smartTrade acquires TickTrade

November 22, 2021 - Multi-asset electronic trading solutions provider smartTrade has announced that it has acquired TickTrade Systems Inc., a Toronto-based technology firm providing FX trading and payments SaaS solutions for financial institutions.

Both companies provide liquidity management solutions and FX trading systems that enable financial institutions to develop and run high-performance trading platforms throughout the world. Together the business will serve a truly global client base across North America, Europe and Asia.

The combination of smartTrade and TickTrade represents a compelling strategic fit providing customers with highly complementary SaaS, electronic FX trading products. The combined company will deliver the best of both industry-leading FX trading technologies; smartTrade’s connectivity, aggregation, and risk management technology with TickTrade’s analytics, payments, and rich advanced distribution technology.

The company will operate under the smartTrade name and David Vincent, smartTrade’s CEO, will lead the combined organisation as its CEO. TickTrade co-founders, Baha Ohcebol and Alexander Culiniac, will maintain senior management roles within the combined business, while also remaining significant investors in the group.

Hg, a leading software and services investor which has backed smartTrade since 2020, will remain majority investor in the combined group, along with longstanding investors Keensight and Pléiade Venture. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

David Vincent, Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder at smartTrade Group, said, “For both smartTrade and TickTrade customers, the combination is extremely compelling. It brings two industry-leading technologies together – one complementing the other, creating a unique breadth and depth of product capabilities.”

Baha Ohcebol, Co-Founder of TickTrade, said, “This is great news for TickTrade customers. To have the backing of smartTrade and Hg means we can significantly build on and continue to innovate the products we know our clients highly value. This also offers further opportunities for product collaboration, wider distribution and cutting-edge innovation - meaning we can bring even better services to even more clients.”

Alexander Culiniac, Co-Founder of TickTrade, said, “This is great news for TickTrade’s customers who have supported us and for employees who have worked so hard to build the business to this stage since we first founded TickTrade back in 2013. smartTrade is a highly innovative company and this next move in the business’ history supports our vision to be the premier integrated trading technology partner for financial institutions, providing innovative and world-class solutions across all asset classes.”