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An American hedge fund which has placed substantial bets on some of the world’s biggest technology companies is taking a stake in TransferWise, the British fintech champion which has just hit a $5bn (£4bn) valuation.
Sky News has learnt that D1 Capital Partners, which was set up two years ago by Daniel Sundheim, a prominent Wall Street investor, has agreed to buy roughly $200m worth of TransferWise shares as part of a secondary share sale that was signed last week.
The purchase will give D1, which has previously disclosed stakes in Amazon, Facebook and Netflix, a roughly 4% shareholding in the UK-based cross-border payments business.
By concluding the deal, TransferWise has joined an exclusive club of UK start-ups to achieve valuations of $5bn or more.
The transaction was signed at a 30% premium to an almost identical share sale just over a year ago, according to insiders, allowing employees and early investors to offload shares at a huge premium.
The transaction will offer fresh vindication of the company’s strategy, even as some of its digital banking peers struggle to maintain investors’ enthusiasm.
TransferWise, which was founded just nine years ago, now employs 2,200 people, boasting eight million customers and £4bn in monthly cross-border transaction volumes.
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