This week has seen a £100m investment from US bank Goldman Sachs into UK fintech startup Neyber, which allows employees to borrow loans directly from their salary.
The investment is part equity and part loan, and an extra £15m has been contributed by existing investors Gael de Boissard and Henry Ritchotte – former executives at Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank.
Founded in 2014, Neyber has now raised a total of £150m through investment, and was valued at £79.4m pre-money in its previous round in August. Other previous investors include Police Mutual and Wadhawan Global Capital (WGC), neither of which is a frequent investor in UK companies (though WGC did invest £32m in Zopa earlier this year).
Goldman Sachs, too, invests only occasionally in UK firms. Its last announced foray into the market was in August of 2016, when it contributed £200k to I Am The Agent, a proptech firm. Both I Am The Agent and Neyber are staffed by former Goldman employees. This is the largest amount the bank has ever invested in a UK company, beating its 2011 contribution to AppSense by almost £72m.
Neyber’s current clients include the UK police force, doubtless a contributing factor in the investment of Police Mutual, as well as the NHS.
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