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Non-Tech : Charles Schwab (SCH) -- A tech-stock profile? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: X Y Zebra who wrote (777)	7/7/1999 11:57:00 AM
From: stock_bull69	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1390

INTERVIEW-Schwab wants to be world's online broker Reuters Story - July 07, 1999 11:08 By Michael Shields ZURICH, July 7 (Reuters) - Internet brokerage king Charles Schwab & Son Inc wants to build on its success in the U.S. and British markets to become the leading online broker in Europe if not the world, its European chief said on Wednesday. The time and money it has spent to master stock trading via orders on the Internet puts it in a good position to profit from the coming boom in online trading in Europe, Charles Schwab Europe Chief Executive Bob Duste told Reuters. "I think one of the things we have really learned and gained great experience about is managing the technology and managing its growth and scale," he said after a news conference to launch Schwab's service to Swiss investors. Schwab has more than 1,800 staff working on information technology and hundreds of computer programmers focused just on programming for the Internet, he said, and has invested heavily to ensure it has the hardware able to handle huge volumes. "I think that really positions us well to take advantage of these opportunities because that is experience, learning and infrastructure that took us a long time and a lot of money and investment to get to. For others to get there starting from scratch is going to be very difficult, I think," he said. Asked if Schwab -- the number one online broker in the United States and Britain's leading execution-only broker -- had the same goal for Europe and the rest of the world, he said: "Absolutely, absolutely." He declined to give a timetable for meeting this ambitious goal while patiently expanding market by market in Europe and keeping a special eye on bourses' efforts to create pan-European trading in major European shares. "I'm not sure if we can put a timeframe on when we will be number one in the world or even number one in Europe. The best of goals are those that are pretty far out in front of you that you can continue to strive for," Duste said. "I think the competitive landscape is going to be challenging here and we will always have people nipping at our heels and people pushing to drive us forward. But that has always served us well in the States." Schwab made Switzerland the continental Europe beachhead for its service in trading U.S. and British stocks because of its prosperous economy, concentration of wealthy investors, familiarity with English and high density of computer users. Schwab is counting on Europe's online traders to follow the trend in the U.S. and British markets. In the first quarter of 1999, Schwab had on average 104,000 daily U.S. trades online that accounted for 65 percent of total trades. U.S. online trading has basically doubled over the past year, and Duste said Europe could grow just as fast. "I think in early years we can achieve at least that kind of a growth rate. What we've seen in the U.K. in the past 12 months has actually been even faster adoption than what we saw in the U.S.," he said, citing growing public awareness of the Internet. "One of the biggest challenges we have is getting people to try it. Once they try it, they can see that investing is the perfect application for the Internet," he noted. Schwab expects its cut-rate commissions to lure customers away from banks which charge higher fees, but also offer comprehensive research and investment advice