Stableton Financial AG, a fintech platform and investment firm specialising in private markets, announces the launch of the world ́s first-of-its-kind private market product, in collaboration with Morningstar Indexes and Swiss leader in online banking Swissquote.

The Stableton Unicorn investment offering is based on Stableton’s experience with VC-backed growth equity and institutional-grade investment solutions, and is enriched by Morningstar Indexes expertise in data and analytics, responsible for calculating a custom unicorn index, which is the key input into the products’ investment strategy.

Stableton’s two distinct investment products provide investors with efficient and cost-effective exposure to a diverse group of the world’s most innovative privately held high-growth companies: an open-ended Luxembourg investment fund, available to institutional investors, and a bankable Actively Managed Certificate (AMC) with a Swiss ISIN, available for public distribution to retail investors.

For the Actively Managed Certificate, Swissquote acts as Stableton’s official launch partner in Switzerland for retail investors. Both investment products seek to broadly reflect the Morningstar® PitchBook® Unicorn Select 20 IndexTM. Morningstar’s index seeks to measure the performance of the largest 20 privately held venture-backed companies from developed markets with a valuation of $1 billion or more.

Investors often seek ways to diversify their portfolios and gain exposure to privately held high-growth companies such as SpaceX. This type of tech company benefits from the ability to focus on long- term growth and innovation without the distractions and scrutiny of being publicly traded. In addition to potentially faster growth and lower valuations, their sharper focus can make these companies attractive investment opportunities. They have the potential to capitalise on emerging trends and technologies, and may offer investors significant returns.

However, investing in privately held companies can be difficult and time- consuming for investors. Currently, available options typically demand high investment minimums, capital calls, long-term fund commitments of 10-12 years, opaque ‘black-box’ investments, and high fees of typically 2% management fee per annum and 20% carried interest (“performance fees”).

Morningstar Indexes’ rules-based selection of index constituents allows for a transparent index, and Stableton’s investment strategy aims to reflect the composition of this index as closely as possible, allowing for attractive fees for those investment products, compared to more expensive strategies, which base on active stock- picking skills and active management. Stableton leverages its unique market and structuring expertise, private market transaction experience, strong deal-sourcing networks, and knowledge about secondary market pricing.

These attributes enable Stableton to carry out the investment strategy to reflect the index holdings as closely as possible, and to potentially achieve similar performance to the index over time via a price-efficient execution, which also benefits the overall liquidity of the offering. Swissquote acts as Stableton’s official launch partner in Switzerland for retail investors. With this strategically important product innovation, Swissquote can expand its range of products and provide its clients with access to unique private market investments through its unique trading platform.

Jan De Schepper, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer of Swissquote, says:

“Swissquote is always at the forefront when it comes to innovation and hence we are proud to be the exclusive launch partner for the strategically important Stableton Unicorn investment offering, which offers our retail and institutional clients access to private market investments, a trend that is rapidly gaining momentum in the financial industry.”

Andreas Bezner, CEO of Stableton, adds:

“The Stableton Unicorn investment offering gives investors the unique opportunity to tap into the potential of some of the world’s most innovative privately held high-growth companies. I am excited about the result of collaborating with such strong partners.”

“The Morningstar® PitchBook® Unicorn Select 20 IndexTM delivers timely insights and unprecedented transparency into the performance and behavior of some of the largest global unicorns from developed markets,” says Sanjay Arya, Head of Innovation, Index Products at Morningstar.

“We are excited to see our new private market unicorn indexes being used by Stableton as a benchmark for its new investment offering. Investors now have the opportunity to gain exposure to the most promising growth opportunities in the market, which were previously difficult or even impossible to access.”