LONDON, UK: Augmentum Fintech plc (LSE: AUGM), Europe’s leading publicly listed fintech fund, announces that it has made a £2.6 million investment into London based LoopFX.

LoopFX (www.theloopfx.com) is the new independent venue for large spot FX trades with a unique matching solution for market participants. LoopFX enables traders to match, in real-time, with other asset managers and banks without information leakage and at a mid-market rate, reducing trading costs and improving best execution processes.

Augmentum is the first institutional investor in LoopFX and its investment follows the integration of LoopFX’s `Peer-To-Bank’ matching technology into leading forex platforms – State Street’s FX Connect and FactSet’s Portware. Augmentum CEO Tim Levene will be joining the LoopFX board.

This investment will allow LoopFX to accelerate its growth as it continues to build this new protocol in FX.

Tim Levene, CEO of Augmentum Fintech said: “We are increasingly focusing on the opportunity in the capital markets space where we see a trend in incumbents opting to collaborate and partner with innovative early-stage companies.

We believe LoopFX offers a text-book example of a fintech operating in the capital markets in partnership with blue chip financial institutions. LoopFX brings efficiencies in trading and price discovery to the FX market, which in turn will help market participants comply with best execution requirements.”

Augmentum invests in fast growing fintech businesses that are disrupting the financial services sector. Augmentum is the UK’s only publicly listed investment company focusing on the fintech sector in the UK and wider Europe, having launched on the main market of the London Stock Exchange in 2018, giving businesses access to patient capital and support, unrestricted by conventional fund timelines and giving public markets investors access to a largely privately held investment sector during its main period of growth.

LoopFX’s board is Chaired by John Sievwright, the former Chief Operating Officer,

International, of Merrill Lynch; and includes Martin Gilbert, currently Chairman of Revolut and the founder of Aberdeen Asset Management; Ivan Ritossa, formerly an executive committee member of Barclays Capital; Mike Soutar, who was most recently the CEO of the Evening Standard; and Tim Ewington, an investor and strategist.

The executive team is led by Blair Hawthorne Founder and CEO, a career FX Dealer most recently at abrdn. Timothy Johnson, Co-Founder and COO, held senior roles in American Express, 360T and CME Group. And John Vause, Co-Founder and CTO, is formerly of State Street, Molten Markets and CME Group.