Companies often use ESOP to align interests with their employees. Many early employees of listed companies have accumulated the majority of their wealth through stock rewards. When short-term capital needs arise, rather than selling those shares in the market (which creates share price pressure), pledging the shares to EquitiesFirst is an alternative for upside retention and alignment of interests.

The EquitiesFirst financing model requires a temporary title transfer of shares during the term of the loan transaction. We analyzed the share price performance of transactions completed by EquitiesFirst in Asia, address concerns about short interest, the cost of capital compared to margin lending and the benefits of our lending model.

Fundraising activities in small-cap companies underperformed large-cap companies in 2020 - May 2021 in Asia as they strive to survive through COVID-19. Given the non-purpose feature of our financing solution, this piece looks at how substantial shareholders of small-cap companies could make use of EquitiesFirst’s competitive financing to unlock capital for their companies.

Private banks and traditional lenders are under increasing pressure from macroeconomic and regulatory forces. With an established risk-management system, EquitiesFirst’s single-stock financing solution complements traditional private banks and their client offerings. This piece decodes how private banks benefit from collaborating with EquitiesFirst to solve client needs.

Crypto-backed loans can help drive down various risks associated with corporate investing in Bitcoin. Active in the crypto-backed lending sector, EquitiesFirst takes a deep-dive look at this trend and the implications for Asia.

Thailand is a key market for EquitiesFirst where the lack of support from the traditional banking sector and the higher cost of raising capital from the bond market have led to share pledge financing being a more attractive channel to access capital via private credit.