On 4 April 2016 Björn Lindvall described the former CreditSquare’s move from debt advice into institutional marketplace lending. He argued that established but still relatively small companies could benefit from the kind of relationship once associated with merchant banks. His article singled out businesses with net profits between £750,000 and £10 million as the segment he had in mind.
What the comparison meant
An investor unfamiliar with an operating company needed someone to assess its contracts, margins, management and ability to repay. The borrower needed someone who could structure the facility around the business. Lindvall’s case for a specialist marketplace depended on doing both jobs well and maintaining access to capital. Technology could organise information, but it could not decide how much confidence to place in the company’s forecast.
The piece set out a founder’s view of how the market might develop. Charles Thorburn’s LendIt conference account records how the same business described its intended loan sizes later that month.
Sources and further reading
- Historical CreditSquare page (Wayback Machine) — checked 2026-11-08
- Björn Lindvall’s April 2016 article — checked 2026-11-08