Deutsche Börse Takes Stake in WeMatch

Deutsche Börse’s DB1 Ventures has led a Series B funding round and taken a minority stake in derivatives matching technology provider WeMatch, alongside existing shareholder JP Morgan. Augmentum Fintech and Illuminate Financial also participated in the funding round.

WeMatch launched in 2016 to develop Web-based solutions to replace voice broking by automating matching, negotiation and lifecycle management for instruments such as securities borrowing and lending, total return swaps, interest rate derivatives, as well as equity derivatives.

The investors say they believe in the enormous potential for WeMatch to help the capital market industry in further adopting digital solutions across multiple markets globally, and to apply this technology to internal and client-facing solutions.

“The digitalisation of workflows combined with seamless access to large liquidity pools at market infrastructure providers has been driving the collaboration between WeMatch and Deutsche Börse; hence, this investment makes perfect sense and further strengthens our partnership.” says Matthias Graulich, member of the Eurex Clearing executive board at Deutsche Börse. “It is a win-win from our perspective – Deutsche Börse will benefit from WeMatch’s agility and innovation power, and WeMatch will benefit from our deep liquidity pools and strong global distribution power facilitating further growth for both firms.”

Tim Levene, CEO of Augmentum Fintech, adds, “We have been convinced for some time that innovative fintech solutions could improve capital market efficiency. WeMatch is already active in multiple asset classes and is leveraging technology to change how market participants interact, helping reduce operational risk while controlling costs thanks to their differentiated subscription model, and as such fits our thesis.”

Meanwhile, Mark Beeston, founder and managing partner at Illuminate Financial, says, “In many markets the levels of adoption of electronic trading varies hugely between the cash instruments versus their derivatives. Securities lending and most derivatives remain heavily voice traded and attempts by platforms to digitise these markets have largely failed.”