Taylor Wessing advises Japanese SBI Group on multimillion investment in solarisBank

Jointly with Bertelsmann’s financing subsidiary Arvato Financial Solutions (Arvato), the Japanese investor SBI Group (SBI) invests in solarisBank, a fully licensed German bank enabling companies to offer their customers digital financial services. The Berlin banking platform will receive a total amount of EUR 26.3 m. for series A financing. Besides SBI and Arvato, also existing investors such as FinLeap, Hegus and Yabeo Capital participated in financing the bank, which for 18 months has also held a European banking license.

Taylor Wessing provided legal advice to SBI primarily in regard to financing issues.

Together with this investment, the strategic partnership with industry leaders SBI and Arvato provides a solid foundation for a further expansion of the banking platform while ensuring the equity position for the transaction and credit business. In line with its international ambitions, the young bank’s management team is being reinforced by Roland Folz as future CEO. Gerrit Seidel will take over the chairmanship of the supervisory board from HitFox Group and FinLeap founder Jan Beckers.

The SBI Group, founded in Japan in 1999, has pioneered Internet-based financial services. As the first Internet-based financial conglomerate, SBI offers financial services in fields such as banking, securities, and insurance. In addition to this business, SBI also focuses on venture capital business. And through these initiatives, the enterprise is engaged in cooperative ventures with promising FinTech startups in order to enable innovative financial services. In the coming years, solarisBank intends to expand its business in European and Asian markets and for this purpose is planning to set up joint ventures with SBI to promote business development in Asia.

“The banking-as-a-platform model of solarisBank provides partners with easy-to-integrate digital banking services. In this context we have identified an enormous demand in Asia, which we intend to jointly exploit with our network,” says Yoshitaka Kitao, CEO of SBI.

Legal advisors to the SBI Group

Taylor Wessing: Hassan Sohbi (partner, Frankfurt), Dr. Christian Traichel (partner, Munich), Olga Radjuk (senior associate, Frankfurt), all Corporate; Dr. Volker Baas (partner) and Dr. Anna L. Izzo-Wagner (salary partner), both Banking, Frankfurt.