LINWOOD-based financial technology company Beeks Financial Cloud is targeting global growth after unveiling a system designed to allow mid-sized financial institutions to execute instantaneous online trades.
The newly launched Beeks Marketplace brings together the company’s eight datacentres, which collectively connect to more than 100 so-called ‘trading venues’ around the world.
Gordon McArthur, chief executive of Beeks Financial Cloud, said the infrastructure the business has built between its datacentres and these trading venues will dramatically decrease the amount of time it will take for customers to begin trading.
“Previously anyone wanting to start trading would have to phone a hosting vendor, get a quote sent for a server, wait for it to be configured then six weeks later be able to trade,” he said.
“We can now enable institutions to come into the cloud, buy a server and place a trade the same day.
“We send trades to banks and financial institutions much quicker than any other cloud provider [because] we’ve run fibre cables from our datacentres directly to them.
“Because speed is important financial institutions tend to congregate around particular datacentres and we’ve picked the same ones – the one in London has between 20 and 25 venues connected to it.”
Mr McArthur explained that trading venues are essentially online trading platforms that operate in the same way as traditional stock exchanges.
“We’ve got a datacentre in Chicago and have a connection to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange,” he said.
“If you wanted to trade corn or oil you could subscribe online, buy a server in our datacentre there and it will do the trade.”
Beeks, which in 2015 made a retained profit of £235,000, is targeting the Beeks Marketplace at mid-sized financial institutions around the globe.
Mr McArthur said that, unlike major banks and financial institutions, these are less to have the capacity to build their own trading platforms.
Currently Beeks has around 6,000 individual clients and 400 institutional ones.
Last year Beeks, which initially focused on the foreign-exchange sector, broadened out into futures trading after acquiring Chicago-based business VDIware.
Through the acquisition the company can give customers access to futures exchanges in Chicago, Frankfurt, New York, Tokyo and London, with Mr McArthur at the time describing the deal as “very strategic”.
VDIware founders Pete Johnson and Patrick Rams were both given equity in the company at the time of coming on board, with the former holding 51 shares as at the beginning of June this year while the latter held nine.
Mr McArthur, who began his career as a futures trader on indices such as the S&P and the Dow 30, is by far the largest shareholder in the company, with a total holding of 1,730.
In 2015 Mr Arthur received dividends of £64,980 while service delivery director Anthony Doleman, who has 190 shares in the business received dividends of £39,500..
While to date the company has not sought external finance, it is likely that it will seek out further acquisitions as part of its growth strategy, meaning it could seek external finance in due course.
This could include seeking a listing on the UK’s Alternative Investment Market.
While Beeks is headquartered in Scotland the vast majority of its clients are based around the globe.
Around a third of the company’s staff work in Scotland with the remainder working from the US, Austria, Indonesia and Japan.
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