The 2014 Tech 50: Kim Fournais and Lars Seier Christensen

July 08, 2014

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< The 2014 Tech 50: Moving Out of the Lab and Into the Cloud

Kim Fournais &

Lars Seier Christensen

Co–Chief Executive Officers

Saxo Bank

Last year: 44

In 2008, Saxo Bank co-CEOs Kim Fournais and Lars Seier Christensen stepped away from day-to-day oversight. The online brokerage they had founded in 1992 and converted to a bank in 2001 proceeded to diversify into real estate and asset management, and profitability suffered. Taking back the reins in December 2012, Fournais, now 48, and Christensen, 51, refocused attention on the business they know best — trading, and its underlying technology — and in 2013 doubled net profits, to 162.2 million Danish kroner ($29.6 million). The Hellerup, Denmark–based bank, originally and best known as a pioneer in electronic foreign exchange trading, with customers today in 180 countries, offers a staggering array of not only currency pairs but also stocks, bonds, options, futures and more. “If financial institutions don’t deliver what people want, they’ll find it elsewhere,” asserts Fournais. “The future of distribution is very much the Internet,” allowing clients “to do their business anywhere, anytime,” especially on mobile devices. There is a growing institutional side of Saxo. It supplies technology to Citi and 126 other firms on a wholesale, or “white label,” basis and offers prime brokerage and other trading and reporting solutions for the buy side. “If you’re an investment manager and come with $20 million, we’ll do anything for you,” Fournais says.