Mark Beeston
Podcast appearances as guest
Episode 27 - Mark Beeston and Alexander Ross
In this episode, I sit down with Mark Beeston and Alexander Ross, founder and general partner at Illuminate financial.
On the podcast
Mark spent 13 years at Deutsche Bank, becoming COO of its Global Rates and Global Credit businesses.
Mark later built Creditex's credit derivatives post-trade business, acquired by ICE, and at ICAP invested in AcadiaSoft and acquired TriOptima.
Illuminate has 11 strategic LPs across its two actively deploying funds and more than 20 people in London, New York and Singapore.
Illuminate invests in capital-markets infrastructure, institutional digital-asset infrastructure, energy transition and carbon, private markets and wealth, and enterprise technology including AI.
Illuminate has sold portfolio companies to Bloomberg, Fitch, S&P, Trading Technologies, Informatica and PayPal, and had two more exits under signed term sheets.
S&P, through Markit and IHS Markit, has anchored all four Illuminate funds.
Financial services spends about $600 billion a year on technology, more than any other sector.
The GP-LP contract is broken when 2015-vintage funds still hold 95% of their companies; investors should take liquidity where they can.
A wave of roll-ups of capital-markets fintechs stuck at 10–20 million in revenue is coming.