As was exclusively reported at LeapRate at the beginning of June, retail forex broker and social trading leader eToro has developed plans to do away with the separate ‘Openbook’ social trading brand, and fold Openbook’s functionality into an upgraded and unified eToro platform.
Several months in the works, and eToro has now formally unveiled the new eToro in an email sent to both Openbook and eToro clients, in a move to begin the migration to the ‘New eToro’.
Visitors to the Openbook website at openbook.etoro.com as of today are now greeted by the following screenshot, including a link to the New eToro.
eToro has raised a warchest of nearly $40 million, bringing on board several powerful investors including Russia’s Sberbank and China’s Ping An, and most recently Germany’s Commerzbank. It appears, with the New eToro now formally unveiled, that the company is getting set to put that money to work in expanding its global reach. A first step we recently reported on was opening a Russia office. eToro also joined the list of forex brokers backing major soccer clubs, signing a 3-year sponsorship deal with West Ham United.
The major thinking behind the unified brand move is: Why bother spending time, effort and money building up and marketing two separate brands under the same roof?