Wednesday, May 06, 2009
Gulf News
Dubai: Denmark's Saxo Bank - which offers online trading and investment services - has opened an office at the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), the first Danish bank to establish a regional presence.
The majority of Saxo Bank's business is based on its online trading platform for investment trading as well as wealth management. A single facility has been developed for Foreign Exchange markets, 28 international equity markets, 18 international commodities and futures exchanges as well as a selection of other options, and fixed income products and services.
"A lot of people are now reviewing how they do their trading, how they do their investment, and looking more today at what is the quality of the product or service," co-chief executive and co-founder Lars Seier Christensen said, speaking to Gulf News.
"The financial crisis has levelled out the playing field very much. People, with some justification, have less trust in the financial sector as a whole which means that some of the traditional patterns are breaking up. They are also looking to making more of the decisions," he said, adding that the "modern investor" is changing the industry from advice-driven high cost high fees, to more self empowerment, and lower costs and fees.
The Dubai office will be headed by Shailendra Robin Patel, senior executive director. "We have a sufficiently large client base in the region so we wanted to be close to them," Patel told Gulf News. "Our total assets around the world is around 20 billion Danish kroner (Dh13.15 billion) and the region contributes about 4 or 5 per cent of our total business at the moment. We have a robust business plan to grow that to 8 per cent in the next three years," he added.
Saxo Bank's foray into the Gulf region and particularly Dubai has been welcomed by DIFC governor Oman Bin Sulaiman, who said that "there is a huge demand for the services they [Saxo Bank] provide investors and the Middle East will benefit from their presence here."
Christensen concurred that Dubai was an important global financial centre, and could potentially provide a platform for other ventures in the region. "Depending on market conditions we intend to use our new office as the first step towards establishing similar presence in other GCC countries," he said.
Gulf News 2009. All rights reserved.
