Private Equity Moris Beracha Wuani

By Daniel Kuhn Bitcoin Wallet, a lucrative South African “investment scheme,” used to attract hundreds of investors a day, many of whom clamored at the company’s doors to invest. Now, the company’s shuttered office is attracting hundreds of protestors demanding their cash back, according to Ladysmith Gazette. As of July 4, the enterprise that many regulators and media had begun suspecting of operating as a Ponzi scheme shut down. The firm enticed investors with promises of 100-percent returns in just over two weeks by reinvesting customer deposits in cryptocurrencies. These same investors want to know where their money went now that the company closed. Bitcoin Wallet founder Sphelele “Sgumza” Mbatha admitted to the Ladysmith Gazette on Saturday that he doesn’t have any more cash to pay out to clients. “I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know online or how this system works. [It has] to be workshopped,” he said. Before closing, Bitcoin Wallets had grown so popular that M...

Standard Token Protocol (STP), a firm hoping to bring transparency to the tokenization process, announced Wednesday it has raised a total of $7 million through the sales of its STP tokens. The fund was raised through two rounds from investors including Neo Global Capital, BlockVC, AlphaBit. STP develops an open-source standard for projects looking to tokenize their assets. The company highlights compliance, claiming that the protocol will ensure tokens fully comply with region-specific regulations and KYC requirements. Meanwhile, the firm’s STP tokens could be used to pay for issuance fees and compliance investigation or to be used for staking and governance on STP’s platform,  per the company’s white paper. STP’s offering of compliance-proof tokenization protocol seems timely as initial coin offerings (ICOs) regain momentum, with 109 offerings raising a total of over $236 million in April alone,  according to ICObench’s data .  However, the ICO sector is also no...

Bruce Flatt put Wall Street’s biggest private equity players on notice that the Canadian juggernaut was coming for them three years ago. The head of Brookfield Asset Management Inc. told Bloomberg Television then that his firm -- pushing into private equity -- should be mentioned in the same breath as Blackstone Group LP , Carlyle Group LP and KKR & Co. It was an unusually brash statement from the understated Winnipeg native. He’s more than backed it up. On Wednesday, Brookfield Asset Management agreed to buy a majority stake in Oaktree Capital, a move that will create a $475 billion alternative-investing behemoth. That’s more assets under management than any of the other blue-chip buyout firms reported at year-end. The transaction caps a flurry of deal-making across Flatt’s investing empire of four publicly traded companies focused on real estate, infrastructure, renewable energy and private equity. “I don’t think Brookfield has grown quickly,...

  T heblockcrypto.com Pantera Capital , a blockchain and crypto-related venture firm, has raised $125 million in its on-going third round of funding, CoinDesk reports . The $175 million funding round is expected to close in March. Pantera partner Paul Veradittikit is hopeful the company will secure the remaining funds, although he admitted the crypto winter had made it more challenging to gather funds. So far, high net-worth individuals, family offices, and those with the ability to move money fast have contributed to the fund, he said and he would continue meeting with institutional investors. According to Pantera’s pitch deck, the new fund is aiming to “invest in later stage rounds to support the more mature companies” at between $3 million to $8 million per investment. Half of the capital is allocated for follow-on funding, which will go towards investing in around 30 to 50 firms – depending on much funding is secured in the current ...

by   Nick Chong North Korea Still In Love With Bitcoin, Crypto Due to the decentralized, borderless, and censorship-resistant nature of  Bitcoin  and related technologies, North Korea, the world’s most well-known hermit state, has taken a liking to this decade-old innovation. But some would argue that North Korea has taken its crypto penchant a bit too far, with a multitude of reports indicating that the nation is leveraging cryptocurrencies for dubious financial gain. As reported by  Ethereum World News  in mid-October, Lazarus, a supposed North Korea-based hacker consortium, was found to be responsible for five cryptocurrency exchange hacks, including the now-infamous $500 million breach of CoinCheck. A report from cybersecurity firm Group-IB, who first divulged this information, indicated that Lazarus’ constituents used social engineering, phishing, and malware to forcefully visit pertinent databases and access points. Now, per the  South Chi...

The SEC this year has kept up a steady stream of actions against private-equity firms By Chris Cumming Evidence is building that the Securities and Exchange Commission has moved on from the era of trying to reform private equity through enforcement actions. The SEC last week released its strategic plan for the next four years, which offers an important window into how the commission views the markets and its role as regulator and enforcer. The plan is heavy on efforts to protect retail investors and adapt to changing technology, including issues like improving cybersecurity and tracing initial coin offerings. But it dedicates almost no time to private markets, institutional investors, or fee and expense abuses, areas that were often highlighted as priorities under the previous SEC regime. Instead, the SEC is focused on ways to protect retail investors, a point Jay Clayton has repeatedly emphasized since taking over as the regulator’s chairman last year. Goals in the ne...

Political uncertainty has made investors pause By Joice Alves Fundraising for European buyouts has hit its worst quarter since 2010 as the divorce between the UK and European Union has fuelled a sharp decline in investors’ appetite for UK-dedicated funds. Fund managers have struggled to keep pace with the record volumes of cash raised for the asset class last year, writes FN ’s sister publication  Private Equity News.  Both capital-raising and the number of fund closings fell in the third quarter, according to LP Source, a data provider owned by FN and  PEN ’s publisher Dow Jones. Buyout fundraising dropped 68% to $7.9bn across 33 funds in the third quarter, down from $24.6bn raised by 46 funds during the same period last year. Fundraising also declined one-fifth during the first half of this year to $46.6bn, down from $67.8bn in the corresponding part of 2017. The figures represents the worst third quarter for European buyout fundraising sinc...

By Justin Villamil Mexico’s upstart stock exchange needs private equity to go public. The Bolsa Institucional de Valores, the bourse known as Biva that began operations in July, is trying to gain market share from the dominant Bolsa Mexicana de Valores by focusing on private equity managers ready to exit their investments and sell shares. The industry has grown 15 percent annually over the past decade, according to a report by El Financiero. “The story of private equity is very recent in Mexico,” Biva Chief Executive Officer Maria Ariza said in an interview at Bloomberg’s offices in Mexico City. “Companies are starting to mature, they’re starting to leave, and they’re starting to look for an opportunity to exit their investments. Ideally, one of the ways to do that is through the capital markets.” Companies controlled by private-equity firms tend to alre...

By Rachel Wolfson  The cryptocurrency market and initial coin offerings (ICOs) have carved out a grey area for regulatory efforts in the United States. For example, utility tokens (user owned tokens that are not created as investment vehicles and hold a claim that they are exempt from federal laws that govern securities) are the primary tokens circulating most ICOs. Owners of utility tokens can’t use the coins outside of the platform without exchanging them; they can send tokens person to person within the network. ICOs must evolve to become self-regulatory, in order to advance the crypto market and become attractive to institutional investors. It’s not uncommon to find that the majority of companies selling utility tokens don’t have token economics. Therefore, most listed utility tokens are not real utility tokens, but rather, these companies are actually selling security tokens. Due to this problem, many institutional investors have been bearish...

By William Suberg U.S. banking giant Morgan Stanley is planning to offer clients Bitcoin trade swaps, anonymous sources told Bloomberg Thursday, September 13. Citing “people familiar with the matter,” the publication reveals the U.S. multinational will follow in the footsteps of fellow Wall Street players in pursuing Bitcoin exposure options. According to the sources, Morgan Stanley “will deal in contracts that give investors synthetic exposure to the performance of Bitcoin.” “Investors will be able to go long or short using the so-called price return swaps, and Morgan Stanley will charge a spread for each transaction,” they added. The news marks the latest commitment to Bitcoin interest from Wall Street giant, Goldman Sachs last week refuting claims it had dropped plans for a Bitcoin trading desk. A Morgan Stanley spokesperson declined to comment to Bloomberg about the plans. In addition to the unconfirmed Morgan plans, the past week has also seen banking giant Citigroup inside...

 By Joseph Young The Chinese government has banned all commercial crypto and blockchain-related events in the region, after encouraging local financial authorities to speed up the development of blockchain technology. Red Li, the co-founder of 8BTC and Chinese cryptocurrency researcher, shared a document released by the Chaoyang District government in Beijing, which ordered local financial authorities and police to ban offices and hotels from hosting crypto-related events. Why the Ban? Previously, crypto-related events were shut down by local police, during a period in which the government was in process of implementing new regulatory frameworks surrounding cryptocurrency trading. At the time, the government clarified its stance on crypto trading and reaffirmed that while the country supports the development of blockchain technology, it is firmly against trading digital assets on cryptocurrency exchanges. Analysts suggested that the ban was imposed as a part of a larger initi...