GM just paid $1B+ to acquire 40-person self-driving technology vendor Cruise Automation; last year Continental AG paid $700m for Elektrobit’s automotive software business unit (full disclosure: Magister has advised Elektrobit).
After 5 years, 18 successful deals and $2B+ of value generated, Magister is evolving into two separate entities.
Statement on Virtual Currencies to the European Parliament’s ECON Committee. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today and share my views on virtual currencies. I am a Partner with Magister Advisors LLP, an EU-based boutique investment bank we established in 2011.
2016’s quieter funding and IPO markets will drive more tech private mergers than ever before. These mergers can support successful growth companies through a volatile funding environment, and accelerate creation of a future group of enduring unicorns.
As Bitcoin and Blockchain investment fast approaches $1bn, we have spent the last three months speaking with over 30 of the leading Bitcoin and Blockchain companies globally (with c. $500m of total investment), plus industry groups, financial institutions and investors, to gain detailed insight and understanding of the development of the market and the direction these fascinating technologies will take in 2016.
The S&P 500 is ending 2015 where it started. Yet all is not stable in tech. 2015’s extremism is setting the stage for a turbulent, and unstable, 2016.
Software as a Service (SaaS) has matured. Its elder statesman, Salesforce, is worth over $50B and nearly every private software company is now SaaS. The reasons are clear. SaaS businesses have much more certain future revenue than older “perpetual license” businesses, and can therefore grow more reliably. Also, SaaS companies have regularly received very high investment valuations, generally 5-10x revenue, and SaaS is the only model many software investors will invest in.
Cries of “shock wave” and “bursting bubble” greeted Square’s recent IPO pricing. It’s understandable when the IPO is $2B lower than Square’s last round only months ago, in a stock market that has remained stable throughout the year.
Wealth management is a $30 trillion industry in which the vast majority of “experts” charge 1-2% in fees annually. Despite this charge, on average they perform worse than the overall market.
$1 billion of funding has gone into e-procurement companies since 2011. 2015 could see another $1 billion of funding, 4 times all of 2014’s investment level and by far the most intensive rate of new investment the space has ever seen.
