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Stableton, Swissquote, and Morningstar Indexes Collaborate to Introduce Private Market Investment Products Focusing on the Top 20 Unicorns

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Published:: May 15th, 2023
Author:: Alexander Antic

Zug and Zurich, May 15, 2023: Investing in private markets can be difficult and time-consuming. Available options typically demand high investment minimums, capital calls, long-term fund commitments, opaque ‘black-box’ investments, and high fees. A first-of-its-kind range of investment products, where the strategy aims to broadly reflect the holdings of a private market index, now gives institutional and private investors, including retail investors, easy and convenient access to privately held high-growth companies.

Stableton Financial AG ("Stableton"), an award-winning fintech platform and investment firm specializing in private markets, announces the launch of the world´s first-of-its-kind private market product in collaboration with Morningstar Indexes, the fastest-growing global index provider and part of Morningstar, Inc. and Swissquote, the Swiss leader in online banking. The Stableton Unicorn investment offering is based on Stableton’s experience with VC-backed growth equity and institutional-grade investment solutions and is enriched by Morningstar Indexes expertise in data and analytics, responsible for calculating a custom unicorn index, which is the key input into the products’ investment strategy.

Stableton’s two distinct investment products provide investors with efficient and cost-effective exposure to a diverse group of the world’s most innovative privately held high-growth companies: an open-ended Luxembourg investment fund, available to institutional investors, and a bankable Actively Managed Certificate (AMC) with a Swiss ISIN, available for public distribution to retail investors. For the Actively Managed Certificate, Swissquote acts as Stableton’s official launch partner in Switzerland for retail investors. Both investment products seek to broadly reflect the Morningstar^® PitchBook^® Unicorn Select 20 Index^TM*. Morningstar’s index seeks to measure the performance of the largest 20 privately held venture-backed companies from developed markets with a valuation of $1 billion or more.

Exposure to privately held high-growth companies

Investors often seek ways to diversify their portfolios and gain exposure to privately held high-growth companies such as Stripe or Revolut. This type of tech company benefits from the ability to focus on long-term growth and innovation without the distractions and scrutiny of being publicly traded. In addition to potentially faster growth and lower valuations, their sharper focus can make these companies attractive investment opportunities. They have the potential to capitalize on emerging trends and technologies and may offer investors significant returns. However, investing in privately held companies can be difficult and time-consuming for investors. Currently, available options typically demand high investment minimums, capital calls, long-term fund commitments of 10-12 years, opaque ‘black-box’ investments, and high fees of typically 2% management fee per annum and 20% carried interest (“performance fees”).

Stableton, Morningstar Indexes, and Swissquote lead as innovators in their fields

Morningstar Indexes’ rules-based selection of index constituents allows for a transparent index, and Stableton’s investment strategy aims to reflect the composition of this index as closely as possible, allowing for attractive fees for those investment products, compared to more expensive strategies, which base on active stock-picking skills and active management. Stableton leverages its unique market and structuring expertise, private market transaction experience, strong deal-sourcing networks, and knowledge about secondary market pricing. These attributes enable Stableton to carry out the investment strategy to reflect the index holdings as closely as possible and to potentially achieve similar performance to the index over time via a price-efficient execution, which also benefits the overall liquidity of the offering. Swissquote acts as Stableton’s official launch partner in Switzerland for retail investors. With this strategically important product innovation, Swissquote can expand its range of products and provide its clients with access to unique private market investments through its unique trading platform.

Andreas Bezner, CEO of Stableton, says: “The Stableton Unicorn investment offering gives investors the unique opportunity to tap into the potential of some of the world’s most innovative privately held high-growth companies. I am excited about the result of collaborating with such strong partners.”

“The Morningstar^® PitchBook^® Unicorn Select 20 Index™* delivers timely insights and unprecedented transparency into the performance and behavior of some of the largest global unicorns from developed markets,” says Sanjay Arya, Head of Innovation, Index Products at Morningstar. “We are excited to see our new private market unicorn indexes being used by Stableton as a benchmark for its new investment offering. Investors now have the opportunity to gain exposure to the most promising growth opportunities in the market, which were previously difficult or even impossible to access.”

Jan De Schepper, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer of Swissquote, adds: “Swissquote is always at the forefront when it comes to innovation and hence we are proud to be the exclusive launch partner for the strategically important Stableton Unicorn investment offering, which offers our retail and institutional clients access to private market investments, a trend that is rapidly gaining momentum in the financial industry.”

* The Morningstar^® PitchBook^® Unicorn Select 20 Index^TM seeks to measure the performance of large, privately held, late-stage venture capital-backed companies with post-money valuations of at least $1 billion from Developed Markets Countries. Index constituents are derived from PitchBook’s global database of venture capital-backed companies, and the index methodology employs a proprietary three-factor pricing model to estimate daily valuations.

For more information about the Stableton Unicorn investment offering, please visit https://www.stableton.com/unicorns and http://swissquote.com/unicorns

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About Stableton Financial AG

Stableton is an award-winning fintech platform (Swiss Fintech Award 2022 in the Growth Stage Startup category) and investment firm specializing in private markets. The platform offers institutional and qualified investors unique investment opportunities in late-stage growth companies with enhanced liquidity. A broad network and differentiated approach, combined with a technology-enabled investment process, enable Stableton to secure exclusive deals and make unique late-stage venture capital and growth equity investments available to investors. Stableton’s investment focus is on the fintech, consumer, mobility, and B2B SaaS sectors.

Stableton was founded in 2018 by Andreas Bezner and Konstantin Heiermann and now employs around 40 people in Zurich, Zug, Berlin, and Riga. The company announced its successfully completed Series A funding round in July 2022. It operates under its FINMA license as a portfolio manager, according to Art. 17 (1) of the Financial Institutions Act (FINIA).

For more information, please visit www.stableton.com and https://www.stableton.com/unicorns.

About Morningstar Indexes

Morningstar Indexes, recently named the fastest growing global index provider for the second year in a row by Burton-Taylor, was built to keep up with the evolving needs of investors - and to be a leading-edge advocate for them. The rich heritage as a transparent, investor-focused leader in data and research uniquely equips Morningstar Indexes to support individuals, institutions, wealth managers and advisors in navigating investment opportunities across all major asset classes, styles and strategies. From assessing risk and return with traditional benchmarks to helping investors effectively incorporate ESG objectives into their investment process, the range of index solutions spans an investment landscape as diverse as investors themselves. We help investors answer today’s increasingly complex questions so that they can more easily reach tomorrow’s goals.

Please visit https://indexes.morningstar.com for more information.

About Swissquote – The Swiss Leader in Online Banking

Swissquote is Switzerland’s market leader in online banking. Over three million financial products can be traded on its innovative platforms. Swissquote’s core competencies include global stock market trading, trading and custody of crypto assets, Forex trading and a Robo-Advisor solution. In addition, Swissquote is active in the payment card, mortgage and leasing markets. As of the end of December 2022, Swissquote held over 52 billion Swiss francs in assets for more than 538,000 private and institutional clients. In addition to its headquarters in Gland, Switzerland, Swissquote has offices in Zurich, London, Luxembourg, Malta, Bucharest, Cyprus, Dubai, Singapore and Hong Kong. Its parent company, Swissquote Group Holding Ltd, is listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange (symbol: SQN). The Swissquote Group and PostFinance each own 50% of the fintech app Yuh.

For more information, please visit www.swissquote.com and http://swissquote.com/unicorns.