(Previously Ranked 27) “We’ve built a business in a difficult time and attracted a lot of clients, so we must be doing something right,” says Saxo Bank co-CEO Kim Fournais, 44. The Copenhagen-based bank — more properly an investment firm, because it doesn’t make loans — attracts customers in two ways: through direct online marketing, and by “white labeling” its technology, enabling banks to buy Saxo’s front-end trading system and sell it under their own brand names.
Citigroup and Cortal Consors are two of 137 white-labelers, up from 120 two years ago. Net assets have nearly doubled since mid-2008, to Dkr18.5 billion ($3 billion) from Dkr10 billion. Fournais founded the firm as Midas in 1992, has been running it with co-CEO Lars Seier Christensen, 47, since 1995 and relaunched it as Saxo in 2001. Especially popular among foreign exchange traders, the flagship Saxo Trader platform is available in 22 languages.
In March, the company introduced a new equity platform, giving retail and institutional traders access to 11,000 stocks on 23 exchanges, 800 exchange-traded funds, and 6,000 single-stock and 20 index-tracking contracts for difference (the latter are similar to swaps and are prevalent in Europe). Showing its investment-banking colors, the company also launched real estate investment vehicle Saxo Properties to take advantage of banks’ “taking their balance sheets down,” says Fournais. “Parts of the market are quite attractive now for long-term investment.”
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