Norwegian fintech took the back road to the stock exchange – now she has been suspended since June
In early June, Spenn Technology emerged from the media as the best impact company in the Mastercards Lighthouse program. At about the same time, the share was suspended from the Nasdaq First North stock exchange in Denmark.
The suspension came shortly after the stock had completed a proper roller coaster ride on the Danish stock exchange.
In February, the entrepreneur Jens Glasø from Madla outside Stavanger took the back road to the stock exchange with his company Blockbonds AS. Then a so-called reverse acquisition was carried out by the Danish listed company NP Investor, which took over Blockbonds. The merged company was then renamed Spenn Technnology.
Glasø has profiled the company as a kind of Vipps for Africa. Basically, the company has a goal of giving people in Africa who lack access to a bank account, the opportunity to get financial services based on blockchain, via an app on mobile phones – including loans, crypto trading and money transfers across countries.
Invite with Mastercard
I quit in February, right after the listing, investments were incorporated into Mastercard’s Lighthouse Massive program. It is a team of companies that will solve global challenges from a social and local perspective.
Spenn was one of 15 selected Nordic companies that received tailored support from advisers in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Danske Bank, Nordic Impact Funds, UNDP, Swedbank and Synch Law.
Short-lived stock market rocket
While Glasø pitched its activities in the support program, led actions and quiet rooms on the First North stock exchange in Copenhagen, will come to the end of April. Then, in a couple of weeks, the share price went from 55 Danish øre to 7.95 kroner. That made Glasø a multi-billionaire on paper.
Men the joy was short-lived. Just over a month later, on June 8, the share was down to 2.16 Danish kroner.
Then Nasdaq First North Denmark decided to pull the brakes and suspend the stock.
Stock market stop
The reason was that the stock exchange needed more information about which company the new company should operate compared to the original company NP Investor, which operated with copy trade.
That information should have been in place by the end of the third quarter. Since that did not happen, work continues in October, the company writes in a statement.
To Dagens Næringsliv, who first mentioned the case, Jens Glasø writes in an e-mail on «the dialogue with Nasdaq is constructive and we feel that we have a common goal to complete this company as soon as possible».
However, he cannot give a precise date.
Pitch winner
Three days after the suspension was to win present in the Mastercard program.
By then, Spenn had made such a good impression that they could not only be used to watch in the Massive program for impact companies, but the company also seized the People’s Prize.
-Winning the Mastercard Lighthouse Massive Program is exciting and something that makes us humble. It has not been a single year for fintech start-ups, but we have not been able to bring financial services to those who demand it the most. We are grateful for programmers like Lighthouse who really deliver on the promise of partnership, says Jens Glasø, general manager of Spenn in a press release in June.
I follow that it has the company in Tanzania, Rwanda, the Philippines and Zambia, through local subsidiaries and had 900,000 users by the end of the third quarter.