Year of the Eurocorn: Europe and the Growing Global Private Market Opportunity
There are already over 650 unicorns and pre-unicorn companies based in Europe that may provide interesting opportunities for global investors to access private company value creation*. But there are challenges to building efficient, compliant and effective global markets that span geographies.
Blythe Masters of Motive Partners hosted Forge CEO Kelly Rodriques and Deutsche Börse's Christoph Hansmeyer for a conversation about the growing European unicorn breeding ground and opportunities for building an efficient global market that spans the US, Europe and beyond.
Topics covered:
- What characterizes the unicorn universe in Europe?
- What are the opportunities for investors today to access pre-IPO stocks?
- What trends are driving the need for liquidity by unicorn companies in Europe?
- What are the trends that signal increased geographically agnostic bets by private market investors?
- What hurdles are there to developing an efficient, global private market to deliver geographically diverse opportunities to investors in Europe and beyond?
- What other global markets are compelling institutional players looking to invest in private tech?
Ms. Masters has served as a Founding Partner of Motive Partners since 2019, where she also serves as President of Motive Capital Corp II. She formerly served as CEO and a Director of Motive Capital Corp. Ms. Masters was the former CEO at Digital Asset from 2015 to 2018. She held senior executive roles at J.P. Morgan over a 27 year tenure.
Mr. Rodriques has served as CEO of Forge since July 2018. He formerly served as CEO of PENSCO Trust Company from March 2010 to September 2016. Since September 2016, he has been the Managing General Partner of Operative Capital, an early stage investor in FinTech companies. He was previously an Operating Partner at Ignition Growth Capital from October 2006 to January 2010, where he led the investment in mFoundry, a leading mobile banking software company.
Mr. Hansmeyer is a Managing Director at Deutsche Börse in Pre- / Post Trade. He formerly served as Deutsche Börse's Head of Group Strategy and M&A as well as Chief of Staff since 2018. He was previously with Allianz SE, based in Munich, Germany from 2012 until 2018. Mr. Hansmeyer has been a director of Forge since January 2020.