Newzulu raises $11.5 million; ASIC chairman cuts back on his travel expenses: Midday Roundup

Crowdsourcing media startup Newzulu has raised $11.5 million in capital to speed-up the company’s overseas expansions and product offerings.

Founded in Australia in 2012 by Alex Hartman and Peter Scarf, Newzulu allows newsrooms to buy verified news photos, videos and text from citizen journalists.

The startup’s parent company, Matilda Media, acquired a French startup called Citizenside in 2013 and employs an editorial team of around 50 people working around the clock to verify content from users.

More recently the company struck a $5.06 million deal with Canadian media and software platform Filemobile.

Co-founder and executive chairman Alexander Hartman said in a statement the latest capital raise was a “great step forward”.

“We believe Newzulu has the ability over the next two years to build significant revenues through selling software platforms, editorial services like Newzulu Live and brand creative services globally,” Hartman said.

“I am grateful to investors for their support of Newzulu and am confident we can successfully execute our business plan, particularly over the next two years as we take Newzulu to the live market.”

ASIC reveals chairman’s travel expenses

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has released the international travel expenditure of its chairman Greg Medcraft for the second half of 2014.

Medcraft has cut his international travel expenses by half in comparison to last year but still spent one in six working days overseas on taxpayer’s money, according to The Australian.

The chairman of the corporate regulator receives a salary of more than $700,000 and spent $128,000 on international travel in the last six months of 2014.

Medcraft plans to spend three days in Korea later this month, and three days in Japan and two days in Germany the month after. 

Shares up on open

Aussie shares have traded higher again this morning, off the back of a strong lead from US markets.

Tristan K’Nell, head of trading at Quay Equities, said in a statement it was good to see a third day of large gains in the oil and energy sector.

“The Australian sharemarket is looking at a tenth straight day of gains, as yesterday’s interest rate cut combines with a strong Wall Street lead and a continued bounce in crude oil to lead our local stocks higher,” K’Nell said.

“Market turnover into lunch was larger than average at $2.181 billion … across the market gains were made in all major sectors but gold.”

The S&P/ASX200 benchmark was up 77.6 points to 5785 points at 11.35am AEDT. On Tuesday, the Dow Jones closed 305.36 points higher, up 1.76% to 17,666.4 points