MiddleGame Ventures Announces €150m FinTech-Focused Fund
25.11.2019 12:00:00 EET | Business Wire | Press release
MiddleGame Ventures (MGV), a fintech-focused investment firm, announced today that it had raised a new fund targeting post-seed, series A and series B lead investments in Europe and North America.
MGV’s Venture Fund I has achieved its first close, with a final close target size of €150MM. It will invest in and partner with B2B and B2B2C startups driving the transformation of financial services from analog to digital and from centralized to decentralized, with an emphasis on middleware and back office solutions. Its remit extends to enabling technologies such as RegTech, Digital Identities, “FinData” and crypto-enabled infrastructure across banking, asset management, insurance, payments, and capital markets.
The Luxembourg Future Fund (LFF) and the European Investment Fund (EIF) are anchor investors in the new MGV fund, whilst S&P Global is included among other institutional, strategic and family office investors. The fund remains open to additional institutional and private investors ahead of a final close later in 2020.
FinTech investment veteran Pascal Bouvier is co-founder of MGV along with Michael Meyer and Patrick Pinschmidt. Pascal said: “We are pleased to have new capital from substantial investors to support great, transformational businesses across Europe and the US with our highly focused fund. Our investors agree that specialist funds with experience working with entrepreneurs, incumbent financial institutions and regulators are best placed to thrive in an environment characterised by financial and technological cross-currents and significant regulatory constraints. We are excited to put our platform to work on behalf of investors and the next wave of innovators solving hard problems and re-architecting the industry.”
Patrick Nickels, chairperson of the Luxembourg Future Fund Board of Directors, added: “We are pleased to be an investor of MiddleGame Ventures fund aiming to support early stage FinTech companies. The Luxembourg Future Fund believes this commitment will help to strengthen the FinTech industry in Europe and generate positive spillovers in Luxembourg. This is a strategic sector for Luxembourg for economic diversification and we are delighted to contribute to its continuing development.”
“We are delighted to be supporting MiddleGame Ventures as an anchor investor in its new fund," said the EIF’s chief executive Pier Luigi Gilibert. “The EIF has a strong commitment to innovation in Europe, and we hope that this fund, with its focus on FinTech entrepreneurs, will assist us in that goal.”
MGV partners have invested over USD $300 million in early stage financial services firms over the past decade including Ripple, Tandem Bank, SimpleSurance, Coverhound and CompareAsia. MGV’s new fund has already made three representative investments in a capital markets digital platform and banking as a service and big data analytics startups in the UK (Nivaura, Railsbank and Gardenia Technologies).
ENDS
About MiddleGame Ventures
MiddleGame Ventures (MGV) is a leading financial services technology venture capital firm. Its focus is on supporting innovation in the financial sector as organisations reinvent themselves to compete and service clients in the digital age.
Central to MGV’s thesis is that disruption in banking, payments, capital markets, asset management and insurance business models by new intermediaries will drive a fundamental re-architecting of incumbents and create entirely new value chains.
MGV is well-positioned to help this financial services renaissance based on the founding team’s extensive investment, operational and regulatory experience.
MGV was established in 2018 by Pascal Bouvier, Michael Meyer and Patrick Pinschmidt. Bouvier and Meyer have substantial FinTech investment experience having co-founded Route 66 Ventures and consulted with Santander InnoVentures. Pinschmidt was a senior official at the US Treasury Department following a decade as a sell-side research analyst covering financial services for Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch.
MGV is headquartered in Luxembourg with offices in Dublin and Washington DC.
MGV also owns and operates NadiFin, a growth stage accelerator for European startups (www.nadifin.com) based out of Luxembourg.
For more information on the MGV team, strategy and portfolio, please visit www.middlegamevc.com.
About the European Investment Fund
The European Investment Fund (EIF) is part of the European Investment Bank group. EIF’s central mission is to support Europe’s micro, small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) by helping them to access finance. EIF designs and develops venture and growth capital, guarantees and microfinance instruments which specifically target this market segment. In this role, EIF fosters EU objectives in support of innovation, research and development, entrepreneurship, growth, and employment.
About the Luxembourg Future Fund
The Luxembourg Future Fund (LFF) is a EUR 150 million equity fund set up in 2015 by the Société Nationale de Crédit et d’Investissement (SNCI) and the European Investment Fund (EIF) and combines a EUR 120 million commitment from SNCI with EUR 30 million from the EIF. In addition to its role as investor, EIF acts as the adviser of LFF, performing investment advisory, operational, reporting and execution tasks. The LFF invests in Venture Capital funds and co-invests in early and growth stage innovative technology SMEs. Its objective is to provide its investors with a risk commensurate return on investments while at the same time fostering the sustainable development and diversification of the Luxembourgish economy.
To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191125005284/en/
Contact information
Patrick Pinschmidt
Telephone: (1) 202-750-4622
patrick@middlegamevc.com
About Business Wire
For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
Owkin to Build AI Agents as Part of a Multi-Year K Pro Collaboration with Sanofi5.6.2026 14:00:00 EEST | Press release
Owkin, the agentic AI company pioneering Biological Artificial Superintelligence to transform drug discovery and development, today announced a multi-year collaboration with Sanofi to co-develop next-generation biopharma agents, to be backed by a five-year license for K Pro, Owkin’s AI Scientist. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260605704506/en/ K Pro, Owkin's AI scientist for biology, powered by multimodal patient data for smarter biopharma decision making. Owkin and Sanofi have collaborated since 2021 through a €90 million strategic partnership focused on target identification in oncology and patient subgrouping. The collaboration was later expanded to include drug positioning for Sanofi’s immunology pipeline. This new collaboration represents the next evolution in the partnership. During the five-year collaboration, Owkin will lead the end-to-end development of novel AI-driven biopharma agents purpose-built
DFNS Rebrands as the Core Banking Platform for Digital Assets5.6.2026 13:41:00 EEST | Press release
DFNS today announced a rebrand, marking its evolution from a wallet infrastructure to the first core banking platform for digital assets. The company is introducing a new logo, website, and market position as fintechs and institutions move their products and operations onchain. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260603859127/en/ Banks, fintechs, asset managers, trading firms, payment providers, market infrastructures, and clearing houses have stopped asking how to "add crypto." They're asking how to run financial products, controls, workflows, and client services on blockchain rails, with the reliability expected of core infrastructure. Some are going further still, exploring whether the blockchain can serve as the ledger itself, where an account is an onchain object rather than a row in a database. Where IBANs, virtual accounts, and blockchain wallets converge into one governed financial account. “DFNS was built
Compass Pathways Announces New Employee Inducement Grants Under Nasdaq Listing Rule 5635(c)(4)5.6.2026 13:30:00 EEST | Press release
Compass Pathways plc (Nasdaq: CMPS), a biotechnology company dedicated to accelerating patient access to evidence-based innovation in mental health, announced today that Compass granted equity awards under the Compass Pathways plc 2026 Inducement Plan to seventeen newly hired non-executive employees. The equity awards were granted on June 1, 2026 and consisted of options to purchase an aggregate of 157,000 shares and restricted share units or, in the case of employees in the United Kingdom nominal cost options, covering an aggregate of 74,700 shares. The options have an exercise price per share equal to $14.19, the closing price of the Company’s American Depositary Shares on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on the grant date, and will vest over a four-year period with 25% vesting on the first anniversary of the date of the grant and the remaining 75% vesting in equal monthly installments over the three-year period thereafter, subject to each employee’s continued employment. The restrict
Renewable Electricity, Soft Wheat Flour From Regenerative Agriculture, Initiatives to Support Local Communities: Barilla Shares These and Other Projects in “Stories of Sustainability.”5.6.2026 11:00:00 EEST | Press release
A slimmer Tagliatelle pack that saves 150 tons of cardboard and cuts transport-related CO₂ emissions by 20%1; ready-made sauce jars made with around 65% recycled glass; the progressive scaling of regenerative agriculture practices across Barilla’s value chain and initiatives supporting inclusion and equal opportunities across the Group’s production sites and communities. These are just some of the “sustainability” stories the Barilla Group is sharing on World Environment Day with the publication of its 2025 Sustainability Report. The report comes just after Barilla was named the world’s most reputable company in the food sector for the third year running and, for the first time, ranked among the global top 10 in the Global RepTrak 100 2026. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260603162436/en/ “The future of the planet will increasingly depend on our ability to spread culture and education,” says Paolo Barilla, Vic
PUMA and Salehe Bembury Host Immersive Sound-Inspired Experience ahead of Football’s Biggest Tournament at The Row DTLA5.6.2026 10:59:00 EEST | Press release
Global sports company PUMA and visionary designer Salehe Bembury hosted an immersive experience at The Row DTLA celebrating their collaboration ahead of football's biggest global tournament. The activation transformed the historic venue into a series of interactive environments, offering guests an inside look into the creative world behind the partnership. Set against the backdrop of Los Angeles, the event brought football beyond the pitch and into everyday life through the lens of sound and design. The PUMA x SALEHE BEMBURY collaboration kicks off PUMA’s second chapter of football introductions this summer, following the launch of their 11 national federation kits in March. This more streetwear-oriented launch introduces a bespoke collection of travel wear and goalkeeper kits for PUMA’s 11 national federations in the tournament. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260605170982/en/ PUMA and Salehe Bembury Host Imm
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom