Craig (left) and Daniel Milne have retained a majority 51% stake in the online auction business they set up five years ago
By Kristy Dorsey
Shareholders who backed a £200,000 crowdfunding campaign by Whisky Hammer have been bought out in a multi-million-pound deal that sees Hong Kong’s Rare Whisky Holdings take a 49 per cent stake in the Scottish online auction site.
According to Daniel Milne, who set up Whisky Hammer in 2016 with his brother Craig, the agreement creates a “clean” ownership structure going forward and paves the way for global expansion following revenue growth of 70% last year. Retail investors who participated in the 2019 Crowdcube fundraising – proceeds of which were used to help pay for a new purpose-built facility in Aberdeenshire – received a 2.6x return on their investment.