This content is from: Portfolio

The 2015 Fintech Finance 35: Steven McLaughlin, Financial Technology Partners

No. 4

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Steven McLaughlin
Managing Partner
Financial Technology Partners

Some 200 companies signed on as sponsors of the fourth annual Money20/20 convention, which lured thousands of financial industry executives, entrepreneurs, cryptocurrency enthusiasts and myriad technologists to Las Vegas in late October. The brands that paid up for the most-prominent positions included Discover, MasterCard, PayPal and Visa — and the decidedly non–household name Financial Technology Partners. The last is a San Francisco–based firm that since its founding in 2002 by former Goldman, Sachs & Co. senior investment banker Steven McLaughlin has billed itself as the only investment bank “focused exclusively on the financial technology sector.” It was the only one participating at Money20/20 from the beginning (though other firms with Wall Street pedigrees have since established presences there), and it hosts a dinner that is reputedly one of the event’s networking highlights, for those lucky enough to be invited. “We are essential to the ecosystem,” boasts McLaughlin, 46. He likens FT Partners to “an exchange, or hub, for buyers and sellers.” Money20/20 represents only part of FT Partners’ territory: The firm’s 60-plus bankers range across all of fintech’s nooks and crannies, from consumer and wholesale payments to capital markets to insurance, on a global scale. “You have to do it a long time to know all these spaces,” McLaughlin says. Evidence of the firm’s accumulated intellectual capital is in its FinTech Transaction Database and monthly market analyses. FT Partners advised alternative lender GreenSky Trade Credit on a $300 million minority investment, business-to-business payments specialist AvidXchange on a $225 million Series E financing and Currencies Direct on its $310 million sale to private equity buyers. “We don’t just represent sellers,” the founder notes. “BlackRock came to us” for assistance with its August purchase of digital wealth management platform FutureAdvisor.


The 2015 Fintech Finance 35

1. James Robinson III
& James Robinson IV
RRE Ventures
2. Jane Gladstone
Evercore Partners
3. Matthew Harris
Bain Capital Ventures
4. Steven McLaughlin
Financial Technology Partners
5. Jonathan Korngold
General Atlantic
6. Richard Garman &
Brad Bernstein
FTV Capital
7. Amy Nauiokas & Sean Park
Anthemis Group
8. Thomas Jessop
Goldman Sachs Group
9. Meyer (Micky) Malka
Ribbit Capital
10. Hans Morris
Nyca Partners
11. Maria Gotsch
Partnership Fund for New York City
12. Marc Andreessen
Andreessen Horowitz
13. Barry Silbert
Digital Currency Group
14. Jay Reinemann
Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria
15. Mariano Belinky
Santander InnoVentures
16. François Robinet
AXA Strategic Ventures
17. Vanessa Colella
Citi Ventures
18. Alan Freudenstein & Gregory Grimaldi
Credit Suisse
NEXT Fund
19. Justin Brownhill & Neil DeSena
SenaHill Partners
20. Rodger Voorhies
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
21. Michael Schlein
Accion International
22. Kenneth Marlin
Marlin & Associates
23. Rumi Morales
CME Ventures
24. Mark Beeston
Illuminate Financial Management
25. Vladislav Solodkiy
Life.SREDA
26. Fabian Vandenreydt
Innotribe SWIFT
27. Derek White
Barclays
28. Alex Batlin
UBS
29. Jeffrey Greenberg
& Vincenzo
La Ruffa
Aquiline Capital Partners
30. P. Howard Edelstein
REDI Holdings
31. Nektarios Liolios
Startupbootcamp FinTech
32. Roy Bahat
Bloomberg Beta
33. Andrew McCormack
Valar Ventures
34. Lawrence Wintermeyer
Innovate Finance
35. Janos Barberis
FinTech Hong Kong

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