Tuesday 13 February 2018 10:20 am

A new fintech bank led by a former hedge fund boss has just raised £70m through a float on the London Stock Exchange

Trufin, a niche technology-enabled bank run by a former hedge fund boss, has just floated on the London Stock Exchange this morning to raise £70m.

The fintech-focused business has three divisions including DFC, a short-term lender focusing on financing supply chains, Oxygen Finance, which helps provide early payments to the UK public sector, and Satago, an invoice finance and specialist lending business.

Trufin, which also owns a 15 per cent stake in peer-to-peer lender Zopa, is led by Henry Kenner. Kenner was one of the founding members and chief executive of Arrowgrass Capital Partners, an alternative investment manager launched by former Deutsche Bank traders in the aftermath of the financial crisis.

"Many borrowers are neglected by banks and still face expensive funding and capital," said Kenner. "We intend to deliver value by taking advantage of current market disruptions and new financial technologies, while keeping a focus on the distribution of niche lending products."

Trufin was in fact created by Arrowgrass, which began investing in and acquiring businesses to build the company in 2014. The firm said it "continues to believe in the attractiveness of the investment opportunity", and will subscribe for shares in the business.

An all-star board has graced Trufin – the specialist bank has managed to attract Raxita Kapashi as chief financial officer from private equity firm Inflexion, former Arrowgrass investor James van den Bergh as deputy-CEO, and a group of non-executive directors who have held roles at companies such as Plus500, UBS and hedge fund Brevan Howard.

DFC's chief executive Chris Dailey is the former boss of challenger bank Oaknorth, Satago's Sinead McHale was formerly at Deutsche Bank and Oxygen's Ben Jackson has held management positions at Cable & Wireless, Royal Mail, Network Rail and Fujitsu.

Trufin floated at the price of 190p per share. It currently has 100 employees, based mostly in the UK but with a small office in the US.