ANZ increases slice of E*Trade
TheANZbank has increased its stake in online share trading company, E*Trade, by almost five per cent, taking the bank’s holding up to 31 per cent.
ANZ is buying more than 5 million shares of E*Trade at 56 cents a share, six cents more than E*Trade’s closing price yesterday of 55 cents.
E*Trade has said in an announcement to theAustralian Stock Exchangethat the deal will give the company even greater access to the ANZ’s four million strong customer base.
AS part of the arrangement, ANZ will absorb the cost of marketing to its customers to encourage them to open accounts and trade online using E*Trade.
E*Trade chief executive Michael Deleray says the issue of more shares to ANZ is evidence of the continuing success of the alliance.
“Customers introduced by ANZ now exceed 31,000 accounts (up over [sic] 60 per cent since June 30, 2000), representing more than one third of our customer base,” he says.
E*Trade admitted last month it had been hit by the fallout of the ‘tech wreck’ which first impacted in April 2000. However, Deleray says this year the online trader had made significant cost reductions which have led to cash positive operations for the first quarter of the 2002 financial year.
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