ScribeStar launches £500k funding round on Crowdcube

UK News

07
Jan
2021

Editor

ScribeStar, the digital platform for producing and publishing regulated capital markets documentation and managing compliance, has launched a £500,000 funding round on Crowdcube.

ScribeStar substantially lowers the cost and increases the speed and ease for companies raising capital on public markets. It has developed a unique system that allows lawyers and issuers to manage the listing process and produce the complex regulated documents needed for these transactions – documents such as IPO prospectuses, public takeover documents, circulars, retail bonds, high yield bonds and other complex securities. The system digitises the old, manual way of producing these documents, moving it into a secure automated online environment where the documents are produced in a structured-data, machine-readable format. ScribeStar’s clients report increases in productivity of up to 60% and time savings of up to 40% on an average transaction – which for SMEs can be 8-15% of the total transaction cost.

Having launched its first commercial product in 2016, ScribeStar’s offering to law firms has matured over the last 4 years and is now becoming increasingly used in the UK market where it has been used in over 50 different transactions. Recent transactions include London Stock Exchange IPOs of Bytes Technology, Wheaton Precious Metals, and Conduit RE. Regular clients include technologically progressive law firms such as CMS and Taylor Wessing and Travers Smith, which are keen to use technology to give their clients a quicker, lower-cost and better service. 

In 2020 ScribeStar started working with UK and international securities exchanges to create a digital hub for digital processing of listings and ongoing compliance. This hub, leveraging off ScribeStar’s experience in the UK, will allow issuers, regulators, advisers and the exchanges to all work together in a single ecosystem and allow the data to flow seamlessly to the exchange, investors and other interested parties. 

The funds raised via CrowdCube will be used to continue ScribeStar’s growth in the UK, support expansion to selected international markets and complete trials with a range of stock exchanges.

Adam Shaw, Executive Chairman of ScribeStar, commented; “We are very excited to be launching on Crowdcube. We have seen a lot of interest in our product in the UK since the pandemic started, driven by the growing demand for capital from companies, the shift to online remote work, and the regulatory move towards machine-readable compliance documentation. We have seen a growth in use from our current customers and an increasing interest from new ones both in the UK and internationally and will use new funding to drive the growth in use. We are using Crowdcube as a way of growing our shareholder base and raising awareness of what we believe is the leading technology in our capital markets space.” 

In addition to the general trend towards remote working and lawyers and exchanges looking to make processes simpler, ScribeStar is supported by regulatory changes. The EU’s CMU is pushing for single data sets to be made available to investors through their Single Access Point, and 2020’s accounts for major companies having to be made under the European Single Electronic Format, to name but a few.