Tiger Brokers, an online securities brokerage backed by Wall Street billionaire investor Jim Rogers, said its latest fundraising round had valued it in excess of US$1 billion, making it the latest start-up to join China’s booming club of unicorns. The company successfully closed a US$80 million Series C financing, bringing the company’s valuation to US$1.06 billion, the Chinese fintech stock brokerage said in a press release on Wednesday. The latest round was a co-investment led by Prospect Avenue Capital (PAC), Orient Hontai Capital and Oceanpine Capital. A unicorn is a privately held start-up company with a current valuation of US$1 billion or more. The newly-raised capital will be used to boost research and development as well as investment in new talent, said Wu Tianhua, founder of Tiger Brokers, adding that the company also aims to accelerate its development of an all-in-one global asset allocation platform. Tiger Brokers offers an app that allows Chinese investors, including ethnic Chinese stationed outside mainland China, to trade US stocks, Hong Kong-listed stocks and China A shares via the stock connect scheme between Hong Kong and mainland bourses. This offers Chinese investors with assets outside the mainland alternative investment opportunities at a time when the domestic market has underperformed global peers due to uncertainties connected with the escalation of US China trade tensions. Two out of five Chinese unicorns prefer to raise IPO capital in Hong Kong The Shenzhen Component Index, China’s main stock index for tracking technology and other new economy firms, fell to its lowest level in three and a half years last Thursday, one day ahead of a deadline for the imposition of US tariffs that target China’s technology and other exports. Founded in June 2014, Tiger has seen the accumulated trading volume on its mobile trading app Tiger Trade reach US$150 billion, according to the release. Tiger Trade is available in more than 200 countries and regions around the world, and offers users the ability to track stock quotes as well as live news feeds. Before the latest C round fundraising, the company received strategic investments from more than 20 investors, including a slew of notable names such as Interactive Brokers Group Inc, Xiaomi Inc, ZhenFund and Wall Street investment guru Jim Rogers.
