ETX Capital targets Hungary and Poland in expansion push

After launching its trading platform in Romania last week, UK-based ETX Capital plans to further expand in the CEE by teaming up with partners in neighboring Hungary and Poland, says Andrew Edwards, CEO of the financial company.

Why did you choose Romania as the first CEE country to expand into?

We did some market research and spoke to the local regulator, which produced positive results. We have found some very acceptable local partners who were interested in talking to us and helping us develop the market.

Our industry is very small in terms of the number of customers. We think that the whole CFD (e.n. contracts for difference) industry consists of only about 300,000 active customers so you don’t need that many customers for it to be quite a successful project for us. What we are not going for is a large group of small customers through this hard sales strategy that I’ve heard other companies from Cyprus have applied. We’re going for much more of a longer term, fewer but more valuable customers.

Do you have further expansion plans?

We’re looking at some partners in Hungary and Poland. We are definitely going for an Eastern European play at the moment. We have found that there has been such a low penetration of some of these countries by the major established players so we think there is a real opportunity for us.

What are your thoughts on Romania’s pipeline of IPOs in the energy sector?

Yes, we are aware of that and it’s quite exciting. Romania needs to make sure these are successful IPOs because I think this will pave the way for a whole series of further IPOs. If they get these ones right, I think this will be a great success for Romania. If they get it wrong, you then run the risk of people placing stocks in places like Poland or even the UK. You need to get the retail investors involved as well.

ovidiu.posirca@business-review.ro

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