Poor investors – that was a convoluted one from Opera and OPay. Yes, “investors in web browser company Opera … told a federal judge in Manhattan that the company and some of its brass must face their proposed securities class action because Opera failed to properly inform them about its participation in the fintech sector in the leadup to its 2018 public offering.” Yes, Opera, the browser business, omitted fintech from its IPO, investors say.
“OPay (not Opera) had a microlending business (among many other businesses). Plaintiffs improperly conflate Opera and OPay in the complaint,”
The owner of Opera (he bought it from the European creators) is known as the kingpin of fintech including OPay, the category-shaking operator in Nigeria. Some investors thought they were buying into OPay without knowing OPay was not part of the Opera IPO deal. Not sure about that though, as IPO is never on a word of mouth, everything is written down. They could have read properly.
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OPay today, the company claims, holds 60% of the mobile money market in Nigeria with excess of 5 million customers. If that is true, and with its claimed 300,000 agents, OPay is bigger than Paga, First Bank and other banks on agency banking size. So, looking at the trajectory and the huge prize ahead, the investors want help from the court on Opera and OPay.
Largely, Opera is not a great business but OPay is a superb venture. Of the $301 billion consumer transactions in Nigeria, more than 95% remain on cash. So, there is a huge prize in this business of digitizing payment. Investors want some of those goodies as part of investing in Opera. The court has a job at hand.
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