A Silicon Valley executive nicknamed the «Bloomberg killer» is relocating to Singapore. The move aims to tap the hot Asian market as well as raise funding needed to expand.
David Gurle played down his «Bloomberg killer» moniker in a recent interview with finews.com: Symphony, the firm that Gurle founded and runs, is seeking to break the hold that the U.S. news and data giant's terminals have over bankers via its messaging service.
Now, the fintech CEO is relocating from California to Singapore, part of a move to spearhead Palo Alto-based Symphony's expansion plans in Asia, «Reuters» reported.
Bloomberg actually isn't the most widely-used instant messaging technology in Asia: Tencent Holdings Ltd's Chinese WeChat app is.
Hunt for Asian Investors
But much like in New York or London, traders and investment bankers are intensely loyal to their messaging platform, posing a challenge for Symphony and other upstarts.
The French-born Gurle plans to relocate to Singapore in the first quarter of next year, which comes against the backdrop of Symphony's efforts to raise up to $150 million in funding from new and existing backers – including potential investors from Asia for the new round, according to «Reuters» and previous reporting by «The Wall Street Journal».
The new round of fundraising would value Symphony at just over $1 billion, a source told «Reuters».
«Biggest Disruptor»
Alongside New York, London and Berlin, Singapore has established itself as a powerful presence in the burgeoning fintech industry, thanks to copious state support for fledgling firms. Domestic bank DBS is home to the industry's biggest disruptor, Neal Cross.
Signs are mounting that Symphony is making inroads into a market that has long been dominated by Bloomberg, and where rivals such as Thomson Reuters have struggled to grab market share: for example, BlackRock is moving its internal employee chat function to Symphony, in which the asset manager is also an investor.
The upstart currently has 116,000 users, which is a fraction of Bloomberg's estimated users. Symphony expects to grow to 130,000 users by year end.
Gurle's move to Singapore and the company's push into Asia comes after investors including tech giant Alphabet Inc. and UBS invested $100 million in the firm's most recent fundraising.
