Further to our earlier report on eToro’s new joint venture with Russian bank Sberbank to serve the Russian online trading market, Sberbank has put out a formal press release. The original PR can be seen here. The full text follows below.
As we wrote in our previous article, the eToro-Sberbank joint venture follows the December 2014 investment made by Sberbank, as part of a $27 million financing round by eToro.
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Partnership launch between Sberbank and eToro investment social network
February 17th 2016, Moscow – Sberbank launched a partnership with eToro, a leading global investment social network, bringing together 5 million traders from 140 countries. Parties reached an agreement on developing and launching a joint venture in Russia.
The joint project with eToro is targeted at both professional traders and beginner investors. The project will let clients converse in a professional social network and perform trading operations involving such assets as leading companies’ stocks, currencies, commodities and indices. The joint venture’s clients will also receive additional benefits when working with eToro through Sberbank’s remote channels.
“The partnership between Sberbank and eToro will enable our clients to take advantage of the vast potential of eToro’s trader community,” Herman Gref, CEO, Chairman of the Executive Board of Sberbank, noted. “The eToro platform features a simple interface, which supports trading in global financial markets, using the knowledge and experience of other traders. This year we plan to establish a joint venture for serving clients in Russia.”
eToro was launched in 2008. The company’s mission is to offer a platform for both beginner traders and professionals where they are be able to converse and share experience, and that is easy and intuitively in terms of usability. The eToro platform allows users to carry out deals at any time, including by phone; to receive information from millions of traders around the world, to learn about investing and learn from each other, follow strategies for other investors and copy the best deals.
Yoni Assia, the CEO and founder of eToro, noted: “We are pleased that our partnership with Sberbank will enable us to provide access to our services to the clients of the largest Russian bank, as well as to offer an alternative financial instrument and innovational platform for investments in financial markets”.
In 2015, eToro launched a Russian version of its next generation trading platform with integrated innovational and intuitive trading instruments.
Sberbank is Russia’s largest bank and a leading global financial institution. Sberbank holds almost one third of aggregate Russian banking sector assets, it is the key lender to the national economy and the biggest deposit taker in Russia. The Central Bank of the Russian Federation is the founder and principal shareholder of Sberbank owning 50% of the Bank’s authorized capital plus one voting share, with the remaining 50% held by domestic and international investors. Sberbank has more than 135 million individual customers and more than 1 million corporate clients in 22 countries. Sberbank has the largest distribution network in Russia with almost 17,000 branches, and its international operations include UK, US, CIS, Central and Eastern Europe, Turkey and other countries.
The Bank holds the general banking license No.1481 issued by the Bank of Russia. Official websites of the Bank: www.sberbank.com (Sberbank Group website), www.sberbank.ru.
eToro is a leading global social network for trading, bringing together 5 million registered users from 140 countries with thousands of new accounts opened daily. eToro’s mission is to simplify access to financial markets and make the trading process more socially oriented, clear and transparent.
Since its launch in 2008, eToro has developed a reputation as social trading market leader, a status that was further proven at FinovateEurope 2015, an expo of premier innovation in finance and banking technology, where the company was recognised with an award in the Best of Show category. The company’s CEO and founder Yoni Assia has been included in the Financial News FinTech40 list of influential people.
Global social platform eToro enables registered users to converse with each other, copy traders activity and monitor their activities, deriving benefit for oneself from their experience and success. This element of the community is the first of its kind and provides for transparent and open trading as compared to traditional isolated trading platforms.
eToro’s activity is regulated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission and FCA UK.