CVC buys currency trading platform to support Asia expansion

The investment is being made through the private equity firm's fourth pan-regional fund, which closed in 2014 at $3.5 billion. Vatsa Narasimha, CEO of Oanda, will continue to lead the business under CVC's ownership.

Founded in 1995 by Michael Stumm, a computer scientist at the University of Toronto, and Richard Olsen, a high school friend from Switzerland who became a banker, Oanda's first product was a website providing free currency conversion tools. An online foreign exchange trading platform arrived in 2001 and Oanda has since expanded its coverage to include commodities, indices, metals, and treasuries.

The company has offices in London, New Delhi, New York, Tokyo, Toronto, San Francisco, Singapore, and Sydney. Oanda entered the Asia Pacific market in 2008 with the establishment of a base in Singapore, primarily to address growing demand in the region for retail foreign exchange trading. It acquired a Japanese broker in 2010 and formally launched operations in the country a year later.

Siddharth Patel, a senior managing director at CVC, said in a statement that Oanda is a cash-generative business with a consistent track record of growth. "We look forward to working closely with Vatsa and his team as we help support Oanda, especially in Asia, in making strategic acquisitions and in investing to further broaden its product set," he added.

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Google plus  
• Save this article  
• Send to  

• Topics
• Buyouts
• Southeast Asia
• Technology
• Asia
• CVC Capital Partners