showing strong potential that could be introduced to the US market," said Nalin Patel, a private capital analyst at PitchBook.

See the full article on PitchBook here: Europe's unicorn herd grows bigger and faster in 2021 | PitchBook

International Investors left holding a $10.3 billion bag of #Ant(s)

Sovereign wealth funds, private equity and asset managers have been left in limbo after investing $10.3bn into Ant International, a subsidiary of the group owned by Jack Ma, in a highly selective, offshore pre-IPO fundraising round in 2018. 

Under an arrangement between Ant and its so-called international Class C investors, the cash was put into an offshore subsidiary that owns nothing. Aside from not having voting rights, there is little detail of the commercial terms of the agreement in Ant’s heavily redacted IPO prospectus.

The result is that investors in Ant International are “screwed”, said one lawyer with direct knowledge of the situation.

See the whole story on the FT here:

https://www.ft.com/content/f0950778-450e-4ef2-804d-7e16946ac4c0

#Wirecard, With McKinsey’s help, hatched plan to buy @DeutscheBank in bid coverup its #Fraud

With McKinsey's help, Wirecard hatched a plan to acquire Deutsche Bank, offering the German FinTech the prospect of a miraculous exit from the massive fraud it had been perpetrating. 

By blending Wirecard's business into Deutsche's vast balance sheet, it hoped it could be possible to "somehow hide the missing cash and explain it away later in post-merger impairment charges."

There was one catch. To even start preparing such a deal in earnest, the company needed to get a clean bill of health from KPMG, which was conducting a special audit of Wirecard's books. 

The approval from KPMG never came.

Six months later the curtain fell on Wirecard. On June 25, the group collapsed into insolvency after it was exposed as one of Germany's biggest postwar accounting frauds. Prosecutors in Munich suspect that €3.2bn in debt raised since 2015 has been "lost". Around €1bn was handed out in unsecured loans to opaque business partners in Asia.

Wirecard: the frantic final months of a fraudulent operation

Executives at the German payments group hatched a plan to buy Deutsche Bank while desperately trying to cover their tracks

Read the article on the FT here: 

https://www.ft.com/content/6a660a5f-4e8c-41d5-b129-ad5bf9782256