US futures broker and financial services group StoneX has completed its acquisition of Paris-based fixed income brokerage Octo Finances.
The deal is intended to help develop StoneX’s fixed income offering. The firm’s brokerage business, which also currently offers foreign exchange (FX), securities and commodities trading.
StoneX global head of fixed income Anthony Di Ciollo said the merger will bring “significant new capabilities” to the business and support its growth in Europe.
Octo Finances offers bond and convertible sales and access to debt capital markets. It specialises in credit research, having published 75,000 reports since it was founded in 1991.
Its clients include banks, insurance companies, private debt funds, mutual funds and private wealth managers.
StoneX Group is headquartered in New York City and listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market. It offers digital trading platforms as well as end-to-end clearing as well as execution services and owns CFD broker City Index as well as Forex platform forex.com.
It has more than 4,500 employees, who serve more than 54,000 commercial, institutional, and payments clients in addition to more than 400,000 retail accounts.
The completion of its acquisition of Octo Finances comes as the group has recently been expanding its operations outside the US.
Last year, its StoneX Payments subsidiary partnered with NatWest to support the bank’s cross-border payments services. The partnership brought access to local payment channels in 10 additional currencies to Natwest clients.
It also recently struck a deal with Lloyds Bank, which will serve as an additional Lender on StoneX’s $115 million Revolving Credit Facility. This money will support the firm’s ongoing operations and growth.
In December the Bank of Ireland approved the group as a Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) to operate a digital asset business, such as cryptocurrency trading, in the European Union (EU). That came after StoneX Digital was launched in June 2022.
The same month StoneX announced a management reshuffle in which StoneX chief executive Sean O’Connor became executive vice-chairman, with Philip Smith stepping up to fill his previous role as the firm’s new CEO.
Robin has more than six years of experience as a financial journalist, most of which were spent at Citywire, and covers the latest developments in the investing, trading and currency transfer space. Outside of work, he enjoys reading literature and philosophy and playing the piano.
You can contact Robin at robin@goodmoneyguide.com
