Ones to Watch: CoalFace Capital

Business & Finance highlights some of the top movers and shakers in Ireland.

What is it?

CoalFace Capital is a data analytics and fund management company with a difference. They are building a fintech business that challenges traditional fund managers and plan to deliver consistently high risk-adjusted returns at very competitive prices.

The company links traders who would like to get paid for their performance with investors who are looking for a much better deal, using smart technology and clever techniques. The company has offices in London and at NovaUCD in Dublin.

Who’s behind it?

Declan McEvoy is the CEO with over 25 years of experience, mainly in sales and trading at large investment banks such as CitiGroup, UBS, BarCap, JP Morgan Chase in London and Standard Chartered. The CTO is Antonio De Negri and he has worked in structuring and programming at BarCap and CitiGroup in London.

CoalFace also has a strong relationship with the Centre for Applied Data Analytics Research on Campus at UCD and is developing the models for tracking the traders and generating the signals in conjunction with them.

Declan McEvoy, CEO, CoalFace Capital

How is it funded?

The founders have put up all of the equity capital so far to create the company, develop the idea and get it into production.

Further funding is also being raised in a private placement run by BDO.

Future plans?

The business can be thought of in two phases: build critical mass by encouraging as many traders globally as possible to sign up; offer investors an exciting alternative fund manager once CoalFace has reached critical mass and road-tested the data to their satisfaction. The plan is to get to 10,000+ traders in the system by the end of 2017 and to have the funds up and running by early 2017.