Saxo Bank acquires Synthesis Bank
Danish Based Saxo Bank has successfully acquired Geneva based Synthesis Bank, a quickly growing player in the aggressively marketed-to Swiss Online Trading Market, with major players like Swissquote (57 % market share) , Tradenet, Yellow-Net, E-sider and others
The takeover is a friendly one; Saxo Bank was a partner with Synthesis and they both use the same trading platform.
The online trading market is growing quickly and the potential is big: Swissquote estimates that there is a total of 400′000 potential online traders in Switzerland, while only 120′000 currently have an account with one of the major online traders. In Germany, apparently a more developed market, there are 4 Mio online traders, with Germany being 10x as big as Switzerland, the number does not appear that unrealistic.
It will be interesting to see whether any of the smaller players has a chance to become a serious competitor to Swissquote that has a 6 Mio CHF p. a. marketing budget.
Further reading:
Landbote about Online Trading
http://www.synthesisbank.com/files/pressReview/derlandbote20030320.pdf
Strategy Paper for Tradejet
http://www.tempobrain.ch/de/tempobrain_aug_08.pdf
Tags: online broker, online trading, saxo bank, stock, synthesis bank, takeover