Our market is a bulletin board

The Seedrs Secondary Market operates as a bulletin board that enables you to express an interest to sell or buy shares held under the Seedrs Nominee Structure during a Trading Cycle.

Because it's a bulletin board, you can't agree a sale without a named buyer

The Secondary Market allows you to connect with other buyers and sellers in order for you to agree on a price and quantity of shares (“a Share Lot”) to be exchanged. Seedrs facilitates the share lot exchange once both the buyer and seller have agreed to the Transfer Agreement. At this point, the funds for the Share Lot will be deposited into the seller’s Investment Account and Seedrs will record the buyer as the new beneficial owner of the shares.

When a Share Lot is listed on the Secondary Market, the seller will not have agreed to the Transfer Agreement given that a buyer has not yet been found. In order to purchase a Share Lot, a buyer is required to agree to the Transfer Agreement that will include all the relevant details relating to the Share Lot.

The seller is then notified and will be required to counter-sign the Transfer Agreement in order for Seedrs to complete the transaction. Until this time, the seller has the ability to cancel their request to sell the listed Share Lot if they wish to do so.

Given that the Secondary Market operates as a bulletin board, as opposed to a more automated trading facility that you may be familiar with in the public markets, it is only currently possible for Seedrs to provide a way for buyers and sellers to connect and then agree to a transaction. This means that the seller is not able to pre-agree a Share Lot sale to any buyer found by Seedrs at the time of requesting to sell their Share Lot.

Further automation whilst possible places significant burdens on the businesses

In order to offer a more automated service, the Secondary Market would require significant development and the underlying businesses would be subject to a number of reporting requirements, similar to that required of publicly listed businesses. There are of course a number of advantages to operating a more automated trading facility, and this may be considered in future. However, given that the Secondary Market is still in beta and to ensure there is no extra burden on our portfolio businesses, we have elected to continue to operate the Secondary Market as a bulletin board. We are continuing to develop the Secondary Market within these constraints to provide both buyers and sellers with the best possible service.