Category: Finance Tools

Micro Investing’s Magic Lies in Helping Your Favorite College Grad (or You) Gain Confidence

Finance Tools, Investment Facts, Money/Personal Finance

Micro Investing's Magic Lies in Helping Your Favorite College Grad (or You) Gain Confidence

When you first graduate from college, you might not feel comfortable dumping lots of money into unknown stocks or ETFs. Even if you’re not a new college graduate, you may want to consider a different approach when you don’t have a lot of extra cash lying around. Why not try micro investing?

Micro investing takes the daunting feeling away from investing, and therein lies its true magic. Let’s take a look at what it can do for you and how it can find a place in your portfolio.

What is Micro Investing?

Put simply, when you micro invest, you invest using small amounts of money. In other words, you pony up money to buy fractional shares of stocks or ETFs instead of full shares.

As of today, a single share of Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) costs $3,383.87. You may know you can’t even afford one share of Amazon, much less two shares!

Enter micro investing apps. You can buy Amazon for a much smaller amount — even really small amounts, like $10. You can also buy multiple securities to aim for diversification (always a great thing!) and lower your risk in the long run.

Why Micro Invest?

Small amounts, compounded over time, can make an impact. Compound interest makes your money grow faster. You can calculate interest on accumulated interest as well as on your original principal. Compounding can create a snowball effect: The original investments plus the income earned from those investments both grow.

Let’s say you save $1 per day. Your $1 per day adds up to $365 a year. Instead of spending that $365, you could stick it into a micro investing app at 5% interest per year. Your small amount would grow to almost $466 by the end of five years. At the end of 30 years, the amount you originally invested would grow to $1,578.

If you micro invested even more, your investment could grow even faster.

How Does Micro Investing Work?

Have you ever heard of the app, Acorns, which invests small change for you? That’s micro investing. A micro investing app rounds up your purchases to the dollar or makes automatic transfers for you. Think of micro investing as “spare change investing” — many apps round up your transactions from a linked bank account and invest the difference.

In other words, let’s say you go to Chipotle and order a mega burrito with those delicious limey chips. You spend $10.34. The app would take your remaining $0.66 and invest it.

You don’t have to invest a lot to get started, either. Stash allows you to get started with just a penny. Interested in micro investing for your favorite college grad or yourself? Take a look at the following steps to get started with micro investing.

Step 1: Choose a micro investing app.

What’s often the hardest part? Choosing the right investment app. Often the most important question comes down to this: Do you want to get your hands directly on your investments or do you want an app to pilot and direct your money for you?

Quick overview: Acorns and Betterment put a portfolio together for you based on your preferences. Stash and Robinhood allow you to choose the direction you want your money to take by allowing you to choose your own investments.

You may want to choose an app that lets you steer the ship yourself, particularly if you want to take a DIY approach to your investments at some point.

Step 2: Input your information.

Once you’ve chosen a micro investing app, it’s time to let the robo-advisor do its job. You input information to your micro investing app that helps it “understand” how to put together the best portfolio for you. You input your age, income, goals and risk tolerance and it’ll allocate your investment dollars accordingly.

Your money will go into a portfolio of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) based on the level of risk you choose. Based on the information you supply, you could end up thoroughly diversified with shares in many (sometimes hundreds) of different companies.

Step 3: Set up recurring investments.

You can set up investments to go into your investment account on a recurring basis for just a few dollars per month. You can also choose to make one-time deposits. Your robo-advisor will automatically rebalance your account if you have too much invested in a particular asset class. Setting up recurring investing means that you’ll invest without thinking about it. (You’ll never miss pennies!)

Step 4: Don’t quit there.

You can easily track your earnings when you micro invest because those apps are seriously slick. You can even project your earnings through the app’s earnings calculator so you don’t have to wonder how much you’ll have later on.

However, this is important: Remember that micro investing may not make you rich (if, in fact that is your goal). You probably can’t save enough for retirement through micro-investing, either. You probably also won’t net enough to save for larger goals, such as a down payment on a home. You may generate a few hundred dollars a year, which might allow you to save enough to fund an emergency fund, but that’s about it.

The real win involves building the confidence needed to invest. Consider other ways you can invest, such as investing money in a 401(k) or a Roth IRA after you get comfortable with micro investing.

Micro Investing Could Work Wonders

Micro investing can work wonders by breaking down barriers to investing. One of the biggest complaints from young students just starting out is that it’s too expensive to invest.

Micro investing can give you or a new grad the confidence to try bigger things, starting with baby steps. If micro investing is what it takes for a new grad to get more comfortable with smaller investments (then grow investments later), then it’s a great option for young investors just getting started.

By:

Source: Micro Investing’s Magic Lies in Helping Your Favorite College Grad (or You) Gain Confidence

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Critics:

Microfinance is a category of financial services targeting individuals and small businesses who lack access to conventional banking and related services. Microfinance includes microcredit, the provision of small loans to poor clients; savings and checking accounts; microinsurance; and payment systems, among other services. Microfinance services are designed to reach excluded customers, usually poorer population segments, possibly socially marginalized, or geographically more isolated, and to help them become self-sufficient.[2][3]

Microfinance initially had a limited definition: the provision of microloans to poor entrepreneurs and small businesses lacking access to credit.[4] The two main mechanisms for the delivery of financial services to such clients were: (1) relationship-based banking for individual entrepreneurs and small businesses; and (2) group-based models, where several entrepreneurs come together to apply for loans and other services as a group.

Over time, microfinance has emerged as a larger movement whose object is: “a world in which as everyone, especially the poor and socially marginalized people and households have access to a wide range of affordable, high quality financial products and services, including not just credit but also savings, insurance, payment services, and fund transfers.

Proponents of microfinance often claim that such access will help poor people out of poverty, including participants in the Microcredit Summit Campaign. For many, microfinance is a way to promote economic development, employment and growth through the support of micro-entrepreneurs and small businesses; for others it is a way for the poor to manage their finances more effectively and take advantage of economic opportunities while managing the risks. Critics often point to some of the ills of micro-credit that can create indebtedness. Many studies have tried to assess its impacts.

New research in the area of microfinance call for better understanding of the microfinance ecosystem so that the microfinance institutions and other facilitators can formulate sustainable strategies that will help create social benefits through better service delivery to the low-income population.

Due to the unbalanced emphasis on credit at the expense of microsavings, as well as a desire to link Western investors to the sector, peer-to-peer platforms have developed to expand the availability of microcredit through individual lenders in the developed world. New platforms that connect lenders to micro-entrepreneurs are emerging on the Web (peer-to-peer sponsors), for example MYC4, Kiva, Zidisha, myELEN, Opportunity International and the Microloan Foundation.

Another Web-based microlender United Prosperity uses a variation on the usual microlending model; with United Prosperity the micro-lender provides a guarantee to a local bank which then lends back double that amount to the micro-entrepreneur. In 2009, the US-based nonprofit Zidisha became the first peer-to-peer microlending platform to link lenders and borrowers directly across international borders without local intermediaries.

See also

Is Patient Financing Right for Your Health Practice?

Finance Tools, Health/Medicine Innovations, Health/Medicine News, Insurance Tools, Money/Personal Finance, Pharma/Medicine

In these times of post-pandemic financial uncertainty, additional return on investment for medical providers is more welcome than ever. Patient financing — which for the purposes of this article means partnering with an external lender to provide service and procedure payments — can produce not just steady income for a practice, but help ensure that patients won’t have to put off procedures or, worse yet, abandon them altogether.

For example, Toronto Plastic Surgeons provides this facility to its patients through Medicard Patient Financing. There are also veterinary financing services for pets available through Medicard Patient Financing. What are some reasons practitioners might have employed in deciding upon this option?

No More Delays

There are, unfortunately, economic disparities when it comes to accessing healthcare services. Too often, the high-income and privileged have more access to healthcare resources than the medium- and low-income populations. Patient financing can help in reducing this imbalance, because the simple and daunting truth is that many medical problems don’t come announced, and it’s often impossible to plan for their associated expenses. With financing, patients don’t need to wait to get their accounts in order before opting for procedures — the result is, ideally, prompt and less stressful treatment.

Related: Fintech fuelling growth in Healthcare Financial Industry

Increased Patient Satisfaction

Since clients can often better manage their expenses via patient financing, they tend to be more satisfied on the whole. In part this is because they are not stressed and burdened with sudden financial decisions associated with urgent medical procedures. Better yet, they are more likely to stay loyal to a practice if they don’t have to worry as much. Compared to other practices that don’t offer this option, they are more likely to choose the former, which can mean increased business through word of mouth.

Reduced Collection Costs

When you partner with a patient financer, you receive payments on time. It also means that your team won’t spend needless hours and energy trying to collect payments.

Steady Cash Flow and Less Bad Debt

In setting up a conventional payment plan for a patient, your team is taking the responsibility of keeping tabs on payments and collecting them on time. It’s essentially extending a loan to a patient, typically without any interest. However, expenses like bills, payroll and lease/rent go on as usual. This can lead to money tied up in accounts receivable, which will easily and quickly impact a budget. But when you opt for association with a patient financing company, the latter bears the cost of collections, including giving you the option of getting payment upfront.

Related: Healthcare is in Turmoil, But Technology Can Save Businesses Billions

Better Marketing

Association with a financing company with its own marketing arm can help promote a business — making your clinic stand out in comparison to competitors.

Which to Choose?

When it comes to financing models, three predominate. In the first, Self-Funding, you as the healthcare provider are responsible for receivables. From creating a payment schedule to collecting funds to following up with the patient, your team carries out all the tasks. In the Recourse Lending model, you work with a patient financier/lender, which will approve a patient’s loan after the business/practice passes qualifying criteria.

If the patient doesn’t pay, the lending/financing company will recover the losses from you. Among the drawbacks here is that the practice will have to bear the losses and lender’s fees. Lastly, there is the Non-Recourse Lending model. Similar to the second, you work with a lending company. Key differences are that it is the patient who has to pass the underwriting criteria (if the lender doesn’t approve the patient, no funding is provided by them), and that losses are borne by the lender. One disadvantage of this method is that the lenders charge interest from patients; when rates are high, patients might not be interested. Also, patients with a weak credit history might be rejected during the underwriting evaluation.

By : Chris Porteous / Entrepreneur Leadership Network Contributor – High Performance Growth Marketer

Source: Is Patient Financing Right for Your Health Practice?

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Critics:

Publicly funded healthcare is a form of health care financing designed to meet the cost of all or most healthcare needs from a publicly managed fund. Usually this is under some form of democratic accountability, the right of access to which are set down in rules applying to the whole population contributing to the fund or receiving benefits from it.

The fund may be a not-for-profit trust that pays out for healthcare according to common rules established by the members or by some other democratic form. In some countries, the fund is controlled directly by the government or by an agency of the government for the benefit of the entire population. That distinguishes it from other forms of private medical insurance, the rights of access to which are subject to contractual obligations between an insured person (or their sponsor) and an insurance company, which seeks to make a profit by managing the flow of funds between funders and providers of health care services.

When taxation is the primary means of financing health care and sometimes with compulsory insurance, all eligible people receive the same level of cover regardless of their financial circumstances or risk factors.

Most developed countries have partially or fully publicly funded health systems. Most western industrial countries have a system of social insurance based on the principle of social solidarity that covers eligible people from bearing the direct burden of most health care expenditure, funded by taxation during their working life.

Among countries with significant public funding of healthcare there are many different approaches to the funding and provision of medical services. Systems may be funded from general government revenues (as in Canada, United Kingdom, Brazil and India) or through a government social security system (as in Australia, France, Belgium, Japan and Germany) with a separate budget and hypothecated taxes or contributions.

The proportion of the cost of care covered also differs: in Canada, all hospital care is paid for by the government, while in Japan, patients must pay 10 to 30% of the cost of a hospital stay. Services provided by public systems vary. For example, the Belgian government pays the bulk of the fees for dental and eye care, while the Australian government covers eye care but not dental care.

Publicly funded medicine may be administered and provided by the government, as in the Nordic countries, Portugal, Spain, and Italy; in some systems, though, medicine is publicly funded but most hospital providers are private entities, as in Canada. The organization providing public health insurance is not necessarily a public administration, and its budget may be isolated from the main state budget. Some systems do not provide universal healthcare or restrict coverage to public health facilities. Some countries, such as Germany, have multiple public insurance organizations linked by a common legal framework. Some, such as the Netherlands and Switzerland, allow private for-profit insurers to participate.

See also

          Publicly funded health care

Tips For Moms To Take Better Care of Their Money

Finance Study/Strategy, Finance Tools, Future Finance/Banking, Money/Personal Finance, Personal Finance/Savings

Tips for moms to take better care of their money

Mother’s month is approaching and the best way to celebrate them is by empowering them and helping them become more independent and financially successful.

Within personal finance there is a “common core”, to call it somehow, a body of knowledge that we should all have, however what works for one does not necessarily work for another.

There are differences in the management of finances between men and women, between a woman without children and a mother, and between a married mother and a single mother.

Let’s take a look at the data first.

Women live 10 years longer than men, increasingly contribute more resources to households, have more breaks in their working life, due to motherhood, and the responsibility of raising their children without leaving them unprotected in the event of an accident or death premature. So there is an urgent need to have a short, medium and long term financial plan.

According to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), 7 out of 10 women over 15 years of age are mothers, of those mothers 4 out of 10 contribute financial resources to the operation of the home, and of those who provide financial resources, 97% He combines his work with the burden of household chores, in addition, according to CONAPO, there are 880 thousand single mothers in Mexico, of which 90% have children under 18 years of age.

So the data and therefore here are some tips to improve your finances.

1. Make a personal budget

The budget is a tool that will help you keep your expenses under control, detect unnecessary leaks, pay attention to priorities and do not forget important items such as savings. It includes all the expenses related to the children such as tuition, school supplies, food, entertainment, medical expenses and even gifts.

2. Do you want successful children?

Educate yourself financially! It is very important so that you can teach that to your children and they grow up with good financial habits, you will avoid future headaches and you will too. Remember that there is no better inheritance than education and good habits.

3. Save for your retirement

You don’t want to be dependent on your children in the future, right? It is important that you regularly allocate within your budget a savings amount for your retirement, feed your AFORE or pension plan. That will give you financial certainty when the time comes.

4. Don’t hide financial problems

Keeping these types of situations secret adds problems instead of solving them, damages family ties and can be counterproductive.

5. Safe, safe?

If the father dies and is the breadwinner of the family, it can cause an economic gap that the mother would have to face, so insure the father, and if you are a single mother, be sure! You do not want to leave your children financially unprotected.

And to close I leave you some ideas of financial gifts for mom.

  • A course in personal finance.
  • An investment account (show him how to use it if he doesn’t know).
  • A few ounces of silver (it will start to rise in price).
  • A Tablet with internet access and teach him how to use it if he does not know. Access to information is a great ally of economic well-being.

Iván Vázquez Islas

By: Iván Vázquez Islas

Source: Tips for moms to take better care of their money

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Being a mom is the best job I have, but let’s be real—sometimes, it’s really hard. So, this episode of The Rachel Cruze Show is all about making your life a little easier. Today, you’ll learn: • 7 ways to save money on your morning routine • Things no one tells you about being a mom • How to give yourself grace as you navigate this crazy thing called “life balance” Sponsors pay the producer of this show, The Lampo Group, LLC, advertising fees for mentioning their services or products during programming.
Advertising fees are not based upon or otherwise tied to any product sale or business transacted between any consumer or sponsor. The following sponsors have paid for the programming you are viewing: — Zander Insurance Resources (everything mentioned in this episode): Zander Insurance: http://bit.ly/2Pd6Nss​ The Contentment Journal: https://www.rachelcruze.com/store/pro…​ Ramsey Solutions YouTube Channels (Subscribe Now!) • The Dave Ramsey Show (Highlights): https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDaveRams…​ • The Dave Ramsey Show (Live): https://www.youtube.com/thedaveramsey…​ • The Rachel Cruze Show: https://www.youtube.com/user/RachelCr…​ • The Ken Coleman Show: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheKenColem…​ • Christy Wright: https://www.youtube.com/c/ChristyWrig…​ • Anthony ONeal: https://www.youtube.com/user/aonealmi…​ • EntreLeadership: https://www.youtube.com/c/entreleader..
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Decentralized Finance Is on The Rise What You Need To Know in 2021

Cryptocurrency News, cryptocurrency strategy, Finance Tools, Future Finance/Banking, Money/Personal Finance, Personal Finance/Savings

Few had heard much about decentralized finance (DeFi) in its early days in late 2017 and late 2019, beyond murmurs about Bitcoin and a mysterious new digital technology called blockchain. 

But a pandemic can change everything. 

Since May of this year, the total value locked (TVL)—the amount of any currency locked into tokens, the vehicle of holding and moving assets on blockchain, in smart contracts on a blockchain ecosystem—in decentralized finance projects rose a whopping 2,000 percent, according to DeFi Pulse. Many investors would be hard-pressed to find such an astronomical rise of any assets or expansion of any financial ecosystem, but DeFi app developers seemed to find success. So what’s the rage, and why does it matter going into the new year? 

What is DeFi?

DeFi, many fintech leaders argue, is the world’s answer to the 2008 financial crisis. Thanks to poor decision making and a lack of proper financial regulation, legacy financial institutions brought the world’s economy to its knees in the most major financial crisis since the Great Depression. The knee-jerk reaction was to create an ecosystem dependent on every link in the chain, rather than centralized authorities—hence the term “decentralized finance.”

The concept of blockchain, a decentralized ledger, was designed to ensure financial transactions would be transparent. Moreover, transaction approval would come from network individuals incentivized to approve them by solving complex mathematical equations or by network consensus voting. 

Later, the idea of operating a decentralized financial system on a decentralized ledger, independent of legacy institutions, grew into a thriving, albeit relatively small, ecosystem. Now, users can find financial services on the distributed ledger for loans, insurance, margin trading, exchanges, and yield farming (yielding rewards from staking digital assets on a network to help facilitate network liquidity).

But there is still a way to go. Not enough consumers are comfortable with DeFi quite yet, because platform accessibility and blockchain tribalism remain a problem. Nevertheless, now the world is experiencing another economic crisis brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, and DeFi is finally getting its day in the sun.

Related: Getting Drawn Into DeFi? Here Are Three Major Considerations

E-wallets are leveling up

For companies and individuals already active in the space, navigating the ecosystem remains impeded by technical limitations. In order to access certain markets and execute transactions on the blockchain—whether it’s borrowing or lending, staking assets in liquidity pools, or trading on an exchange—users need to own an e-wallet that’s properly connected to the ecosystem. 

E-wallets are the backbone of transactions on blockchain. Just as the digital assets they help transact and store, these wallets are secure, transparent, and easily accessible to users. At least, that’s the idea behind them, though there are various degrees of security and transparency. For DeFi to attract more users, the wallets must be compatible with multiple blockchains running financial dApps (decentralized apps that operate on a blockchain system). One of the first wallets, created by Ethereum and called “MyEtherWallet” (MEW), lacked a user-friendly interface and was challenging to grasp for people outside the hardcore crypto crowd.

Since then, a number of blockchain developers have created alternative e-wallet solutions. Most recently, Spielworks, a blockchain gaming startup, reached an agreement with Equilibrium and DeFiBox to integrate its e-wallet “Wombat,” which is currently available on the Telos and EOS blockchain mainnet (a blockchain network that is fully developed, deployed, and operational).

The Wombat wallet provides users with access to several DeFi platforms that offer token exchanges, yield farming, borrowing, and lending. Wombat recently also integrated with Bitfinex’s new EOS exchange, Eosfinex, as well as 8 other DeFi networks. Rather impressively, the wallet also offers free and fast account creation, automatic key backup, and free blockchain resources. 

Related: Cryptocurrency Innovators Need to Simplify User Experience

Developments in blockchain wallets, such as Wombat’s, will be pivotal in the next few years in the growth of DeFi applications and the movement of users toward decentralized finance and away from traditional finance. While wallets are important, so are the underlying mechanisms to piece the entire ecosystem together, because one a DeFi ecosystem is not enough if confined to just one blockchain mainnet.

Piecing it all together

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” President Lincoln’s famous quote referred to the Civil War that ravaged the United States at the time, but his historically renowned words can apply very well to the blockchain community today. 

Invest $300 to get $2500 in a week completely legit

For DeFi to reach its maximum potential, as a decentralized ecosystem that doesn’t answer to a central authority, blockchain platforms must stand united and interoperate. Could anyone imagine if payment transfers between regular banks were not possible? How could an economy function? This is the sort of technical problem plaguing the DeFi world: Each blockchain platform has its own benefits, but each remains largely separated from the others in its own silo. The root of the problem is attitude, the other part is technical limitations.

Related: 15 Crazy and Surprising Ways People Are Using Blockchain

Ethereum and EOS are primary examples of this sort of rivalry, both of which have their own technical benefits for dApp developers. If the two ecosystems could be connected to one another, EOS-based and Ethereum-based developers alike, for example, could benefit from each other’s platform’s strengths. Users could also benefit, via financial opportunities without having to sacrifice shifting their base from one blockchain to another.

This is precisely what LiquidApps’s latest development—its DAPP Network bridging—has solved. LiquidApps’s technology provides the technical mechanisms to connect separate blockchain mainnets and recently provided its tools to EOS-based developers to successfully deploy a bridge between EOS and Ethereum.

This was shortly followed by decentralized social media app Yup’s deployment that demonstrated the possibility of moving tokens easily between different once-separate blockchain mainnets. It still remains to be seen how long it will take before blockchain platforms themselves integrate built-in cross-chain technologies, but LiquidApps is starting the next crucial step to DeFi development.

Whether it’s cross-chain technology or the e-wallets that grant access to dApps, tech developments and attitudes in the DeFi space over the next few years will determine its success. The latest developments suggest the future of DeFi looks promising. Time to go decentralized.

By: Ariel Shapira Entrepreneur Leadership Network Contributor

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Paris Fintech Forum

by O. Bussmann, CEO, Bussmann Advisory (CH) Speakers *M. Froehler, CEO, Morpher (AT) *H. Gebbing, Managing Director, Finoa (DE) *U. Shtybel, Vice president, HighCastle (UK) *N. Filali, Head of Blockchain Program, Caisse des Dépôts (FR) more on http://www.parisfintechforum.com/videos2020

99Bitcoins

Start trading Bitcoin and cryptocurrency here: http://bit.ly/2Vptr2X DeFi applications – https://defipulse.com/defi-list/ DeFi is becoming more and more popular as the main use case for cryptocurrencies. This video explains in detail what DeFi is and what you should know about before getting involved. 0:38 Bitcoin and Our Financial System 1:24 Our Centralized Financial System 1:59 What is DeFi? 2:22 DeFi Components 4:16 – DAI explained 5:51 – DEXs explained 6:33 – Decentralized money markets 8:06 Money Legos 8:56 DeFi Advantages and Risks 10:02 Conclusion For the complete text guide visit: https://bit.ly/2R35g6Z Join our 7-day Bitcoin crash course absolutely free: http://bit.ly/2pB4X5B Learn ANYTHING about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies on our YouTube channel: http://bit.ly/2BVbxeF Get the latest news and prices on your phone: iOS – https://apple.co/2yf02LJ Android – http://bit.ly/2NrMVw2

How Spacs Became Wall Street Tree

Exchange/FX, Finance Tools, Money/Personal Finance, Personal Finance/Savings, Stock Market Tools, Stock Market/Share Industry

If you want to see the future of so many of the special purpose acquisition companies currently flooding the market, look to the recent past. Nearly five years ago, Landry’s Seafood billionaire Tillman Fertitta took Landcadia Holdings public to the tune of $345 million. No matter that, true to the SPAC “blank check” model, there was not yet any operating business—dozens of hedge funds piled into its $10-per-unit IPO. 

In May 2018, Landcadia finally located its target: a budding online restaurant delivery service called Waitr that would merge with the SPAC in exchange for $252 million in cash. Fertitta touted the fact that the Louisiana startup, with $65 million in revenue, would now have access to 4 million loyalty members of his restaurant and casino businesses, and a new partnership with his Houston Rockets NBA franchise. Two years later, though, you very likely have never heard of Waitr. As such, its stock recently traded at $2.62, down more than 70% from its IPO price (the S&P 500 has climbed 76% over the same period).

Waitr was a disaster for pretty much anyone who bought the stock early. But the hedge funds that purchased Landcadia’s IPO units did just fine. Virtually all recouped their initial investment, with interest, and many profited by exercising warrants in the aftermarket. “SPACs are a phenomenal yield alternative,” says David Sultan, chief investment officer at Fir Tree Partners, a $3 billion hedge fund that bought into Fertitta’s Landcadia SPAC IPO—and pretty much any other it could get its hands on. 

The SPAC boom of 2020 is probably the biggest Wall Street story of the year, but almost no one has noticed the quiet force driving this speculative bubble: a couple dozen obscure hedge funds like Polar Asset Management and Davidson Kempner, known by insiders as the “SPAC Mafia.” It’s an offer they can’t refuse. Some 97 percent of these hedge funds redeem or sell their IPO stock before target mergers are consummated, according to a recent study of 47 SPACs by New York University Law School professor Michael Ohlrogge and Stanford Law professor Michael Klausner.

Though they’re loath to talk specifics, SPAC Mafia hedge funds say returns currently run around 20%. “The optionality to the upside is unlimited,” gushes Patrick Galley, a portfolio manager at Chicago-based RiverNorth, who manages a $200 million portfolio of SPAC investments. Adds Roy Behren of Westchester Capital Management, a fund with a $470 million portfolio of at least 40 SPACs, in clearer English: “We love the risk/reward of it.” 

What’s not to love when “risk” is all but risk-free? There’s only one loser in this equation. As always, it’s the retail investor, the Robinhood novice, the good-intentions fund company like Fidelity. They all bring their pickaxes to the SPAC gold rush, failing to understand that the opportunities were mined long before they got there—by the sponsors who see an easy score, the entrepreneurs who get fat exits when their companies are acquired and the SPAC Mafia hedge funds that lubricate it all. 

It’s about to get far worse for the little guy. Giant quant firms—Izzy Englander’s Millennium Management, Louis Bacon’s Moore Capital, Michael Platt’s BlueCrest Capital—have recently jumped in. Sure, they all raised billions based on algorithmic trading strategies, not by buying speculative IPOs in companies that don’t even have a product yet. But you don’t need AI to tell you the benefits of a sure thing. And that means torrents of easy cash for ever more specious acquisitions. Says NYU’s Ohlrogge: “It’s going to be a disaster for investors that hold through the merger.” 

In the first 10 months or so of 2020, 178 SPACs went public, to the tune of $65 billion, according to SPAC­Insider—more than the last ten years’ worth of such deals combined. That’s just one indication that the current wave of blank-check companies is different from previous generations. 

In the 1980s, SPACs were known as “blind pools” and were the domain of bucket-shop brokerage firms infamous for fleecing gullible investors under banners such as First Jersey Securities and The Wolf of Wall Street’s Stratton Oakmont. Blind pools circumvented regulatory scrutiny and tended to focus on seemingly promising operating companies—those whose prospects sounded amazing during a cold-calling broker’s telephone pitch. The stockbrokers, who typically owned big blocks of the shares and warrants, would “pump” prices up, trading shares among clients, and then “dump” their holdings at a profit before the stocks inevitably collapsed. Shares traded in the shadows of Wall Street for pennies, and the deal amounts were tiny, typically less than $10 million. 

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Former stockbroker and convicted felon Jordan Belfort was immortalized in The Wolf Of Wall Street. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, blank check companies, similar to today’s SPACs but known as blind pools, were his stock and trade. Getty Editorial

In 1992, a Long Island lawyer named David Nussbaum, CEO of brokerage GKN Securities, structured a new type of blank-check company, with greater investor protections including segregating IPO cash in an escrow account. He even came up with the gussied-up “special purpose acquisition company” moniker. 

The basics of the new SPACs were as follows: A sponsor would pay for the underwriting and legal costs of an initial public offering in a new shell company and have two years to use the proceeds to buy an acquisition target. To entice IPO investors to park their money in these new SPACs as the sponsors hunted for a deal, the units of the IPO, which are usually priced at $10 each, included one share of common stock plus warrants to buy more shares at $11.50. Sometimes unit holders would also receive free stock in the form of “rights” convertible into common stock. If a deal wasn’t identified within two years, or the IPO investor voted no, holders could redeem their initial investment—but often only 85% of it. 

GKN underwrote 13 blank-check deals in the 1990s, but ran into regulatory trouble with the National Association of Securities Dealers, which fined the brokerage $725,000 and forced it to return $1.4 million for overcharging 1,300 investors. GKN closed in 2001, but Nussbaum reemerged in 2003 running EarlyBirdCapital, which remains a big SPAC underwriter today. 

SPACs fell out of favor during the dot-com bubble years, when traditional IPO issuance was booming. In the early 2000s, interest in SPACs returned with the bull market, and the deals started getting bigger. Leading up to the 2008 crisis, dealmakers Nelson Peltz and Martin Franklin both turned to SPACs for financing, raising hundreds of millions of dollars each.

Around 2015, SPACs began to offer IPO investors 100% money-­back guarantees, with interest; the holder would also be entitled to keep any warrants or special rights, even if they voted against the merger and tendered their shares. Even more significantly, they could vote yes to the merger and still redeem their shares. In effect, this gave sponsors a green light on any merger partner they chose. It also made SPAC IPOs a no-lose proposition, effectively giving buyers a free call option on rising equity prices. As the Fed’s low-rate, easy-money policy propelled the stock market higher for over a decade, it was just a matter of time before SPACs came back into vogue. And so they have, with unprecedented force. 

Hedge funders may be the enablers of the SPAC boom, but they certainly aren’t the only ones getting rich. In September, a billionaire-sponsored SPAC called Gores Holdings IV said it would give Pontiac, Michigan–based entrepreneur Mat Ishbia, owner of mortgage lender United Wholesale Mortgage, a $925 million capital infusion, which would value his company at $16 billion. If the deal is completed, Ishbia’s net worth will rise to $11 billion, making him one of the 50 richest people in America. “I never knew what a SPAC was,” Ishbia admits. “I felt like it was a more efficient process.”

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SPAC MVP: United Wholesale Mortgage’s Mat Ishbia won a national basketball championship with Michigan State twenty years ago but missed his only shot in the finals. His first attempt at the SPAC game could be a slam dunk. Jacob Lewkow for Forbes

There are also the sponsors, underwriters and lawyers who create SPACs, each taking their pound of flesh from the deals. Sponsors, who pay underwriting and legal fees to set up and merge SPACs, normally wind up with a generous shareholder gift known as the “promote”—roughly 20% of the SPAC’s common equity after the IPO. 

Alec Gores, the private equity billionaire who helped take United Wholesale Mortgage public, has listed five SPACs and raised over $2 billion. In the United Wholesale Mortgage deal, Gores and his partners are entitled to purchase $106 million worth of “founder shares” for $25,000, or $0.002 a share. Gores’ private equity firm hasn’t raised a new fund since 2012. With easy scores like this, why would he? 

Among SPAC sponsors, few can match Chamath Palihapitiya’s frenetic pace. Palihapitiya, 44, is a former Facebook executive who founded Silicon Valley venture capital firm Social Capital in 2011. With his venture business slowing down, Palihapitiya has recently turned to the public markets. In the span of 37 months, he has raised $4.3 billion in six New York Stock Exchange–listed SPACs that go by the tickers IPOA, IPOB, IPOC, IPOD, IPOE and IPOF. The founder’s stock he has received for his “promote” will amount to no less than $1 billion, by Forbes estimates. In late 2019, Palihapitiya used one of his SPACs to take Virgin Galactic public. Two other deals have already been announced: mergers with home­buying platform Opendoor at a $5 billion valuation and with medical-insurance company Clover Health at $3.7 billion. Palihapitiya and Gores point out that they intend to invest hundreds of millions via private placements in their deals.  https://c4087b1b1645d1a0dc9c9c6154fc97c6.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html

Of the $65 billion raised in SPAC IPOs so far in 2020, Forbes estimates that all told, sponsors like Gores and Palihapitiya should net more than $10 billion in free equity. Great for them, but terrible for the rest of the shareholders. In fact, by the time the average SPAC enters into a merger agreement, warrants afforded to hedge funds, underwriting fees and the generous sponsor’s promote eat up more than 30% of IPO proceeds. According to the study of recent SPACs by Ohlrogge and Klausner, a typical SPAC holds just $6.67 a share in cash of its original $10 IPO price by the time it enters into a merger agreement with its target company. 

“The problem with the typical founder-shares arrangement is not just the outsized nature of the compensation or the inherent misalignment of incentives, but also the fact that the massively dilutive nature of founder stock makes it difficult to complete a deal on attractive terms,” says billionaire Bill Ackman. 

A handful of billionaires like Ackman are structuring fairer deals with their SPACs. In July, Ackman raised a record $4 billion SPAC called Pershing Square Tontine Holdings. He’s shopping for deals, but his shareholders will face much less dilution because his SPAC has no promote. 

“A handful of billionaires are structuring fairer deals with their SPACs. but most SPAC deals don’t come with benevolent billionaires attached.”

Billionaire hedge fund mogul Daniel Och, backer of unicorn startups Coinbase, Github and Stripe via his family office, recently raised $750 million in a SPAC IPO called Ajax I but reduced its promote to 10%. His investing partner in Ajax, Glenn Fuhrman, made billions in profits running Michael Dell’s family office; the SPAC’s board includes an all-star lineup of innovators: Kevin Systrom of Instagram, Anne Wojcicki of 23andMe, Jim McKelvey of Square and Steve Ells of Chipotle. The group has pledged their personal capital into Ajax’s future deal. 

“We’re lowering the sponsor economics to make clear that this is not about promoting someone’s capital,” Och says. “It’s about investing our own capital, and then finding a great company that we can hold for a long period of time.” 

Most SPAC deals don’t come with benevolent billionaires attached. In fact, if history is any guide, the average post-merger SPAC investor is in for a fleecing not unlike the ones dealt out in the shoddy blind-pool deals peddled by those bucket shops of the 1980s and ’90s. 

According to NYU’s Ohlrogge, six months after a deal is announced, median returns for SPACs amount to a loss of 12.3%. A year after the announcement, most SPACs are down 35%. The returns are likely to get worse as the hundreds of SPACs currently searching for viable merger partners become more desperate. 

Problems are already surfacing in the great SPAC gold rush of 2020. 

Health-care company MultiPlan, one of the most prominent recent deals, may already be in trouble. Acquired by a SPAC called Churchill Capital Corp. III in a $1.3 billion deal, its shares plunged 25% in November after a short seller published a report questioning whether its business was deteriorating more than it let on. 

The Churchill SPAC is one of five brought to market by former Citigroup banker Michael Klein, which have raised nearly $5 billion. Klein and his partners now sit on stock holdings worth hundreds of millions, thanks largely to the lucrative promotes. Klein’s investment bank, M. Klein & Co., has made tens of millions of dollars in fees advising his own SPACs on their deals. In the case of MultiPlan, Klein’s bank earned $30 million in fees to advise Churchill to inject SPAC capital into MultiPlan. IPO proceeds, however, are now worth only 70 cents on the dollar.  https://c4087b1b1645d1a0dc9c9c6154fc97c6.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html

“Coming out of the financial crisis there was all this talk about the expected outcomes when you have all these traders who have heads-they-win-tails-they-don’t-lose incentives, because it’s somebody else’s money,” says Carson Block, the short seller who called out MultiPlan. “Those incentive structures are alive and well on Wall Street in the form of SPACs.” 

Nikola Motor, the SPAC that broke the dam on electric-vehicle speculations, now faces probes from the Department of Justice over whether it misled investors when raising money. Its founder, Trevor Milton, is gone, and a much-hyped partnership with General Motors is in doubt. Shares have traded down 36% from where they stood when the SPAC merger was completed. 

Electric vehicles aren’t the only overhyped SPAC sector. So far 11 cannabis SPACs have either announced a deal or are searching for one. And in online gaming, there are no fewer than 10 SPACs in the works. 

Blank Checks For Billionaires 

SPACs were once shunned by savvy investors. Today they’re beloved by THE WEALTHIEST. 

It wasn’t long ago that fracking was all the rage on Wall Street, too, and SPAC IPOs provided quick and easy capital infusions. Energy private equity firm Riverstone Holdings issued three large SPACs—one in March 2016, for $450 million; then two more IPO’d in 2017, raising $1.7 billion—all intent on profiting from shale oil-and-gas investments. 

Riverstone’s Silver Run II SPAC acquired Alta Mesa Resources in 2018, but the company quickly went bankrupt, incinerating $3.8 billion of market capitalization on oil fields in Oklahoma. Its other two SPACs completed mergers, and now both are trading below $3 per share. 

Despite its dismal track record, Riverstone had no trouble raising $200 million in October for its fourth SPAC IPO, “Decarbonization Plus Acquisition.” Shale fracking is yesterday’s game, so Riverstone has moved on to clean tech. 

Hope springs eternal—especially when you can count on hedge fund money to back you up.

Antoine Gara

Antoine Gara

I’m a staff writer and associate editor at Forbes, where I cover finance and investing. My beat includes hedge funds, private equity, fintech, mutual funds, mergers, and banks. I’m a graduate of Middlebury College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and I’ve worked at TheStreet and Businessweek. Before becoming a financial scribe, I was a member of the fateful 2008 analyst class at Lehman Brothers. Email thoughts and tips to agara@forbes.com. Follow me on Twitter at @antoinegara

Eliza Haverstock

Eliza Haverstock

I’m an assistant editor at Forbes covering money and markets. I graduated from the University of Virginia with degrees in history and economics. More importantly, I covered breaking news for its student paper The Cavalier Daily, while also writing for the school’s underground satire magazine. Since then, I’ve worked at Bloomberg and Pitchbook News, writing about everything from plastic straws to pizza robots.

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Bloomberg Markets and Finance

SPACs (special purpose acquisition companies, or “blank check” companies) have become all the rage on Wall Street in 2020. Sonali Basak explains how they work and why they have grown so popular.

What is a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC)? What is a blank check company? Should you invest in SPACs, and how do they work? Both a SPAC and blank check company are publicly-traded shell companies that raise collective investment funds through an initial public offering (IPO) in the form of a blind pool. The funds are placed into a trust until an acquisition is made or a predetermined period of time elapses and the fund is liquidated.

SPACs are increasingly being viewed as an alternative to the IPO process in particular for silicon valley companies since the failed WeWork IPO. Some recent SPAC mergers have been controversial such as Nikola Motors (NKLA) and Luckin Coffee (LKN). Many argue that these companies would not have made it through the traditional IPO process. We will also learn about Direct Listings, like the Spotify listing which is another alternative to the IPO process. Patricks’ Books: Statistics for Traders: https://amzn.to/3eerLA0 Financial Derivatives: https://amzn.to/3cjsyPF Corporate Finance: https://amzn.to/3fn3rvC Visit our website: http://www.onfinance.org Follow Patrick on Twitter Here: https://twitter.com/PatrickEBoyle Patreon Page: https://www.patreon.com/PatrickBoyleO…

Why $1000 Welcome Bonus Investment With CryptobitFortune Corp Has Never Been Easier For Most People

Billionaires Strategy/Investment, Finance Tools, Personal Finance/Savings

Cryptobitfortune is a young and legit bitcoin management company. The company is registered in 173 Bencoolen Street, Singapore since 2016. They are dedicated in cryptocurrencies industry, with outstanding technology of bitcoin trading and bitcoin mining.Since company was born, our role is to offer each person the chance to attend the bitcoin related business and earn profit easily with our powerful system.

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The forecast engine was originally based on statistical analysis and scientific research of the cryptocurrency market data and trade patterns. Its has since been upgraded into a vast neural network sourced directly by crawlers monitoring over 200,000 media channels and over 30,000 indicators. According to research, the cryptocurrency market has been directly influenced by trading behaviour.

Our forecast engine is able to make objective forecasts at remarkable accuracy and analyse them in a fraction of time it would take manually. The analysis is then sent to our AI trading bot, which executes them as automatic exchange.

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Fortune Magazine

The Bitcoin bubble may be deflating, but the blockchain technology that underpins cryptocurrencies is only gaining ground inside Fortune 500 companies and beyond. What’s the future of blockchain? And how does crypto fit in? Kathleen Breitman, President, Coase Christine Moy, Blockchain Program Lead, J.P. Morgan Chase Moderator: Jen Wieczner, FortuneSubscribe to Fortune – http://www.youtube.com/subscription_c… FORTUNE is a global leader in business journalism with a worldwide circulation of more than 1 million and a readership of nearly 5 million, with major franchises including the FORTUNE 500 and the FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For. FORTUNE Live Media extends the brand’s mission into live settings, hosting a wide range of annual conferences, including the FORTUNE Global Forum. Website: http://fortune.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FortuneMagazine Twitter: https://twitter.com/FortuneMagazine

IBM and Bank of America Advance IBM Cloud for Financial Services, BNP Paribas Joins as Anchor Client in Europe

Banking News, Banking Tech, Finance Study/Strategy, Finance Tools, Future Finance/Banking, IBM Tech

ARMONK, N.Y., July 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that several global banks including BNP Paribas, one of Europe’s largest banks, will join a growing ecosystem of financial institutions and more than 30 new technology providers adopting IBM Cloud for Financial Services. Today’s news also marks a significant milestone in IBM’s collaboration with Bank of America, with the availability of the IBM Cloud Policy Framework for Financial Services.

The IBM Cloud Policy Framework for Financial Services establishes a new generation of cloud for enterprises with common operational criteria and streamlined compliance controls framework specifically for the financial services industry, allowing IBM’s growing financial services ecosystem to transact with confidence.

IBM is also announcing the formation of the Financial Services Cloud Advisory Council to support this effort and advise on the ongoing advancement of the IBM Cloud Policy Framework for Financial Services. Chief Technology Officer Tony Kerrison will represent Bank of America on the Council, which will be led by Howard Boville, SVP, IBM Cloud. The Council will be focused on bringing major financial institutions together to help drive the strategic evolution of cloud security in this highly regulated sector.

“We have had great success with our proprietary, private cloud, that currently houses the majority of our technology workloads,” said David Reilly, Bank of America’s Global Banking & Markets, Enterprise Risk & Finance Technology and Core Technology Infrastructure executive. “At the same time, we have been looking to identify a financial services-ready solution that offers the same level of security and economics as our private cloud with enhanced scalability. That’s why we’re partnering with IBM to create an industry-first, third party cloud that puts data resiliency, privacy and customer information safety needs at the forefront of decision making.”

Central to the development of the IBM Cloud for Financial Services, IBM collaborated with Bank of America and Promontory, an IBM Services business unit and global leader in financial services regulatory compliance consulting, to establish a set of cloud security and compliance control requirements as the basis of its policy framework, which will allow financial institutions to confidently host key applications and workloads.

The IBM Cloud Policy Framework for Financial Services is now available and aims to deliver the industry-informed IBM public cloud controls required to operate securely with bank-sensitive data in the public cloud. IBM, Promontory and the advisory council will continue to collaborate to assure  that the framework will be up to date to address the latest industry regulations.

BNP Paribas joins IBM Cloud for Financial Services

BNP Paribas has committed to joining the IBM Cloud for Financial Services as an anchor client in Europe to support its first dedicated cloud in Europe to be GDPR compliant, acknowledging that a public cloud informed by IBM’s deep financial industry expertise, controls framework and industry-leading data-protection capabilities, meets their exacting standards. BNP Paribas will utilize a dedicated cloud, developed and managed by IBM, that will leverage IBM public cloud technologies, including Keep Your Own Key (KYOK) encryption capabilities. BNP Paribas could plan to onboard additional banking partners to the ecosystem across Europe in the future.

“As we continue to expand our collaboration with IBM, we’re driving innovation in the financial services industry and are able to partner with a growing ecosystem of technology providers, from small startups to leaders in the industry.  That’s an important step forward for BNP Paribas Group to accelerate its transformation journey and be compliant with European regulations,”  Bernard Gavgani, CIO, BNP Paribas. “IBM Cloud for Financial Services helps us to further our transformation journey to the cloud and migrate mission critical workloads with confidence knowing that we can meet the regulatory standards established for the industry.”

IBM Grows Financial Services Cloud Ecosystem

Additionally, MUFG Bank plans to explore the deployment of IBM Cloud for Financial Services in Japan, continuing its ongoing transformational journey with IBM to accelerate digital reinvention.

“MUFG has been shifting its IT workload to cloud for years, with strong focus on keeping our data secure and mitigating operational risks on this new and fast-changing technology platform. We believe IBM Cloud for Financial Services will be suited to help Japanese financial institutions redirect their efforts to maintain legacy systems toward digital reinvention in the era of new normal. We look forward to continuing discussions around our strategic partnership with IBM to leverage best-in-class technology for our mission-critical workloads, as well as to drive digital transformation across MUFG”, said Mr. Hiroki Kameda, Managing Corporate Executive Group CIO of MUFG.

IBM has also expanded its growing ecosystem of Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to include more than 30 partners. These technology providers have committed to onboarding offerings and cloud services to IBM Cloud for Financial Services that will help address stringent security, resiliency and compliance requirements and can accelerate transactions with financial services institutions.

“With major financial institutions and technology partners joining our financial services cloud, IBM is establishing confidence within the industry and around the globe that the IBM public cloud, equipped with industry-leading encryption capabilities, is the enterprise cloud for all highly regulated industries, including financial services healthcare, telco, airlines and more,” said Howard Boville, Senior Vice President, IBM Cloud. “IBM is creating a platform with the goal that financial services institutions can address their regulatory requirements, while creating a collaborative ecosystem that helps enable banks and their providers to confidently transact.”

New IBM Research Cloud Innovation Lab and Innovative Security Capabilities for Clients

IBM Research has played a central role in the technology underpinnings of the IBM Cloud for Financial Services, taking a holistic approach to security and compliance that spans infrastructure, platform, data, and the developer workflow. For example, developed in collaboration with IBM Research, IBM will launch the IBM Cloud Security and Compliance Center which will allow clients to continuously monitor and enforce their security and compliance posture across their workloads, and provide a seamless, automated and adaptable process for improving cloud security. Following on the heels of its recent acquisition of Spanugo, the IBM Cloud Security and Compliance Center will include the ability to instrument the developer workflow with automated security and compliance checks.

Once the IBM Cloud Security and Compliance Center is available in August 2020, global banks and ISVs with workloads on the IBM Cloud for Financial Services, will be able to define their compliance profiles and manage controls, maintain an extensive data trail for audit, and, in continuous real time, monitor compliance across their organization. Promontory will continue to provide tailored, IT risk advisory services to users of the IBM Cloud for Financial Services.

To enable financial services clients and ecosystem partners to benefit from, and influence, the emerging cloud technologies being created at IBM Research, IBM will launch the IBM Research Cloud Innovation Lab, planned for August, 2020. Clients and industry partners of the IBM Cloud for Financial Services will be able to get a first look at the latest innovations from the IBM Research lab as well as quickly experiment, go deep into the technology and functionality of new cloud solutions and exchange ideas. More information on the IBM Research Cloud Innovation Lab and IBM Cloud Center for Security and Compliance can be found here.

IBM Cloud for Financial Services is built on IBM public cloud, powered by the same industry-leading confidential computing security found in IBM Z. Delivered via IBM Hyper Protect Services, it features ‘Keep Your Own Key’ encryption capabilities backed by the highest level of security certification commercially available, making the IBM public cloud the industry’s most secure and open public cloud for business.

Source: IBM

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Royalty Finance Provides The Key to Becoming The Master of Your Own Business Destiny

Business Hacks, business News, Business/Customer Care, Content Marketing, Finance Study/Strategy, Finance Tools, Money/Personal Finance

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The global pandemic has dealt yet another blow to business in general, and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in particular.

Even at the beginning of the year, the level of indebtedness across this community was untenable. To make matters worse, recent research has highlighted that a quarter of a million companies are at risk of collapsing under £35bn ($44bn) of unsustainable debt taken on during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is foreboding, to say the least.

However, the outlook need not all be doom and gloom. Alternative and more flexible forms of finance have been on the rise since the Global Financial Crisis sent shockwaves through the markets in 2008. Now, 12 years on, businesses have more options than ever before when it comes to finding an innovative capital solution which promotes, rather than encumbers, growth. Evaluating these will be essential for management teams as they look to stabilise their business in a post-pandemic world and create a stronger growth platform for 2021.

The biggest sector you have never heard of.

Royalty Finance is one such solution. It is probably one of the biggest sectors you have never heard of. Popularised in North America, this form of alternative financing is estimated to be worth around $50 billion in the region and has been recognised as a viable capital solution for companies operating across a range of sectors since the 1980s.

The solution sees well-established companies receive capital in return for a slice of their revenues.  Models vary, but typically royalty financing works as a type of ‘corporate mortgage’, where a business exchanges a small percentage of its revenues over a long period of time in return for capital today. It is because of its ability to provide supportive capital which does not saddle the business with re-financing risk that its relative obscurity in the UK and Europe is quickly changing.

The advantages are clear: because it is passive, unlike other options, royalty financing is the only source of capital which enables business owners to realize their long-term business goals without compromising owner control, adding amortizing bank debt to the business or, in most cases, diluting equity shares.

Since the royalty company is taking a slice of revenue from the business, it also means that the interest of the two partners are aligned (arguably, unlike other traditional finance methods), with the repayment percentage adjusted annually to reflect any movement in an investee’s revenues. This means that it represents a true partnership model.

As an additional benefit, the company’s repayments cover the principal as well as the interest. Many companies use the money to replace existing short-term debt to allow them to grow.  Royalty financing eliminates re-financing risk because it has a payback over decades, hence the analogy to a ‘corporate mortgage’. As well as being used to refinance debt, other common applications include M&A, shareholder restructuring and organic expansion.

A transatlantic shift

The transatlantic jump for royalty financing originally came as a result of a shift in how SMEs perceived and dealt with their banks on the back of the Global Financial Crisis. Just two years ago, the UK’s Federation of Small Business (FSB) reported that small credit business approvals had fallen to a 30-month low, with only 60% of small firms that applied for credit being successful, establishing a significant SME funding gap and frustrating growth.

Fast forward to today, and the coronavirus has shifted this sentiment stagnation a full 180o to the other extreme. The UK government’s decision to act as a guarantor for business loans to prop up the private sector during the pandemic, however well-meaning, has created a staggering debt mountain.  Worryingly, the implications for the SME sector, which employs 60% of the UK’s private sector workers, and its future growth prospects are even more eye-watering.

Banking industry executives fear that the loans will lead to widespread corporate failures in 2021 when companies must start paying interest on the debt, leading to a swathe of job losses. Even among businesses that can afford to service their loans, debt impedes a companies’ ability to invest and grow, thereby creating a significant drag on any economic revival after the Covid-19 pandemic.

The UK government has already started work on how to tackle the corporate debt mountain. A likely solution will be to enable the debt to be swapped by the government for equity stakes in businesses, much like we saw during the global financial crisis. This will make many of our SMEs accountable to UK Government, presenting an array of new potential headaches for management.

This raises the question: is this the only way? After the initial drop in revenue experienced by companies almost across the board in April 2020, when the pandemic first struck UK shores, many have started experiencing a relative upturn in trading. For those businesses which have a proven, long term track record of profitability, but have taken a hit during unprecedented times, there lies the opportunity to evaluate their options, refinance this debt and once again make themselves the masters of their own destiny.

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A new tomorrow

The accelerated adoption of pre-existing trends, whether it be flexible working or digitalisation, during the pandemic has been a hot topic over recent months. In my mind, this extends to the application of alternative finance as well.  In times of short-term uncertainty, long term capital, which does not need to be continuously repaid or have an identified exit strategy in place, represents a no-brainer for management teams.

The businesses of today benefit from a financial landscape that is more diverse than ever before. Now that the dust has settled following the initial shockwaves sent through the business community at the start of the outbreak, management teams have the perfect opportunity to take their future into their own hands and ensure that their capital structure works for, not against, their business.

With its aforementioned advantages and amid a quickly changing finance environment among SMEs in particular, royalty financing is set to grow from strength the strength across the UK and Europe. You could call its sudden rise a surprise, but all the right conditions have been there for growth of the industry.

Neil Johnson
bevtraders-2

5 Tips for Crowdfunding During the Pandemic

Content Marketing, Finance Tools, Investment Facts, Money/Personal Finance, Personal Finance/Savings, Startup News

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With the economy in a holding pattern and businesses shutting down, you may be wondering if a crowdfunding campaign can succeed right now. Are people going to be interested in funding your next cool gadget or product?

Kickstarter’s numbers reveal that backers are still showing up to support their favorite projects. Indiegogo crowdfunding campaigns are also thriving.

To those afraid to launch a crowdfunding campaign, I say this is an excellent time to go ahead. While people are cautious about how they spend their money, most are getting on with life and resuming activities they may have paused — including funding projects. And as the number of live campaigns is lower than usual, you can take advantage of less competition and leverage the platforms’ deadline extensions and reduced fees.

Here’s how to make sure your crowdfunding campaign is a success.

1. Focus on community

Community fuels Kickstarted and Indiegogo campaigns. If you have a strong community, build on it. Engage with your audience. Find new ways to pique their interest and regularly update them about product delivery or delays. Consumers have more time to browse and buy products than they used to, so they’ll seek out something that resonates with them. Attract attention with the right messaging and product discounts.

2. Level up promotion

As people make more deliberate money decisions, your job is to be more convincing in your pitch. Give backers strong reasons for funding your project. Invest in Facebook ads, doing aggressive A/B testing to get your messaging and visuals right. Spend smartly on social advertising, not more.

Related: How to Kickstart Your Capital Funding

3. Increase your outreach efforts

Start or ramp up how often you send out press releases, reach out for influencer marketing, and guest post, to name a few outreach strategies. People are spending more time online, scanning for content. Address the demand by sending out two guest posts a week instead of one, for example. Add to your social media content, engaging with your audience and showcasing the impact your product can have.

4. Plan for a relaunch if you are having supply chain issues

If your product relies on supplies from a region with production slowdowns and you have limited options for workarounds, communicate that to your community. Most likely, they will continue to support you through the delay.

Related: 12 Key Strategies to a Successful Crowdfunding Campaign

If you see a dwindling in your funding despite the communication, marketing and promotion, plan for a relaunch. A relaunch in the next few months may prove to be more effective than stalling a campaign that can’t deliver because of supply-chain issues.

5. Communicate

Regardless of your crowdfunding journey and current status, communication is key to running a successful campaign. Talk to your suppliers and shippers. Keep your community informed, communicating any setbacks or issues you experience. Going silent when you encounter challenges will not help you achieve your fundraising goals.

No matter what your situation, give your backers the benefit of knowing the truth. They will likely understand and may try to meet you where you are. Continue to press on for the best outcome and keep involving your backers. That’s how to succeed today.

Related: Beyond Kickstarter: 10 Niche Crowdfunding Platforms for Startups

By: Sohail Khan Entrepreneur Leadership Network Writer

bevtraders-2

The Market Crashed & You Lost a Lot of Money Here’s What To Do Next

Content Marketing, Finance Study/Strategy, Finance Tools, Future Finance/Banking, Investment Facts, Money/Personal Finance, Personal Finance/Savings

1

The coronavirus crisis has left millions unemployed, sick and under financial strain. The last thing many of us want to do right now is look at our investments.

If you haven’t yet, try not to. Through March, the S&P 500 had the worst quarter since 2008 while the Dow Jones hadn’t seen a drop this bad since 1987. And in May, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned of a “prolonged recession,” leaving many wondering if the worst is yet to come.

Chances are you’ve already looked at your portfolio and you’re anxious about the cash you’ve lost. That feeling is normal and you’re not alone. But if you’re wondering what to do with such a tumultuous market, there’s an easy answer: nothing.

Before you make drastic moves with your investments, see which ones are best for your finances right now.

1. Assess the damage

You’re probably panicking. Watching your investments wash away in a matter of hours, days or weeks isn’t exactly a fun time. But instead of freaking out, use this time to see which investments are worth keeping and which ones to drop.

Use this time to evaluate long-term goals. Are you OK with losing more money — even in the short term? There’s a chance your earnings will continue to drop and if you need your money within the next few months to a year, you might need to move it to a more stable account, like a high-yield savings account.

It might be time to cut your losses for some securities and use that money elsewhere. If you need the cash, use it. Otherwise reinvest in the market, whether in stocks you can buy cheap or dividend-paying stocks, where you’ll get a cash-out every month or quarter.

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Read more: Five investment accounts everyone should have

2. Evaluate your portfolio

The stock market continues to rapidly rise and drop every few days. And if you judged the US economy based on the stock market alone, it looks like we’re in a strong recovery (we’re not).

If you have extra cash on hand, invest in the stocks that were once too expensive for you. The strongest companies will most likely be here when the crisis is behind us. Look at the costs and see which ones you want to add to your investments.

You may also want to check in on companies and sectors you haven’t invested in. For instance, health care and industrials might be something to explore.

3. Dial back stock-only investments

While your portfolio should already be diversified, now might be the time to consider a conservative move. If you’re closer to retirement, look at more conservative investments. Some securities invest in stocks, bonds, CDs, real estate and other types. Consider diversifying in:

  • Exchange-traded funds
  • Index funds
  • Mutual funds
  • Annuities

Lower-risk investments are a safer bet, even if they are still risky.

Read more: Investing and saving during coronavirus: Here’s what to prioritize

4. Stick it out

It’s easy to balk when you see investments plummet. But the younger you are, the more likely you are to enjoy a stock market rebound. The 2008 recession lasted a year and a half but most recessions last less than a year. (The other exception is the Great Depression, which lasted nine years.)

Because most recessions are short-lived, take a moment to remember that the stock market plunge is short-lived, too. Once you’re on the other side of this, you’ll see your investments thriving — maybe even better than they were before.

5. Liquidate if you have to

While younger folks might have the luxury of riding it out, not everyone can afford it. For one thing, you might be closer to retirement. This means you can’t afford to take bigger risks — including waiting for a rebound that you aren’t sure will come before you stop working.

If you’ve lost your job or you’re facing significantly reduced hours (and a lower paycheck), you might not feel comfortable keeping your money in the stock market any longer than you need to. Taking your money out isn’t a bad thing if it’s a need. It’s better to cover your costs instead of going into debt just so your investments can earn a little more later on. If you need it now, use it now.

By: Dori Zinn

Source:https://www.cnet.com

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