Asset Match

Asset Match is the online marketplace to buy and sell shares in UK private companies.

Asset Match arranges share transactions between interested buyers and sellers of established, private companies.

The Problem:

It is difficult for shareholders of private, established companies to sell shares without the company being listed on an exchange, especially if they would like to sell a minority stake. Admission to a public market is expensive, time consuming and often not a route to guaranteed liquidity. In addition, it can indeed be a distraction and more of a hindrance than a benefit to the company.

There are over three thousand private companies in the UK, with locked in share capital of approximately £300bn.

This is a problem for a founder, management, employee and external shareholders. Shareholders are unable to sell shares easily, whether it is for diversification, or to finance other investments, or for cash flow purposes. Shareholders also lack a reference point for price discovery.

The lengthening gestation period from start-up to exit has also meant early stage investors in private companies have now become long-term holders as they cannot obtain liquidity and this has created a log-jam.

Asset Match has been created to solve this problem.

The Solution:

Asset Match is a transparent Electronic Platform for trading shares, typically of profitable and established private UK companies. Asset Match centralises liquidity in the shares of these growing UK companies via periodic auctions.

Asset Match does not set the price of a share. It is the buyer and seller that will agree the price at which trading takes place using our platform.

Our platform provides a mechanism for:

private companies to realign their shareholder base
shareholders to sell their private company shares more easily
investors, be they High Net Worth, sophisticated investors, sector specialists or institutions, to access investments in established private companies that historically were very difficult to access
participants to trade directly with each other on a “peer to peer” (P2P) basis without the need for a intermediary or market-maker. This allows the pricing and execution to be very transparent
companies control and manage liquidity for their shareholders more efficiently, and build their investor profile at the same time
In addition, the platform has a robust corporate governance framework and a settlement process that makes buying or selling shares straightforward.

Asset Match provides a centralised ‘shop window’ for UK private companies and seeks to change the perception that it is very difficult to access investments in these companies and to improve the liquidity of the asset class.