Former Bank of America subsidiary in Russia wants to become a boutique broker

Two people from the BCS brokerage firm have joined the team: Svetlana Zaitseva has taken over as COO, and Alexander Tsukerman will develop international business. According to the publication’s sources, five more people may move from BCS.

According to the Central Bank, it is brokerage firms focused on serving a relatively small number of clients that have shown strong revenue growth over the past year.

However, there are also risks, the main one being high competition in the market to serve wealthy clients; the company will have to offer its own unique approach to managing client portfolios and build the company’s reputation practically from scratch, said Evgeniy Shatov, Partner at Capital Lab.

Merrill Lynch Securities was founded in Russia in 2007 and three years later received a brokerage license. In 2021, it was among the top 10 Russian brokers: revenue amounted to almost 2.4 billion rubles, and net profit exceeded 600 million rubles.

After February 2022, the company drastically reduced its presence on the Russian market. By the end of that year, the amount of funding was reduced to 10.6 million rubles.

A year later, the company was put up for sale and the deal was closed in early October 2023. Now SPEC Investment is controlled by the Cypriot Avinem Investment Limited, less than 1% belongs to the company Rusatomcapital. The company is headed by Kirill Kosminskiy. The company’s revenue last year amounted to 49.4 million rubles, and the net loss amounted to 933 million rubles.