Ex-JPMorgan fintech founder has given his millionaire colleagues a chance to cash out
As we noted in April, ex-JPMorgan analyst Steven Hunter has done pretty well for himself in the last ten years. In 2016, he founded credit intelligence fintech 9fin... today it's worth $1.3bn. It's not just Hunter getting rich from its success though; many employees have received stock pay while working there and they just got an opportunity to turn that into cash.
Click here to join the bubble by eFinancialCareers, our new anonymous community. ✍️
9fin filed a confirmation statement via the UK's Companies House in October. This helpfully broke down how many shares each employee and investor held at that point. If each of those shares were valued equally at the current $1.3bn valuation, they would now be worth roughly $97 each. The stock is made up of different tiers, which can sometimes have price variations between them (usually in favour of VCs and investors) but we can treat that price-per-unit as un upper limit when valuing the the stock held by employees as of October
So who's getting rich from 9fin? Hunter himself had ~2.6m shares in the confirmation statement which would be valued at ~$252m at the price-per-share above. Huss El-Sheikh, his co-founder and CTO (who came from Deutsche Bank), held shares at an estimated value of ~$124m.
Below the C-Suite, one of the most interesting cases is Huw Simpson, 9fin's global head of strategic operations. Simpson joined the firm as an intern then worked as a graduate credit analyst before ascending to a number of senior roles. As of October, he owned ~39,000 shares, which could be worth up to ~$3.8m.
Many employees holding a notable number of shares come from 9fin's News and Insights team. Will Caiger-Smith, 9fin's VP of content, owned a stake worth ~$985k as of October.
Jainisha Amin, the firm's head of European legal, also owned a stake that could be valued above $1m.
Some of 9fin's biggest shareholders are ex-employees. Morgan Muranyi, who says he was the firm's first commercial hire and who built out 9fin's sales team, had a stake worth ~$1.4m as of October. Jake Laxton joined as a graduate credit analyst and spent just under three years there before leaving for a private credit firm; his stake as worth ~$116k in October.
9fin didn't disclose how many employees participated in the share sale, nor did it say the value of shares cashed out. It did say, however, that "participation was entirely optional," and that the firm covered the adminstrative costs. The figures above may be slightly inflated, as employees predominantly held 'ordinary stock' which sits at the bottom of the liquidation waterfall should 9fin ever go public or get acquired. This might lead to investors slightly discounting the shares compared to 9fin's broader valuation, but it's a lot of money either way.
Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: WhatsApp: http://wa.me/442079977910 (+44 20 7997 7910), Telegram: @AlexMcMurray, Signal: @AlexMcMurrayEFC.88 Click here to fill in our anonymous form, or email editortips@efinancialcareers.com.
Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: comments are moderated intermittently by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You must take sole responsibility for comments you post on this site. We will take reasonable steps to weed out anything that we consider to be offensive or inappropriate.
Photo by Alexis Hunter on Unsplash
