Schibsted Growth participates with a part in a EUR 10 million round of funding in Prêt d’Union with the participation of its existing shareholders.
Schibsted Growth’s ambition is to support the development of Prêt d’Union by leveraging the resources and expertise accumulated by Schibsted Media Group worldwide during the past 20 years of its digital transformation.
This support materializes into collaboration opportunities with leboncoin.fr in order to attract new customers and enhance brand awareness. With operations in 29 countries in the world, Schibsted is well positioned to support entrepreneurs aiming for international expansion.
“In 7 years, our team grew from 2 to 200 people and leboncoin.fr became the 2nd most popular brand in France. In a quickly moving digital economy, we want Prêt d’Union to benefit from our support and experience in order to manage the challenges associated with their expected strong growth,” says Olivier Aizac, CEO at leboncoin.fr.
“We share with Prêt d’Union the values of integrity, transparency and respect of our customers that make the strength of Schibsted. Selecting Prêt d’Union for our first investment in France emphasizes our strong commitment to build an ecosystem of innovative companies leveraging the group’s audience and expertise in order to boost their growth,” says Marc Brandsma, Managing Director at Schibsted Growth in France.
Schibsted Growth selected Prêt d’Union as its first investment in France. Prêt d’Union is the leader of the “peer-to-peer” lending market in Continental Europe. Using a simple and transparent online platform, Prêt d’Union matches borrowers looking for consumer loans with individual investors willing to optimize their returns.
The company facilitated more than 5M€ of loans in September 2013, a volume growing by 10% monthly. Prêt d’Union is the only peer-to-peer lending company licensed by French banking and financial authorities to operate in Europe. Prêt d’Union heralds a transparent and responsible approach in the consumer credit sector.