China-based online financial services provider Lufax has raised $1.33bn in a founding round co-led by financial services firm SBI Holdings, Reuters reported yesterday, citing people with direct knowledge of the matter.
Financial services firms JP Morgan, Macquarie Group, UBS and UOB also participated, as did investment banking firm Goldman Sachs’ Private Equity Group.
Private equity firm Primavera Capital, investment fund All-Stars Investment and the state-owned Qatar Investment Authority co-led the round with SBI, and it was filled out by venture capital fund Hedosophia and investment firms Hermitage Capital and LionRock Capital.
Founded in 2011 as a peer-to-peer lending and brokerage offshoot of insurance group Ping An, Lufax has since evolved into a more diversified wealth management service.
The round valued the company at $38bn pre-money and it is open to increasing its size with additional funding from other investors, according to Reuters.
Lufax was preparing an initial public offering in Hong Kong slated to raise as much as $5bn, only to delay the flotation in favour of new funding following regulatory changes. A report in June 2018 stated it was targeting $1bn to $2bn in this round at a valuation of up to $40bn.
The company’s first external funding was a $500m series A round in 2015 that included BlackPine Private Equity Partners, CDH Investments and China International Capital.
All three returned the following year when Lufax received nearly $1.22bn in a series B round backed by Ping An, food conglomerate Cofco, financial services group Bank of China, Guotai Junan and Minsheng Shangyin International at a valuation reported by Reuters to be $18.5bn.
