Funding Circle co-founder Samir Desai to leave board

The former boss and co-founder of Funding Circle is leaving the board of the lender to small businesses in a move that further distances the company from its tumultuous past.
Samir Desai, 41, who was the group’s initial chief executive and led it for 12 years, will step down as a non-executive director in a month’s time.
The businessman was hailed as one of the biggest stars of Britain’s financial technology sector before Funding Circle’s flotation in 2018, but the listing proved disastrous and he stepped back to become a non-executive director at the beginning of 2022.
His decision to leave the lender altogether means that none of Funding Circle’s three co-founders are still involved in running the company.
“Samir has been instrumental in building Funding Circle into the highly innovative business it is today,” Andrew Learoyd, the group’s chairman, said.
Funding Circle was a pioneer of retail peer-to-peer lending, whereby members of the public lend to companies. It was founded in 2010 by Desai, Andrew Mullinger and James Meekings, who had become friends while studying at Oxford University.
It clinched a £1.5 billion price tag when it joined the stock market in a deal that triggered large payouts for its founders, but the shares immediately tumbled from their 440p listing price amid investors’ nervousness about the lofty valuation put on a lossmaking business.
Then the peer-to-peer market was poleaxed by the pandemic in 2020 and by mounting regulatory scrutiny. In 2022 Funding Circle permanently shut its retail peer-to-peer operations to focus on channelling financing from lending institutions to small businesses.
It has made an annual profit only once since its listing, although Lisa Jacobs, who replaced Desai as chief executive, is leading a turnaround. This month she said the business was on track to become profitable. Her overhaul has included cutting about 120 job, as well as selling its American division.
Meekings, 41, stood down from running Funding Circle’s British business in 2019, while Mullinger, also 41, stepped away from the group in 2016. Desai now focuses on running Super Payments, a company he founded after Jacobs succeeded him at Funding Circle. He remains one of Funding Circle’s biggest shareholders, however, with a stake of about 4.9 per cent.
In a further break from the company’s past, the group is hunting for a successor to Learoyd, 63, who has been a non-executive director at the business since the year it was founded and has been its chairman since 2016. Funding Circle has said that it plans to appoint a new chairman by March next year.
Shares in the company closed down 2½p, or 2 per cent, at 124½p.