Lloyds facing Curve shareholder rebellion over £120 million acquisition

Sky News has learnt Curve notified its investors this week that it had signed a share sale and purchase agreement with Lloyds Banking Group.

The sale of Curve has been bogged down in controversy, with shareholders in the group enraged about the discount placed on the firm’s valuation.

The £120m sale price represents only about half of the total funding raised by Curve since the company was created a decade ago and remains light years away from the $50-$60 billion prospective valuation promised by management at the height of the fintech boom years.

IDC Ventures, which holds a 12% stake in the firm has been lobbying against the deal since reports first emerged about a potential sale.

Efforts by IDC to remove Lord Fink, the City grandee who chairs Curve, and Shachar Bialick, the fintech’s founder and chief executive, as directors of the company were recently voted down by shareholders.

IDC remains implacably opposed to the sale, expressing concern over a lack of transparency about the deal structure and distribution of proceeds to shareholders.

“IDC does not intend to support the proposed sale and does not believe that it is capable of being implemented without its support,” the firm states.

Bialick has previously acknowledged that the sale price was disappointing, and warned that the company would probably run out of money this year unless a sale to Lloyds was agreed.