User:Jimmyjoe68/sandbox/Christian Faes

Christian Faes is a financial technology entrepreneur and financier. Faes is co-founder and CEO of LendInvest, which is a real estate lending and investing platform, that has raised over £1 billion in the United Kingdom. Faes has been referred to as a 'pioneer' by the Financial Times, and regularly listed as one of the most influential people in FinTech. Faes has been won numerous awards including the European Allstar Investor Award in 2017, often referred to at the 'Oscars of the start-up world'.

Career
Faes was born in Australia and studied and graduated with honours in law from Bond University, and then qualified as a solicitor working as a property lawyer with Allens Arthur Robinson. He first moved to London in 2000 where he was a securitization lawyer with Clifford Chance, and then in-house legal counsel with Deutsche Bank.

In 2008 Faes set up a property bridging finance business called Montello in London. LendInvest was spun out and launched in 2013 by Faes and his co-founder, Ian Thomas.

LendInvest
Faes and his co-founder Ian Thomas still own the majority of LendInvest, which is a privately held company.

LendInvest’s investors include Atomico, the European venture capital investment fund co-founded by Niklas Zennström (one of the founders of Skype), which invested £17 million in March 2016. The investment followed a £22m Series A investment from a Chinese investor, which at the time was the largest Series A investment in a UK FinTech company ever. The Chinese investor has since exited the investment and is no longer a shareholder in the company. LendInvest also has investment bank GP Bullhound and US hedge fund investor Tiger Management as equity investors in the business, investing in a $39.5m Series C fundraising round in 2018.

LendInvest has also had backing from financial institutions such as Macquarie Bank, Citibank, and Nomura  and has listed a retail bond on the London Stock Exchange.