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Cortal launching first European online broker
Paribas subsidiary will launch in 9 international markets
By Barbara Kollmeyer, CBS MarketWatch
Last Update: 2:08 PM ET Sep 10, 1999 NewsWatch
PARIS (CBS.MW) -- French banking giant BNP-Paribas SA unveiled the first pan-European online broker on Friday, which will debut in eight European countries and give access to nine international stockmarkets starting September 27.
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Updated:
9/11/99 2:56:02 PM ET
Discount brokerage house and Paribas subsidiary, Cortal, will launch the online system under the name E-cortal.
Online brokerage houses have been springing up across Europe, but investors normally only get access to one or two markets.
E-cortal will launch in Austria, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom, with contact by telephone and Internet provided in each language.
By the end of the year, the company promises U.S. investors will be able to buy and sell European stocks via its partnership with Ameritrade Holding Corp. (AMTD: news, msgs).
European shopping
The nine exchanges provided will be grouped under the World Stocks Shop which will include the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq, the FTSE 100, the German Xetra Dax, the Paris CAC-40 and main exchanges in Amsterdam, Madrid, Milan and Zurich.
Investors will be able to pick shares listed on the principles markets and new European markets, as well as warrants and Cortal's euro-certificates. The company will provide real-time quotes and financial information on each of the stock exchanges, company profiles and analysis through a variety of international search engines.
Under the Funds Shop, investors will be able to choose between 200 mutual funds managed by nine international asset management companies, authorized to deal in most of Europe.
E-cortal will charge a flat fee of $23 (15 euro) for market-priced orders up to $7,624 (5,000 euros). For all other types of orders it will charge a flat fee of $53 (35 euros) up to 5,000 euros. A subscription fee of 6 euros per month, excluding tax, will be waived until the end of the year.
Cornering the market
Cortal said while 30 percent of Internet users are European, they represent only 9 percent of worldwide electronic commerce. "Europe therefore has a strong potential for development," it said.
Philippe Nahum, member of the management board for Cortal, told CBS MarketWatch that the company expects to build on its 453,000 traditional customers in France, Belgium and Luxembourg, predicting that these customers will want to go online as well.
He pointed to one estimate by JP Morgan, that European Internet users will top 127 million by 2002. "Basically what will happen is that the Internet is going to boom and what we're seeing is that once people have access to the Internet and get familiar with it, they find it's efficient and cheap," said Nahum.
In Germany, the two big online broking houses are ConSors and Commerzbank's Comdirect.de. ConSors, which went public on Germany's Neuer Markt in May (see story), controls more than 25 percent of the online brokerage accounts in Germany. See full story
In London, Charles Schwab (SCH: news, msgs) and E-Trade (EGRP: news, msgs) launched online broking services in July. The most recent newcomer is DLJdirect, the online arm of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, which launched at the end of August |
