It was a challenger to Trade Republic, Scalable Capital and the like for a while, but now the Dutch neobroker BUX belongs to a bank. ABN AMRO announced today that it has acquired BUX and its approximately 500,000 customers. This comes as no surprise to observers, as ABN AMRO Ventures, the bank’s investment arm in start-ups, was one of the fintech broker’s early backers. BUX is available in several EU member states.
There is currently no public information on the purchase price. With this acquisition, ABN AMRO intends to strengthen its presence in the retail investment segment and significantly expand its digital offering. The antitrust authorities still have to approve the takeover. In the Netherlands, the combination of the bank and BUX should now be the market leader.
“This step is an additional growth investment for BUX that will enable ambitious long-term scaling and innovation, strengthened by ABN AMRO’s extensive resources and infrastructure,” the bank said. It is also expected to strengthen its own position abroad. It is interesting to note that the acquisition does not include BUX‘s cryptocurrency activities.
Unlike many other banks, which are currently focusing on Bitcoin and the like due to an expected exciting crypto year 2024, ABN AMRO is keeping its hands off them for the time being. The crypto offering at BUX was introduced in 2019 – what exactly will happen with it is still open. At the end of 2022, BUX acquired the retail business of its Spanish counterpart, Ninety Nine, in order to grow on the Iberian Peninsula. BUX has not raised nearly as much capital as other fintech brokers such as Trade Republic or Bitpanda, which have now launched very similar offerings to BUX (e.g. fractional shares, ETFs, crypto, etc.).
Prosus and the Chinese giant Tencent led a financing round of $80 million in BUX in 2021. In 2022, BUX made a loss of €16 million on a turnover of 2.52 million euros. The buyer ABN AMRO says the transaction is “expected to have only a minor impact on the CET1 capital ratio.”