BUX, a Netherlands-headquartered financial services firm, has expanded its European footprint with the latest acquisition of the retail brokerage arm of Spanish neobroker, Ninety Nine.
Officially announced on Monday, the acquisition will strengthen the presence of BUX in the Spanish retail brokerage category. Its aim for the deal is to gain an existing client base as it will migrate Ninety Nine’s retail user base to its platform.
“We are proud and delighted to help a new group of Spanish clients create a stable investment base and build a better financial future,” said BUX’s CEO, Yorick Naeff. “Thanks to this acquisition, Ninety Nine users will have access to a wide range of services provided by BUX, such as investing in Spanish, European, and US stocks, ETFs, cryptocurrencies, fractional investing, and the BUX Savings Plan.”
Further, following the acquisition, the Ninety Nine brand will no longer offer B2C brokerage services; it will only focus its resources on providing B2B & B2B2C services to banks, fintech and media groups.
“We have been working for over a year and a half on our B2B strategy, and while it was a difficult decision, we have decided to focus all our efforts on it,” the Founder and CEO of Ninety Nine, Javier Sanz Álvarez, said.
“However, our clients are still very important to us, so we have been working with BUX to provide them with a great alternative to continue investing, including two free shares as a welcome gift, free migration to the BUX platform, and fees almost 50% lower than current ones.”
European Expansion
BUX offerings in Europe include a range of services like commission-free stock tradings, fractional shares and even trading services with contracts for differences and cryptocurrencies. It now has more than a million customers.
The platform is aggressively expanding its footprint in the continent; it is now operational in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Austria and Ireland. In addition, it has a UK subsidiary, which migrated a significant portion of its client base to an EU-based sister company following Brexit. The revenue of the UK company halved to £9.1 million in 2021, with a year-end loss of over £4.2 million.
