August 9, 2011: Gain’s acquisition of dbFX – very little money changed hands

  • Gain paid just $2.5 million in upfront cash to Deutsche Bank for the assets acquired from dbFX – those assets being customer account balances, effective customer agreements, and a marketing list.
  • The total transaction was valued at about $10 million – based on recent valuations of other Forex M&A transactions (see our Forex Industry Report for more up-to-date details on public and M&A valuations and transactions in the Forex sector), and our estimate for dbFX of about $55 million in client assets and $12 billion in monthly volume at the time of acquisition, Gain paid slightly below recent comparable valuations.
  • The remainder of the payments to Deutsche Bank (other than the $2.5 million upfront cash) are contingent future payments, which depend on the volume generated from the acquired dbFX customers over the next two years – Gain currently estimates those future payments at just over $7 million.
  • Interestingly, in its own internal allocation of the purchase cost, Gain felt that the marketing list it acquired (at $3.4 million) was worth almost as much as the customer list ($4.8 million).

Other interesting nuggets from Gain’s Q2 include:

  • Slowing institutional business – institutional volume on Gain’s GTX platform fell from $37 million per month in Q1 to $32 million, but still represented more than 20% of Gain’s overall volumes.
  • The Asia-Pacific region has grown to be 50% of Gain’s overall retail volume – an amazing transformation for Gain, which not long ago did more than half its business in the US. Numbers-wise, Gain’s “Americas” volume has dropped by 34% from last year, while Asia-Pacific has grown 118%.

You can see Gain’s 10-Q report on the website of the US Securities and Exchange Commission at https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1444363/000119312511212607/d10q.htm.

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