Richard White, the Sydney-based billionaire founder of ASX-listed freight logistics business WiseTech Global, has acquired recently delisted data services company Kyckr.
The deal is worth around $43.5 million, and was made throughWhite’s personal investment vehicle RealWise KYK AV Pty Ltd.
Kyckr provides real-time Know Your Customer (KYC/KYB) and and Ultimate Beneficial Owner (UBO) data from trusted, legally-authoritative sources to businesses to help them reduce the risks associated with counterparty relationships when it comes to fraud, money laundering and financial crime, as well as commercial risk, reducing the regulatory and commercial costs.
The former Australian regtech startup is now headquartered in London and Ireland, having listed on the ASX in 2016, then delisting in November last year.
White first backed Kyckr in September 2019 as an ASX-listed business, taking a 19.6% stake for $5.2 million. That saw its share price saw 90% to above $0.20 cents, but since the start of 2020, Kyckr’s share price languished below $0.10 cents, sitting at $0.079 when it delisted on November 7. White increased his stake while in May last year nabbing $629,000 worth of stock at $0.055 a share.
While WiseTech has been in an acquisition mode in recent years and this deal aligns with its field of play, White has also been busy as an investor in several technology companies including local ventures Songtradr, Espresso Displays and Genics.
White said Kyckr addresses a key issue for companies trading internationally.
“Businesses today operate in an increasingly interconnected global marketplace, where compliance with laws and regulations related to anti-money laundering, sanctions and an ever-expanding list of financial crime typologies is becoming increasingly high-risk, complex, time-consuming and costly,” he said.
“I see in Kyckr the opportunity to replace manual processes and aggregate real-time data from disparate sources to provide a scalable, reliable, highly compliant and cost effective KYC/KYB/UBO tech platform solution in the same way that WiseTech’s CargoWise has replaced multiple single-point legacy systems in the complex and fragmented global logistics sector with integrated global technology that drives productivity, reduces compliance risk and facilitates planning, visualisation and control.”
Kyckr’s UK-based CEO sIan Henderson said they are pleased to have White’s ongoing strategic guidance and support.
“We are embarking upon an exciting evolution of our powerful offering to broaden its scope by building an integrated global software solution to enable businesses to navigate the highly complex and dynamic compliance and counterparty risk management challenges that they face in an increasingly interconnected and digital marketplace,” he said.
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