Hussam El-Sheikh will remain in London to run the office where the fintech 9fin was started while his friend and CEO, Steve Hunter, takes over the New York office, where backing from Ilavska Vuillermoz Capital will be used to win new customers. Photo: 9fin

Hussam El-Sheikh will remain in London to run the office where the fintech 9fin was started while his friend and CEO, Steve Hunter, takes over the New York office, where backing from Ilavska Vuillermoz Capital will be used to win new customers. Photo: 9fin

Ilavska Vuillermoz Capital has participated in the second part of a Series A funding round worth $23 million for UK fintech 9fin, led by Spark Capital.

Imagine a real-time data platform that can analyse the refinancing needs of businesses. This is just one of the solutions developed by the British company 9fin to help investment banks.

Aggregating more than 2,000 sources of financial content to provide information faster than any media; bringing together all the tools needed for credit analysis; helping lawyers to better assist their clients: these are three further axes of 9fin, a fintech developed by Steven Hunter and Hussam El-Sheikh, ex-JP Morgan and ex-Deutsche Bank, who have been friends since attending the University of Bristol ten years ago.

Today, the fintech announced that it has raised an additional $23m in a round led by a new investor, Spark Capital--whose board of directors includes Alex Finkelstein--and in which Luxembourg-based Ilavska Vuillermoz Capital participated. The latter had already participated in the first series A round of €9.5m at the end of 2021.

A new office in New York

"We hadn't planned to raise any funds, but when we spoke with Alex and the Spark team, they were incredibly enthusiastic about the business and their culture and operational experience is a great fit for us. So we decided to opportunistically scale up and accelerate our US GTM agenda," said Hunter, who will head up the new New York office while his co-founder remains to lead the London office.

"We've had incredible success with our platform in Europe and are excited to expand into the US. With this round, we will grow our US team to over 70 people with new hires planned in credit, legal and sales," he said.

Since 2021, the company has more than doubled its client base, tripled its team and quadrupled its recurring revenue. The company supports more than 60 clients, including nine of the top 10 investment banks, four of the top five distressed debt advisers, 80% of European sales and trading desks and four of the top six debt capital markets law firms.

This story was first published in French on . It has been translated and edited for Delano.