Building a Better World with a Transparent Investment Platform

Developing markets have tremendous potential.  Growing populations, abundant natural resources, passionate entrepreneurs and increasingly educated workforces.  In too many cases, the obstacle to a thriving high-growth economy is a shortage of suitable funding.

At the same time, investors in mature economies struggle to find low-risk investments with sufficient yield to support their portfolio objectives.

Cathmere is a stealth-stage Web 3.0 venture building the bridge from high-impact developing market opportunities to sophisticated mature-market investors’ needs for higher yield at low risk, through comprehensive, auditable real-time data transparency via the CQR®Chain and CQR®Invest platforms.

Emerging Markets Opportunities

  • Health Care

    Healthcare service providers in most emerging markets need more equipment than they can finance. Pay-per-scan, renting and leasing are helping to increase access to equipment and close the (still considerable) gap relative to industrialized markets.

  • Energy

    Many emerging markets have ample wind, sunlight and open spaces to support deployment of renewable energy, at utility-scale near cities and micro-grids for smaller towns. Reliable energy will unlock commerce, service and quality of life benefits, but requires innovative financing and metering integration

  • Agriculture

    Some of the most fertile and readily arable land in the world can be found in emerging and frontier markets, yet agricultural yields often lag because modern planting and harvesting equipment are not available to farming operations. Leasing, yield sharing rental programs and mechanization services are ways to provide this access, allowing the operators to pay for the use of the equipment with the cash flows they help generate.

  • Technology Infrastructure

    Emerging markets are catching up rapidly in giving people access to the internet, in part enabled by the rapidly growing number of subsea and terrestrial cables and co-location datacenters. However, the Capex required for businesses to use the improved connectivity is often prohibitive. Rental programs for servers and storage turns Capex into Opex, and eases the path to digitization of their economies.

Asset Backed Securities for Emerging Markets

In mature markets, Commercial Asset-Backed Securities (ABS) are an important pillar of institutional investors’ fixed-income portfolios, with an estimated $1.7 Trillion outstanding in 2023*.  These investments are secured directly against the lease payments that businesses are contractually obligated to pay to use the equipment, and against the underlying asset.  The result is very low default risk for investors compared with, for instance, mortgage-backed securities, where fluctuations in real-estate asset values can have a significant impact on loan repayment rates.

The equipment leasing industry focuses more on the value of the equipment for the customer and the cash flow generated by its use, and less on the historical P&L and balance sheet of the customer, which helps businesses develop and grow.

Historically, Asset Backed Securities have only been created for large institutional investors, focusing on large quantities of high-value assets in mature markets, which makes the ABS market inaccessible for contracts originated in emerging markets.

Cathmere’s digital-first platforms make it possible to replicate the attractive structure of ABS, with its benefits to both investors and business equipment lessors, at the much smaller scale needed to connect Emerging Markets businesses with individual accredited investors.

* Source: Guggenheim Investments, JP Morgan, eMBS. Data as of 2.28.2023

Building with Leading-Edge
Web 3.0 Technologies

Leadership

The Cathmere leadership team brings decades of experience in early-stage investment, technology-led new venture creation, and business building in Africa and other emerging markets

Frans van Schaik

  • Founder and CEO

    In addition to serving as CEO of Cathmere, Frans is Chairman of African Asset Finance Company, Inc., and serves on a number of affiliated company boards.

    Previously Frans founded Tribute Capital, was a managing partner at Logispring, served as (interim) CEO of a number of industrial groups, and was a junior partner at Gilde Investment Funds. He has also co-founded several businesses including an equipment leasing company.

    Frans holds a BA in History, and LLM from the University of Amsterdam and a post-graduate diploma in International Relations from the University of Vienna.

  • VP Software Engineering

    Matt is a seasoned engineering leader and entrepreneur with 25 years of experience building high-performing teams and bringing new software technology and products to market in the US and globally in highly regulated industries including finance, medical and military/defense.

    Prior to joining Cathmere, Matt led the design and implementation of Blockchain Regulatory and Compliance Technologies at Paxos. His prior experience also includes senior technology leadership positions at Canonical and Northrop Grumman.

  • Co-Founder and CTO

    Brad is an experienced growth technology executive, having served in strategic, investment and operating roles.

    Most recently he built Trucking Fleet Solutions into a $25+m business for Stoneridge (NYSE: SRI), a publicly traded tier-1 automotive electronics supplier. As the founder and principal of Princeton Management Associates, Brad performed strategy, and advisory roles for many growth companies, including QualityHealth (sold to RealAge), Confidex (sold to Beontag) and Steerpath (a leading provider of smart-building technologies).

    Brad was Strategy and Technology partner at the industrial innovation investor Logispring, and a Principal in Booz Allen Hamilton’s Information Technology group.

    Brad recieved his MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and his BA in Electrical Engineering from Yale University

Join the team

Cathmere is seeking experienced senior developers that are passionate about both Web 3.0 and achieving business success through positive social impact.