Thanks to Companies House filings of British Companies are available to the public fee-free now (previously there was a small fee to access documents). This is a huge plus for equity crowdfunding as interested investors can check past filings of the pitching companies (provided the company was not founded very recently).
This also allows anybody interested to check how many shares the founders, employees and investors of the top UK equity crowdfunding platforms Crowdcube and Seedrs hold. And in order to save you the time to search yourself, P2P-Banking.com provides the direct links to the documents below:
Crowdcube
- Shareholder list – as of Sep 10th, 2014
- Articles of Association – adopted July 16th, 2014
- Last accounts filed – up to Sep. 30th, 2013
Seedrs
- Shareholder list as of March 16th, 2015
- Articles of Association
- Last accounts filed– up to Dec. 31th, 2013
Both companies had pitches in the past for themselves, offering part of their equity on their platforms to interested investors.
I expect that the free availability of information will aid to the further growth of UK crowdfunding for equity. In Dec. 2011 the Crowdcube pitch was the first UK crowdfunding for equity pitch, that I invested a small amount in (see my article here). Since then this sector in the UK has experienced tremendous growth rates.