Nomura Research Institute’s Australian wholesale trading platform AUSIEX is acquiring Brisbane-based FIIG Holdings, Australia’s largest specialist fixed-income provider with more than $5 billion in funds under advice.
AUSIEX, which specialises in equities trading, clearing and settlement services, has secured an agreement to acquire full control of FIIG Holdings, which operates FIIG Securities, with plans to make it a fully owned subsidiary by the end of June this year.
The acquisition price has not been disclosed.
FIIG, which was founded in 1998 by Jim Stening and Douglas Bates as a fixed-income trading business that provides investors with direct access to bond markets and term deposits, employs more than 100 staff from offices in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.
Both Stening and Bates remain non-executive directors of FIIG.
The CEO of AUSIEX, Patrick Salis, says the transaction will drive an expansion of the group’s products and services to meet the needs of traders, advisers and investors.
"With this move, AUSIEX expands beyond exchange traded instruments listed on ASX and (derivatives and exchange network) CBOE, to now also include over the counter (OTC) domestic and international fixed income products via the FIIG platform,” says Salis.
“It will provide local institutions, financial advisers, family offices, SMSF and HNWIs (high-net-worth individuals) with the most comprehensive investments trading and portfolio administration platform offering in the country.”
The latest deal follows a series of Australian acquisitions by Japan's Nomura Research Institute (NRI) in recent years, including AUSIEX which it bought from Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ASX: CBA) in 2021.
"This acquisition brings together two culturally and commercially aligned businesses with highly complementary strengths,” says FIIG CEO Alex Welch.
“It marks an exciting step forward in our ambitions to make bonds accessible to Australian investors while continuing to enhance the services we deliver to our clients with even greater capabilities.”
Salis says the acquisition progresses the long-term plans for AUSIEX to become a market utility platform leveraging NRI’s “scale and intellectual property”.
“We are excited to build on an over 25-year legacy of FIIG, an independent company founded in Brisbane and welcome their staff into the NRI Group,” he says.
“FIIG has over 6,000 clients, and we are pleased to extend the AUSIEX vision to each of those clients of being a trusted partner behind every trade and transaction.”
FIIG Securities made headlines in 2023 after announcing a cybersecurity breach that could have affected its Australian investors when an “unauthorised third party” illegally accessed its IT systems.
The breach led to Federal Court action filed by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) earlier this year in which it is alleged that the breach enabled the theft of about 385 gigabytes of confidential data.
ASIC has alleged that FIIG’s cybersecurity failures enabled a hacker to enter its IT network and go undetected from 19 May 2023 until 8 June 2023, resulting in the theft of personal information and subsequent release of client data on the dark web.
AUSIEX also has previously been in the firing line of regulators after the platform and CBA’s online broker CommSec were slapped with a combined $27.12 million in penalties after the Federal Court found both firms breached the Market Integrity Rules on numerous occasions, including overcharging brokerage fees.
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