First round of Seedrs secondary trade market closes

Seedrs has closed its inaugural round of secondary trades.

The crowdfunding platform, which counts Sir Andy Murray among its backers, launched the initiative in order to boost liquidity in early stage firms by enabling investors to buy and sell shares rather than hope for a flotation or takeover.

Trading through Seedrs’ new secondary market begin on the first Tuesday of every month and are open for one week. During this time, investors are able to buy and sell shares from each other.

The trades take place “under the nominee”, which means a nominee company will continue to be the legal shareholder of the shares, but instead of holding them on behalf of the seller, the nominee will now hold them on behalf of the buyer.

The market, which forms part of the Seedrs platform, enables investors who have shares held under the Seedrs nominee to buy and sell shares from and to each other, with investors in Seedrs-funded companies given the opportunity to increase their stakes by buying shares from those sellers.

The first instalment of the pioneering market saw one shareholder offload shares in an unnamed e-commerce business for £95 each, Seedrs said.

The investor had bought them in 2013 for £10 each.

Seedrs chief investment officer Thomas Davies, said: “Secondary markets are challenging to operate successfully, and we are conscious of our obligation to provide our investors the best experience we can but we are obviously delighted with the success of our first trading window and will continue to observe behaviour and make improvements as we approach our next window.”

About 140 lots of shares were put up for sale this month, and Seedrs said it has received more than 275 requests to sell when the next trading window opens on 4 July.