GL TRADE, the provider of front to back office applications for financial institutions, has acquired 100 percent of the shares in US Company FNX SOLUTIONS, which specialises in the management and processing of OTC products for Capital Markets and Hedge Funds. The deal will be closed in February 2007.
FNX SOLUTIONS expects turnover of €11 million in 2006, much of which is recurrent, and predicts turnover growth of 25 percent per year over the next two years. TRADIX says they currently generate sales of a little over €4.5 million. FNX SOLUTIONS is mainly based in the United States and Japan, but also counts presence in the UK, Thailand, Taipei and Singapore.
The combined business aim to generate a Turnover of about €20 million in 2007, which will represent about 10 percent of the Turnover of the Group. Farid Naib, the CEO and founder of FNX SOLUTIONS, has been appointed as the Global Head of the Capital Markets Front to Back Business Line.
FNX SOLUTIONS’ product offering consists of four main product lines designed mainly for over the counter (OTC) desks at global and regional banks, hedge funds, prime brokers and private banks. FNX SOLUTIONS has recently released a complete margin-trading platform for retail clients and prime brokers.
“FNX SOLUTIONS’ products are used by more than forty clients”, says Naib. “Joining GL TRADE will enable us to draw on the business network of one of the leading ISVs, with an excellent presence in continental Europe where FNX SOLUTIONS has not made deep inroads. FNX SOLUTIONS will benefit from GL TRADE’s international coverage, size and reputation which will allow us access to more ambitious client projects.”
“This deal forms part of our strategy to speed up the development of our multi-instrument positioning and reinforce our establishment within the capital markets, as well as for hedge funds and buy side users in general,” adds Pierre Gatignol, the Chairman and CEO of the GL TRADE Group. “This acquisition will perfectly round out our existing Capital Markets front to back offering, both in terms of functionality and geographically, specifically in the US and Asia, our two regions that are showing strong growth opportunities.”