Our motivation.
We're dedicated to creating more opportunities for business and investors to connect and grow together
When working as the Head of Conduct at the Financial Markets Authority, Catalist founder, Colin Magee, heard a lot of different views about why New Zealand's capital markets weren't working as well as they should.
Among the issues that kept being raised were the limited options for medium-sized businesses to raise capital. Start-ups had good funding sources, like bank loans, angel investment and equity crowdfunding, and large businesses could complete full public listing on a traditional stock exchange. A select few medium-sized businesses got funding from venture capital and some looked overseas which meant New Zealand missed out on the economic benefits of their growth, as well as the potential for jobs.
Catalist helps to close this funding gap by harnessing the regulatory benefits of a traditional stock exchange and opening the door to greater funding opportunities, without the associated regulatory burdens.
Many founders and early investors find themselves locked into an investment they can't easily exit. The ability to find new investors has been hugely restricted, due to the regulations that are designed to protect smaller investors from potentially higher risk (but higher reward) investments. Catalist's periodic auctions give business founders and early-stage investors the opportunity to partially exit some of their investments early, or facilitate a sell-down or managed transition to new owners.
There has been a great disparity in investment opportunities available to a privileged few, compared to everyone else. And most current options for investing in private businesses have very few protections for investors. Through a licensed, well regulated marketplace, Catalist makes it viable for the growing pool of low-to-mid-tier investors to access high growth business investments and their potentially higher returns, while also providing protections from market manipulation and insider trading.
Catalist was created to address a number of the issues that were frequently raised. It took two years for us to get a raft of new regulations, exemptions and approvals through multiple government entities. Our license and legislation specifically approves our Public Market and allows us to give all New Zealanders access to a fully regulated stock market for high growth Kiwi businesses.
We know investors are increasingly keen to invest in private businesses and projects that have a positive impact on New Zealand's society and environment. It can be difficult to find these investment opportunities and costly to pursue them. Catalist is an effective marketplace for matching investors with suitable investment opportunities.
