Lightspin, the provider of the next-generation cloud security platform, announced today that it won the 2021 Digital Innovator Award from Intellyx, the first and only analyst firm dedicated to digital transformation. 

“Lightspin is leading the cloud security space by utilizing patent-pending technology to intelligently prioritize cloud threats while alerting DevOps teams of cloud security misconfigurations and vulnerabilities early in the development cycle, before the deployment of environment in production”, said Vladi Sandler, Co-Founder and CEO of Lightspin.  “We are honored to be recognized as a digital innovator by Intellyx, and will continue to pave the path to finding new ways to keep data stored on the cloud safely.”

“At Intellyx, we get dozens of PR pitches each day from a wide range of vendors,” said Jason Bloomberg, President of Intellyx. “We will only set up briefings with the most disruptive and innovative firms in their space. That’s why it made sense for us to call out the companies that made the cut.”

For more details on the award and to see other winning vendors in this group, visit the 2021 Intellyx Digital Innovator awards page here. 

Bolero International, the leading provider of cloud-based trade finance digitisation solutions, announce the relocation of company co-founder Paul Mallon to Singapore in a strategic move.

Paul Mallon will take up the role of COO Asia-Pacific and will be leading Bolero’s ambitious global growth strategy as trade finance digitisation thrives in the region. This move will provide increased engagement with Bolero’s clients, partners and other stakeholders in the region.

Andrew Raymond, CEO at Bolero International said “Asia has always been important to Bolero and we see great potential to grow and thrive as digitisation efforts accelerate across the region.”

“With Paul taking up this role in Singapore, we will be better able to support our plans for expansion in Asia.  Paul will provide much needed senior management presence and expertise to drive the growth that our new Galileo offerings make possible.”

Paul is the co-founder of Bolero and a Maritime law expert specialising in Bills of Lading. He is the architect of the Bolero Rulebook and Bolero’s legal structures. In addition to his new responsibilities Paul will continue as General Counsel.

Synechron announced today that The Globee® Awards, organizers of the world’s premier business awards programs and business ranking lists, has named May Yang, Synechron’s Global Head of Operations, as a Gold Level Female Executive of the Year winner in the 14th Annual 2021 Women World Awards®.

Women World Awards recognizes women in business and professions from all over the world. The coveted annual Women World Awards program encompasses the world’s best in leadership, innovation, organizational performance, new products and services, and milestones from every major industry in the world. Organizations from all over the world are eligible to submit nominations including public and private, for-profit and non-profit, largest to smallest and new start-ups.

Synechron’s May Yang was recognized at the Gold Level in the Female Executive of the Year category. This award recognizes outstanding women in business and professions from across the globe, encompassing the best leaders across every major industry. May’s Synechron career progression, along with her commitment, determination, and dedication to ensuring the development and success of employees, was recognized, as was her unfaltering mission and 2020 launch of Synechron’s ‘Same Difference’ program. The ‘Same Difference’ program, which just marked its first-year anniversary, encompasses an array of eight (and growing) Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives across the global organization. Each Synechron regional location has its own set of programs within the global DEI initiative, and all programs are managed, supported and driven by individuals from the grass roots level up through top level management.

Synechron’s ‘Same Difference’ program brings together multiple working groups of employees from all Synechron offices to collaboratively engage with one another and share different perspectives, while fostering an inclusive culture and celebrating individuals’ unique attributes. The program’s suite includes the ‘Better ME’ female mentoring partnership program, the ‘Take the Leap’ series of regular webinars featuring successful external leaders sharing insights on key topics, and the ‘We have your Back’ program which encourages mid-senior level women in IT to return to the workforce after a career hiatus. May is also instrumental in spearheading partnerships with external DEI organizations, including the Professional Diversity Network (PDN), myGwork, India Diversity Forum, Gender Networks U.K. and Campus Pride, all of which serve to strengthen diversity hiring practices.

This significant recognition marks Synechron’s first global award for its growing DEI initiatives platform.

“It is truly an honor to be named a Female Executive of the Year winner by Women World Awards for this esteemed industry and peer recognition program,” said Synechron’s May Yang. “This recognition validates our position as a company determined to celebrate the individualized attributes of many great and skilled people who are starting, building and reigniting their individual career paths. We are thrilled to advance our own efforts toward recognizing all individuals, no matter their culture, background, gender identification, personal life preferences and lifestyles. We are proud to pioneer and demonstrate to the world how we can all advance business initiatives and drive real benefits from building an inclusionary culture, no matter the industry.”

The Women World Awards annual awards program celebrates the individuals and teams who set industry benchmarks for excellence. All organizations private or public, corporations, nonprofits, associations, vendors, and government organizations worldwide are eligible to enter. Judges from around the world representing a wide spectrum of industry experts participated in the judging process. See the complete list of 2021 winners here: https://globeeawards.com/women-world-awards/winner/

Cloud-native intelligent automation-first technologies are being brought to bear across the most functionally operative IT stacks in enterprises of all sizes. Now there is a new responsibility to eradicate the technical debt hangovers of yesteryear. Mike Hughes, Product Evangelist from OutSystems analyses the source of the debt and the route onwards to higher wealth.

Software code has value. This is an enduring truth that works on a number of levels. Developers are paid a (hopefully) worthy sum for engineering the code constructs that drive the world’s enterprises, so, ergo, code has a value.

Some code is more directly employed in live production and mission-critical systems, so we might ascribe more importance and worth to it than other lines of code. Other code is perhaps dormant, legacy or redundant in some way… and this code probably has a lower worth. So, again, this code has value, just less.

Yet still other code is clunky, partially or non-functional, and in fact ends up taking up space in systems such that it gets in the way of workable functions and the user functionality they are supposed to deliver. This is code that eliminates or consumes value and goes towards forming what we call technical debt.

What is technical debt?

Simply put, technical debt is the coding you have to do now because of the shortcuts you took yesterday. More specifically, it’s the technologies and time spent maintaining old, bad and broken code, rather than developing new ideas. 

Software developers often spend an inordinate amount of their valuable time refactoring and reengineering complete sections or subsections of an application’s functional substrate, possibly as a result of Extreme, Agile or Rapid Application Development RAD methodologies.

There isn’t a sole cause of technical debt, though. IT leaders cite too many development languages/frameworks (52%), turnover within the development team (49%), plus the reality of having to accept known defects to meet release deadlines (43%), according to our own “Growing Threat of Technical Debt” study carried out with research sampling and measurement company Lucid. 

Like financial debt, the longer you leave technical debt in place, the more costly it is to repay (fix) it and get things sharper, cleaner and clearer for the future. And unfortunately, businesses continue to delay addressing technical debt. Only 20% say technical debt is something they’re currently managing well, though 36% report they’ll be able to manage tech debt in the future.

Technical debt can come from poorly executed programming, but is more likely to be the result of bad management and/or poor requirements management carried out in the business-technical function. This results in a situation where the development function is tasked with overly complex demands, or simply gets asked to do too many things at once.

The last couple of years has seen an exacerbation of these issues as companies have rushed to digitise products and services in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

So what should we do about technical debt in the age of cloud, automation and platform-level control? Our first steps are to identify it, understand why it exists and then look for tools to build functionally effective modern applications for the future.

Legacy code, stack apps & SaaS sprawl

The combination of legacy code and the new generation of mobile apps, stack applications and SaaS sprawl are major contributors to technical debt that are robbing organisations of resources, time and the ability to innovate.

Just remembering the wider global effects of the pandemic, it is clear that a large number of digital transformation initiatives have been catapulted forwards, for what in many cases are short-term fixes and short-term gains. 

Left unchecked, technical debt will continue to compound. Enterprises need a new approach to move past it and innovate at a pace and scale for true competitive advantage.

The loss in opportunity cost 

After all, our analysis found that a majority (69%) of IT leaders say technical debt poses a fundamental limit on their ability to innovate, along with 61% saying it drags on their company’s performance and 64% agreeing it will continue to have a major impact in the future.

There is also a massive opportunity cost for businesses of all sizes across industries as they dedicate time, money and other resources to technical debt instead of innovation. On average, businesses spend approximately one-third of their IT budget addressing technical debt - and this jumps to 41% for enterprises.

While many business leaders are aware there’s a price to building software quickly but not necessarily right, few fully grasp the causes of technical debt or the true financial and strategic burden of its causes and how quickly it grows.

Good news from the next world

Luckily, it is possible to ‘pay off’ technical debt and reach a higher tier of onward IT software and systems development. In that higher tier, enterprises are able to more carefully align, map and track the use of their modern application development platforms to their organisational structures and team priorities.

Eradicating technical debt is no smash-and-grab bank heist; it needs to be approached honestly, systematically and strategically.  One way to achieve this is by adopting a modern application platform. It can help organisations of all sizes adapt, evolve and improve their applications when their business needs them, helping them tackle technical debt while maximising their ability to innovate. In our case, we can help businesses to not only build apps fast with a visual, model-driven development environment and infinitely reusable components, but also to build apps right with an integrated development platform that ensures the security, resilience and scalability of cloud-native, enterprise-grade applications.

Once an enterprise sees the value of adopting a model-driven development environment and reusable components, it can elevate its IT function to benefit in full from an integrated development platform that ensures the security, resilience and scalability of cloud-native, enterprise-grade applications. 

We can hold technical debt to account and build more wisely for the future if we invest today; it’s time to balance the books and reboot for good.

 As global Connected TV (CTV) engagement increases exponentially year over year — with CTV users in the U.S. estimated to reach 213 million by 2023, per Statista — mobile marketing analytics platform Adjust is expanding its CTV and Over The Top (OTT) offerings to include Connected TV Ad to Mobile Measurement. The new feature gives advertisers a complete view of the user journey from CTV ad view through to mobile app install, providing cross-device insights to help optimize campaigns and drive growth.

“As CTV grows, so does its influence as an advertising medium — transforming what's broadly been thought of as an awareness tool into a key performance channel. It has become essential for marketers and developers to understand CTV’s role in the user journey,” said Gijsbert Pols, Lead Product Strategist at Adjust. “Adjust is committed to helping apps meet their users where they are, empowering them to serve engaging ads that can be confidently measured and attributed.”

The addition of Adjust’s CTV to mobile measurement feature brings attribution data for mobile marketers into one place, enabling them to assess the performance of their marketing campaigns across all channels, including CTV and OTT. By leveraging Adjust’s multi-touch attribution, marketers can see the full impact of CTV advertising on their overall user acquisition strategy, helping prove ROI.

“Historically, television has been an expensive advertising channel with ROI difficult to prove,” Pols added. “However, with holistic CTV measurement, teams with leaner budgets can enter the space and spend efficiently, while also maximizing an innovative new channel.”

Based on internal Adjust data, exploration of CTV advertising is becoming a top priority for mobile advertisers, as ad spend is expected to grow to $27.5 billion by the end of 2025. Adjust’s latest feature complements its Connected TV App Measurement solution launched last year. Focused on helping marketers maximize the adoption of their OTT and CTV apps, CTV App Measurement includes integrations for all major CTV platforms including Apple TV, Android TV, Amazon Fire and Roku. 

Learn more about Adjust’s comprehensive CTV and OTT campaign measurement offerings here. 

MES (abbreviation for METAVERSE EMPIRE) is jointly initiated by a group of blockchain geeks and senior game enthusiasts from the UK and Canada. Based on the Binance Smart Chain to build two tokens, MES and MEF, combined with the new gameplay of NFT and Metaverse exchanges. The platform currency MES is used as the value carrier to anchor virtual scene applications, and the ecological currency MEF is used for value circulation. The application of technology subverts the economic model of traditional games and gives games more financial and economic attributes. MEF will be used as the platform governance token of Metaverse Exchange, and unlimited destruction will boost the ecological development of games and exchanges.

Let players not only earn huge profits through games, reach a community consensus system, and establish a medium for value transmission. At the same time, every value transfer is accompanied by a deflation model and a destruction mechanism, thereby forming a stable economic system and value-driven model with the MES ecology.

There are precedents for outstanding cases, the game empire breaks the capital market. The most popular blockchain game and Metaverse project at the moment is undoubtedly Axie. The price of its native token exceeded US$110 last weekend, bringing its market value to US$30 billion. In addition, the game's current transaction volume has exceeded US$29.5 billion. . Axie's achievements as a benchmark are enough to prove the development prospects of blockchain games. However, with the development of new technologies, it is carrying the banner of blockchain to transform the game industry all the way forward. There are more than 100 categories but the scale is still not as large as traditional Internet games. It's a drop in the bucket, and the contest between power and resistance, every bit of trial has become more precious. In this context, MES has opened a new breakthrough point, creating a blockchain high-power application game with epochal and financial attributes.

Ten million bonuses to promote the development of the alliance, MES global node will be launched immediately. From the economic model, MES uses MES and MEF twin tokens, which complement each other. MES facilitates the development of the game ecosystem. MEF is produced during the game. 70% of MES tokens are produced by METAVERSE EMPIRE's NFT smart mining to ensure market liquidity. , The platform will only start mining after reaching 50,000 people. NFT must be synthesized by MEF, so that the value of MES and MEF will rise steadily. There is no pressure on the market to add tokens. When it reaches 50,000 people, there will be enough players to share every day. Consuming the 3000 tokens newly added by digital smart mining to ensure the steady development of MES and MEF, and as a global node, not only enjoys the high incentive policy that allows creation and construction to be endowed with value attributes, but also the node in the game can not only Enjoy the weighted income. At the same time, because of the identity of the participating builder, you can also participate in voting governance in the future ecological development. The entire economic model is structured through a rigorous algorithm to ensure the value of the circulation in the secondary market and return the value to the hands of serious builders.

MES4.0 ecological planning, iterative development of specific forms in the future. From a value-oriented point of view, the highlight of the MES game is that it has low thresholds and high returns, supports multiple languages, has a small publishing volume, high revenue from digital smart mining, significant market power, and has a variety of highly free gameplay. . MES is not only an entertainment tool, but also allows the game scene to carry the virtual reality of identity, wealth, and network, so that all players can make money while playing, and all behavior trajectories will be accompanied by value orientation. From the perspective of the overall ecological layout, MES links not only the integration and interaction of virtual space and the real world, but also through a series of smart contracts with optimized liquidity mining strategies, which can automatically seek the best profit strategy for users, starting from 1.0 farming civilization Gradually leap over to the Stone Age and then to the Age of War, which resulted in an age of civilization and finally formed an age of benign and sustainable empires.

Metaverse has structured the real technology interaction in the virtual area. MES has opened up new opportunities for value delivery, allowing us to seize the entire market opportunity to open our METAVERSE EMPIRE.

Landmark Information Group analyses residential property data from July to September ‘21

Data from the latest edition of Landmark Information Group’s quarterly Property Trends Report has identified a fifth consecutive month of low property supply levels, with new listings reporting lower numbers than pre-pandemic figures in 2019.

The report, which reflects upon activity across England and Wales’ residential property industry during July, August and September 2021, shows that listings were down by an average of 9% compared to 2019 data, while demand continued to outpace supply, maintaining a sustained imbalance in the market. July was the only month where listings were marginally higher than SSTC – the first month since October 2020.

With the end of the Stamp Duty Land Tax holiday, which concluded on 30^th September, the conveyancing community once again had to manage significant fluctuations in completion activities in a race to beat the deadline. Completions peaked at 44% up in September versus September 2019, although the previous two months both recorded fewer completions compared to the prior two years. This has been a rollercoaster period for property lawyers and conveyancers as they navigate the various SDLT holiday deadlines and consequential activity peaks.

In other respects, property search order-volume data appears to present more stable results, with figures that are closely aligned to statistics reported in 2019.

Key Findings:

Property Listings: Last quarter, new property listings were down every month when compared to the same period in 2019: -6% in July, -13% in August and -8% in September, even though demand has remained steady. Unless a rebalance occurs, there is the potential to see stock levels continue to decrease as we head towards the end of the year, which could continue to affect house prices.

Sold Subject to Contract: For properties converting to Sold Subject to Contract, the data was relatively stable compared to previous quarters with a gradual trend that moved closer to the SSTC data from 2019 from month to month: July reported a 9% decrease, August 7% down and September a 1% difference from the pre-pandemic stats.

Legal Conveyancing: Property search order-volumes were a more consistent picture, month to month, with volumes marginally higher than 2019 figures; 3% up in July, 4% up in August and 2% in September. Even though property lawyers and conveyancers were working hard to meet the Stamp Duty deadline , it is most likely that a large proportion of searches were ordered in the previous quarter, due to typical order patterns and turnaround times.

Completions:  Data shows that completions in September peaked 44% higher than in September 2019 driven by the need to beat the conclusion of the Stamp Duty incentive. The data shows however that completions were much lower in both July (-35%) and August (-19%) compared to 2019, illustrating a slowdown in mid-summer, most likely as legal professionals took some well-deserved time off after the exceptionally busy previous quarter. 

Simon Brown, CEO of Landmark Information Group said, “The property industry has shown great resilience over the last 18-months as it has had to traverse so many challenges – from the market closure amid the height of the Covid lockdowns, to surges in market activity driven by the Government’s stimulus activities, all the while managing home-working, furlough and unpredictable market conditions.

“As much of the property industry breathes a sigh of relief following the various surges in market activity ahead of the Stamp Duty deadlines, many aspects of the market are starting to present more stable figures, including SSTC, legal search order-volumes and mortgage valuations. We are however seeing the demand for properties continuing to exceed supply. This market imbalance has the potential to lead to depressed sales, placing increasing pressure on property prices, as sellers are able to command higher asking prices. We look to see if this adjusts as we head towards the pre-Christmas sales period.”

Spanning property listings, sold subject to contract, legal conveyancing and completions, the data used is extracted from Landmark Information Group’s business entities, which have touchpoints across the whole UK property market transaction pipeline, and offers a truly unified view of the whole England and Wales property market.

The Property Trends Report provides cross-market trend analysis for the residential property market pipeline in England and Wales and assesses transaction movements across the estate agency and conveyancing sectors.  To view the report visit: https://www.landmark.co.uk/news-insights/industry-reports/landmark-property-trends-report-october-2021/

For more information on Landmark Information Group, telephone 0844 844 9960, or visit www.landmark.co.uk.

Coventry Building Society and Atos today announce the completion of a major upgrade of its digital infrastructure by Atos that will help strengthen the Society’s position as a top 10 UK savings and mortgage provider.

Coventry Building Society selected Atos to design, build and migrate its business-critical application to the new flexible ‘hybrid cloud’ infrastructure across secure data centres and Amazon Web Services. The infrastructure together with a new cloud operating model enables Coventry Building Society to accelerate digital initiatives to maintain product and customer experience differentiation to the society’s 1.85 million members.

The programme migrated business critical savings and mortgage systems and applications without any unplanned disruption to service; achieved through joint collaboration to create a solid foundation of new environments to support operations and future developments.

“Having a new hybrid data centre platform in the United Kingdom not only allows us to continue to provide superior products and services to our members, it reduces risk and accelerates agile digital developments to our colleagues and members to meet changing needs,” said James Fellows, Chief Information Officer at Coventry Building Society.

“Migrating a complex legacy estate requires considerable scale, expertise and effort. The deep experience of Atos using proven migration processes and deployment of best-of-breed technologies saw them and the Coventry Building Society team manage the end-to-end process with predictability and minimal service impact.”

James added that throughout the pandemic, the Society has had to keep the whole organisation running as normal to give members access to savings and mortgages. At the same time, its offices could not be used while the government’s work from home advice was in force.

From the outset, Atos responded immediately to work side-by-side with Society engineers to accelerate key aspects of the data centre programme, moving 1,200 additional Coventry Building Society colleagues to work safely and securely from home at minimal notice. 

Clay Van Doren, CEO Northern Europe, Atos said: “This is a tremendous example of a highly collaborative partnership from inception to completion leading to wholesale renewal of Coventry Building Society’s digital infrastructure. This milestone will act as a catalyst for accelerated digital transformational activity which is a hugely exciting prospect.” 

The infrastructure transformation programme conformed to all Prudential Regulation Authority criteria while the new energy-efficient and cloud-based technologies will reduce the overall carbon footprint of Coventry Building Society, contributing to its overall carbon reduction plan.

Banks, fintechs, and software vendors collaborate to overcome obstacles surrounding interoperability

BIAN, the independent not-for-profit standards association, is today announcing the second iteration of its ‘Coreless Bank’ initiative. Working with experts from DXC, IBM-Redhat, JPMorgan Chase, PNC, Salesforce, Tata Consultancy Services, Thought Machine and Zafin, the concept has been developed to overcome the common obstacles surrounding the modernization of core banking infrastructure. 

The Pandemic highlighted what it really means to be digital, with many banks and their infrastructure struggling to keep up with the continuous shifting of customer demands. Due to the extensive use of legacy technology, the speed at which established banks can bring new services to life is often too slow. This is further complicated by the perpetual challenges caused by a lack of industry standards, meaning that banks are restricted by their choice of partners needed to build and execute new digital services. 

The integration, demonstrated by BIAN’s Coreless Banking platform will allow financial institutions to overcome these hurdles and take advantage of faster and more cost-effective development of services relevant to today’s digital-first customers. The platform will empower banks to select the software vendors needed to obtain the best-of-breed for each application area without worrying about interoperability. In addition to this, it enables the translation of each proprietary message model into BIAN’s standard message model. Thereby it ensures that each solution can connect and exchange data seamlessly. 

Commenting on the launch of the environment, Hans Tesselaar, Executive Director of BIAN, said, “To meet the needs of the modern customer, banks need to assess their current core banking structure and determine how they can bring new services to market both quickly and efficiently. As part of the initiative, we are leveraging all BIAN assets to show that financial institutions and software companies alike, can leverage BIAN to overcome current hurdles and take advantage of faster and more cost-effective development of services relevant to today’s digital-first customers. We’re incredibly proud and excited to be launching the results at SIBOS, alongside our members.” 

To find out more about the Coreless Bank, our products and available training programs, please visit: WWW.BIAN.ORG or WWW.PORTAL.BIAN.ORG

Dispersion, an incubator specialising in decentralised finance ("DeFi"), is pleased to announce the proposed acquisition of Accru Finance Ltd (“Accru”), which plans to launch the first  internationally-regulated and insured platform for the trading and yield farming of cryptocurrencies, for  a consideration of £8.75m to be satisfied by the issue of 250 million new ordinary shares in Dispersion. 

The acquisition is the biggest corporate investment by the Company since its IPO and on completion, Accru Finance’s sellers will hold 28.9% of the enlarged share capital of the Company. 

The deal is subject to the approval of the Company’s shareholders at a general meeting to be held on 26  October 2021. 

Background to and rationale for the acquisition: 

Dispersion was incorporated to identify investment opportunities in various high growth sectors and  joined the AQSE Growth Market on 30 April 2021. The Company specialises in decentralised finance,  a disruptive technology that uses the blockchain and cryptocurrencies to remove financial  intermediaries from transactions. To date it has made initial investments in NFT investments plc, ePIC  Blockhain Technologies, Inc., Defy1 SAS, Sporting Icons Ltd, Blimp Technologies Inc. and DeFi Yield  Technologies Inc. 

Accru (trading as “Aqru”), is registered in the UK and was founded in January 2021 to provide a  regulated and consumer-facing platform that enables cryptocurrency traders to access high yields being  generated from lending out digital assets worldwide. www.aqru.io 

The platform, which will also be available to institutional investors, makes the conversion of fiat to  cryptocurrency simple and understandable while also paying market leading yields on assets held.  Customers can choose from stable investments pegged to the US dollar or Euro, or aim for growth with  Bitcoin and Ethereum. Unlike other platforms, rewards accrue in real-time and can be withdrawn daily. 

Dispersion believes that there is potential for significant returns to be generated by cryptocurrency  deposits, with market participants willing to pay high levels of interest to borrow assets they struggle  to access via traditional means. 

Accru was co-founded by Philip Blows and Digby Try, who will join the Company’s Board of Directors  to advise on the oversight of Accru’s operations following the acquisition, subject to completion of the  requisite regulatory procedures. Mr Blows will succeed Mike Edwards as chief executive while Mr Edwards will become executive chairman.

Philip Blows has 16 years’ experience within regulated leadership positions in the fintech and asset  management sectors. Initially working as a trader and investment manager, he built portfolios for retail  and institutional investors and scaled up an online investment platform for currency broker, Moneycorp.  Phil sat on a board of leading UK robo-adviser, Wealth Wizards, where he was involved in the product  development and scale-up of their automated investment solution across the UK to thousands of retail  customers. Phil is a graduate of the University of Geneva where he completed his MBA and graduated  top of his class. He is passionate about improving the world's financial health and is the author of The  Money Triangle, proceeds of which support various financial education charities. 

Digby Try has more than 20 years’ experience in currency, payments and fintech sectors. Having started  his career with HiFX (now XE.com) and Moneycorp, he went on to spend seven years as EMEA Sales  Director at Currency Cloud (acquired by Visa for £700m). More recently, as Global Head of Sales at  OpenPayd, Digby specialised in delivering fiat banking rails to the crypto industry, working with many  of leading exchanges. Digby is a graduate of the University of East Anglia where he studied Economics  & Philosophy. 

Accru owns the entire share capital of two subsidiaries; Accru Digital Assets Ltd, registered in Republic  of Ireland, and Accru Finance Ltd in Bulgaria. Accru does not yet have approval from the Financial  Conduct Authority (FCA) to operate in the UK and will not offer its services in the UK or any other  territory where it would be unlawful to do so. Accru will use its platform in Bulgaria to further develop  its business until it receives operational approval in the UK. The platform expects to launch in  November 2021 within permitted jurisdictions and will launch in the UK subject to FCA approval. 

Accru will operate as a standalone business of which Dispersion will have full ownership, oversight  and control, leveraging the experience and operational skills of the Company’s Board to accelerate and  maximise Accru’s profit opportunity. Dispersion aims to position Accru as a retail DeFi arm for the  Company with a strategy to introduce a corporate DeFi arm which will run separately. 

Commenting on the proposed acquisition, Mike Edwards, chief executive of Dispersion Holdings, said:  “Accru provides a state-of-the-art service to streamline and democratise access to the rapidly growing  market for digital currencies while providing a safe and regulated environment to harness their high  yield opportunities. The acquisition is a major step forward for Dispersion and is in line with our long 

term strategy to back disruptive new ventures with the potential to generate significant returns for the  Company.” 

Philip Blows, co-founder of Accru Finance Ltd, said: “We are delighted with the support from  Dispersion Holdings, which is at the fore-front of capitalising on the DeFi revolution and the huge  market opportunities being opened up by innovative new companies such as Accru Finance. I look  forward to working with Dispersion with great excitement and anticipation.” 

Terms of the deal 

Under the terms of the proposed acquisition, the Company will pay £8.75m for Accru, to be satisfied  by the allotment and issue of 250,000,000 shares in the Company at 3.5 pence per share. On completion  of the Acquisition, the Sellers will hold 28.9 per cent of the enlarged issued share capital of the  Company, which will comprise 862,500,000 shares. 

Furthermore, 75 per cent of the new shares to be issued to the sellers will be subject to a 12-month lock  in period. 

The acquisition is conditional on receiving approval from Dispersion’s shareholders. A notice  convening a General Meeting together with resolutions seeking approval from shareholders was posted  to shareholders on 08 October 2021. The meeting is to be held at Fladgate LLP, 16 Great Queen Street,  London, WC2B 5DG at 11.00 a.m. on 26 October 2021. 

The directors of Dispersion Holdings plc accept responsibility for this announcement.