The capital story behind Stewards Inc.’s arrival on Nasdaq begins with a number: more than $153 million in merchant cash advances deployed since 2020 to over 10,000 small and medium-sized businesses across the United States. That lending book, built by a Fort Lauderdale company that traded for years as FAVO Capital, is now the core asset of a Nasdaq Capital Market listing under the ticker SWRD. The milestone was sealed on Oct. 14, when South African financier Glen Steward rang the opening bell at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York’s Times Square alongside his leadership team.
The path to the bell was neither short nor cheap in effort. Stewards began trading on Sept. 10 after moving up from the over-the-counter market, a step the company’s own filings had warned in April it was not yet equipped to take. Steward, who served as chief strategy officer before becoming chairman of the board in April, describes the regulatory environment as challenging, citing the governance, reporting, audit readiness, legal work, investor communication and operational structure that US markets monitor closely to protect investor interests. There were sleepless nights, he says, and the company had to leave its comfort zone to meet the standard.
The economics of the platform now listed are deliberately diversified. Stewards runs a private credit business, a real estate portfolio and a growing technology arm focused on asset tokenization and digital treasury. The property leg arrived in August 2025 with the purchase of the 1818 Park asset in a $190 million deal, a scale of transaction that signals the group’s ambition beyond its lending origins. In private credit, Steward sees substantial opportunity in providing capital to businesses underserved by traditional banking channels, arguing that the asset class can offer a higher return for the same or lesser risk, provided underwriting is disciplined. In real assets, the group looks for durable cash flows; in financial infrastructure, for efficiency, transparency and access to capital.
Ownership and identity were consolidated before the listing. FAVO Capital, founded by Vincent Napolitano, now chairman emeritus, was rebranded to Stewards in November 2025, bringing the American lender under the brand Steward has built across South Africa and Mauritius over close to three decades. That brand sits on a capital base with an unusual geography. Steward began his career in London at Merrill Lynch and DMG Deutsche Morgan Grenfell, then returned home to build investment businesses in South Africa and Mauritius. His advisory firm, Stewards Investment Capital, works with wealthy individuals and institutional investors on alternative assets. He credits Mauritius, with its rule of law and its position as a bridge between Africa, global capital and the United States, as the launchpad that carried the group into the American market.
The operating team behind the listing reflects that geography. Bilal Adam is described as the driving engine behind global expansion; Nathaniel Tsang Mang Kin runs the company day to day; Suneeta Motala crafted and implemented the firm’s strategy. On the US side, Shaun Quin is a founding pillar, Vaughan Korte handles the hardest operating problems, Katy Murless brings the discipline Steward calls indispensable in a listed company, and Scott McGowan drove investor relations, corporate messaging and the capital-markets communications a Nasdaq listing demands. Steward is explicit that the listing, while carrying the company name, represents the efforts of hundreds of people over many years, and that clients, shareholders and employees built the trust underneath it.
What the listing buys, in Steward’s telling, is access. A Nasdaq quote enhances visibility and credibility and provides a platform to reach broader pools of capital and stronger partners. But he frames it as validation rather than completion, and the value case still rests on execution: disciplined capital allocation, prudent risk management and long-term relationships. His investment philosophy, summarised as preservation, compounding and discipline, underpins that stance. Capital permanently lost cannot compound; consistent returns over long periods, not extraordinary single years, create exceptional outcomes; and remaining rational when others are emotional is an investor’s most valuable edge.
Meanwhile, his reading of the market points the same direction. African wealth is globalising, with successful families diversifying across currencies, jurisdictions and asset classes. Private markets, particularly private credit, are drawing capital away from traditional stocks and bonds. Family wealth is institutionalising around governance, succession planning and preservation. And technology is digitising financial infrastructure, settlement systems and capital markets, the very direction of Stewards’ own tokenization work. His advice to African investors follows from the same logic: think beyond returns, keep surplus capital out of the currency the operating business depends on, reduce concentration risk, and treat wealth as a responsibility to structure and transfer, not merely an asset to hold.
The through-line for investors watching the story is a business that moved from over-the-counter obscurity to a recognised public market by combining an American lending book, a $190 million real estate position and a Mauritian platform, all under a chairman who set the Nasdaq objective the moment he stepped onto US soil. Whether the listing converts into durable shareholder value now depends on the one variable Steward insists matters most: execution.