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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Business
Kalyeena Makortoff Banking correspondent

The Covid loans, the billionaire … and Starling, the very fast-growing bank

Anne Boden, chief executive of Starling Bank, said it had ‘one of the best banking platforms in the world’.
Anne Boden, chief executive of Starling Bank, said it had ‘one of the best banking platforms in the world’. Photograph: AFP/Getty and Alamy

Aboard his 92-foot yacht in the Bahamas in June 2015, the reclusive Austrian-born billionaire Harald McPike was investigating a new moneymaking opportunity.

Decades after reportedly making his first fortune in blackjack, the gambler turned investor had set his sights on the burgeoning UK fintech market and invited the founder of Starling Bank, Anne Boden, aboard.

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