Almost a year after announcing it had acquired ACON Bank (ACON), JFD Brokers (JFD) released a statement on Tuesday saying that it has been given the regulatory thumbs up to complete its takeover of the German investment bank.
The retail broker first detailed its acquisition in January of this year when it revealed that it would be taking a 51 percent stake in ACON. That deal gives JFD the option to buy another 20 percent of the firm in the future.
At the time of that announcement, as you can probably gather from this article, the deal was still subject to regulatory strictures. To put it simply, German authorities had to approve the deal before it could go through.
And now they have. JFD said in its statement that both the Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht (BaFin) and Central Bank of Germany (Bundesbank) have given their stamp of approval to the acquisition.
Broadening the Product Set
With a German investment banking license, JFD will now be able to broaden its set of products and service offering - something worth doing in the wake of the European Securities and Markets Authority’s latest product intervention measures.
Alongside membership in the Vienna Stock Exchange and Deutsche Boerse, the retail broker can provide digital asset management, on-exchange stock trading, and investment advisory services as a result of its acquisition.
JFD also said that it plans to cater more to the institutional space with “capital and Liquidity solutions.” In terms of geographical growth, the broker also said in its statement that it would be targeting Latin America and South-East Asia.
“We are excited to become an integral part of JFD,” said ACON’s CEO Michael Hasenstab. “We can Leverage from its global operations while bringing outstanding experience in investment banking, trading services as well as in the provision of advisory solutions for institutional clients in terms of M&A and debt financing.”
