Deutsche Boerse and Markit are stepping up their investments in the financial technology sector via a fund established by Illuminate Financial Management, a London-based venture capital fund focused on early-stage fundraising for financial technology companies.
In November, Illuminate announced that the two companies were the lead investors in the new fund, which will focus on providing seed capital for early-stage companies in areas such as compliance, regulation and connectivity.
“Investing with Illuminate gives us deep insight into technologies and pioneering business models in our space,” Lance Uggla, Markit’s CEO and founder, said in a press release. “We look forward to collaborating with Illuminate to advise investee companies as they refine their business models and define their go-to-market approach.”
Illuminate was founded in 2014 by Mark Beeston, former head of the post-trade risk business of ICAP. The firm’s portfolio includes: CloudMargin, a collateral management solutions company, Open Gamma, an open source risk-systems developer, Duco, a hosted reconciliation services provider, Enso, a provider of data-driven investment and operational insights for hedge funds and prime brokers, and Droit, a provider of trading decision engines for OTC derivatives.
