Rescued fintech Railsr recruits former blockchain chief as new CEO | Business news
Philippe Morel, the former head of SETL, will take over as chief executive of Railsr weeks after parts of it were sold through a pre-packaged administration, Sky News understands.
A payments company saved weeks ago from the brink of outright collapse has lured an experienced fintech boss to spearhead a transformation plan under its new owners.
Sky News has learned that Railsr will announce the appointment of Philippe Morel as its new chief executive on Tuesday.
Mr Morel, the former head of SETL, a blockchain company that was recently sold, will join Railsr just a month after parts of it were sold through an accelerated insolvency process.
The transaction was the culmination of a rapid decline for a company best known in the UK for taking over the UK operations of Wirecard, the scandal-plagued German financial group.
Railsr had been valued at close to $1 billion – the magical “unicorn” status sought by tech start-ups – but saw its assets sold for less than £500,000, according to administrators.
Rick Haythornthwaite, the respected industrialist hired as chairman several months ago, helped steer a path through the company’s financial distress and has now orchestrated the recruitment of a new management team, according to insiders.
Alongside Morel, Railsr is also expected to announce the appointment of Debbie Lotz, a former head of National Australia Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland, as its new chief financial officer.
Nick Charteris, a former Railsr CEO, is rejoining the company as CEO after a brief stint at Crypto.com, according to insiders.
Railsr’s assets were sold to Embedded Finance, a new holding company backed by investors D Squared Capital, Moneta VC and Ventura Capital.
Railsr’s customers, a bank-as-a-service provider formerly known as Railsbank, have millions of end users in the UK.
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The company specializes in so-called embedded financial solutions such as banking services, credit cards and digital wallets.
Before dealing with administration, it had been in takeover talks with Flutterwave, the African payments technology business.
The problems compounded as technology companies struggled to access sufficient standalone funding to survive.
Railsr itself raised a bridge financing round late last year that was designed to provide enough capital to execute a sale.
In total, it had raised well over $100 million in equity since it was set up by Nigel Verdon and Clive Mitchell in 2016.
Mr Verdon once claimed the company “transformed the financial industry the way Apple did the music industry when they created iTunes”.
A Railsr spokeswoman declined to comment.
