Fimart Italia launches a crowdfunding campaign on Opstart

Fimart Italia srl, innovative startup based in Rovereto (Trento), founded last May and 100% controlled by the American company Look Lateral Inc., has launched an equity crowdfunding campaign on Opstart. The company, with a pre-money valuation of $3.9 million (€3.3 million), has collected to date over $108,500 (€92,000) on a minimum target of $118.000 (€100,000) and a maximum of $1.36 million (€1.15 million).

Through its platform, based on a certified database, Look Lateral allows art owners to identify and monetize their permanent collections to strengthen their capital reserves, investors to acquire and exchange shares in the world’s most important works of art, and artists to receive royalties during the economic life of their work.

Read more about the crowdfunding campaign launched by Fimart Italia and stay on top of the market with the latest business news brought to you by our companion app, Born2Invest.

Fimart uses blockchain technology to ease the process of changing the ownership of works of art

Look Lateral, founded in Seattle in 2018, was created from the meeting of the art market with the most innovative fintech technologies and responds to the global need for greater transparency, accessibility and liquidity for those who want to invest in works of art. The company, in fact, allows everyone, from small investors to family offices and investment funds, to invest in works of art, thanks to the proprietary digital platform in which the works are tagged, valued and placed as an underlying of financial products.

Fimart is an art financial market that takes advantage of the blockchain to automate and reduce barriers and costs to change ownership of works of art. The latter is tagged and linked to the provenance system (a certified and secure database with information on works of art) through an issue transaction (smart contract) that includes all technical and legal components, including information on financial planning. Therefore, all data in the provenance system is added to the smart contract and included as an integral part of the contract, including the indexing algorithm. Thanks to the smart contract tool, it is also possible to sell a work of art in its entirety, or only parts of it, by “splitting” the ownership of the work.

Finally, the valuation of the artwork is accurate and up-to-date, ensuring full transparency of the price and market performance, thanks to the indexing methodologies and pricing algorithms developed by Look Lateral together with Antonio Mele, Professor of Finance at the Swiss Finance Institute and co-inventor of the Fixed-Income volatility counterparts to the equity VIX, adopted by the Chicago Board Options Exchange and the S&P Dow Jones Index.

Thanks to the smart contract tool, it is possible to sell a work of art in its entirety, or only parts of it, “splitting” the ownership of the work

Buyers simultaneously obtain prizes and other rights to the work. To exploit the full potential of tokenizing a work of art, Look Lateral is creating a simple and secure place to quickly buy and sell fractions of a work of art. This place is called Fimart and it will be a real financial art market, where it will be possible to create financial products with works of art as the underlying: from property split to convertible bonds to loans with works of art as collateral.

The campaign aims to develop in Italy the business related to the Fimart platform (Financial Marketplace of Art) and implement a commercial strategy towards clients, galleries, museums, collectors, investors and other potential strategic or institutional partners exclusively for the Italian territory and other European Union countries that will be identified. In particular, resources will be concentrated on two macro-areas: the set-up of financial instruments and an investment fund; and the development of technology.

Look Lateral was founded in 2007 as a lifestyle, fashion and culture magazine by journalist Maria Grazia Savoia. Promoting a cosmopolitan vision of appreciation of art and creativity, the magazine was distributed with Marie Claire Maison and later with the Finegil de La Repubblica Group. After his death in 2009, his son Niccolò took over the publishing house in 2012 and expanded the brand to its first digital iteration, as a virtual art fair with works from highly selected galleries throughout Europe. After selling over 100 major artworks in two years, Niccolò Savoia has once again expanded the vision of Look Lateral to become the world’s leading digital and financial ecosystem to democratize art ownership. Currently he has brought together a team of entrepreneurs, professionals and consultants, specialized in art, finance and tech, to realize the global dimensions of the company’s vision.

Look Lateral boasts contracts or privileged contacts with more than 250 of the best galleries on an international level and more than 50 galleries are already partners; moreover, they are part of the network of illustrious collectors, curators and experts, and the major international fairs. The company aims to be listed on the stock exchange, indicatively in 4-6 years. The subsidiary Fimart Italia, to which financial and equity autonomy is reserved, will follow the path of the American parent company in the same period of time. In any case, it is expected that the American parent company will buy back the shares sold in a period of time not exceeding 6 years.

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(Featured image by mollyroselee via Pixabay)

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