Renowned stock investor Jim Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings, has agreed to invest in Beijing-based online brokerage firm Tiger Brokers, marking the Wall Street investor’s first backing of a Chinese technology start-up.
The announcement came a week after Tiger Brokers said it had raised RMB100 million (US$14 million) in a series B+ round led by China Growth Capital. The company did not disclose how much Rogers has agreed to invest.
"What Tiger has been doing, which is use technology to trade around the world, reserve a bright future," said Rogers. He is bullish on the growth momentum of China’s fintech industry, claiming that the Internet-driven transformation across the financial sector will benefit the growing number of Chinese investors seeking to optimize their asset allocation.
"Everybody will be able to trade in everywhere and Tiger appears in the right place, at the right time," Rogers added.
"Tiger Trade is a fintech product designed by the company as a one-stop stock trading platform for global Chinese-speaking investors to conveniently access to cross-border investment portfolio," said Wu Tianhua, founder and CEO of Tiger Brokers.
According to Wu, in addition to access to U.S. stocks, Hong Kong stocks, and China A-shares, the platform supports transactions involving securities margin trading in addition to 13,000 U.S. stocks, share options and ETF (exchange traded funds) products.
According to the company, more than US$100 million in transactions were booked through Tiger Trade in the first month following the initial launch of the platform in 2015. The monthly dollar value of transactions handled through Tiger Trade jumped 22 times by the end of last year, topping 2.2 billion RMB a month.
In August 2015, Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Technology led a reported RMB100 million funding round in Tiger Brokers. In December 2016, the company secured RMB200 million from CITIC GoldStone Fund Management Co., Ltd. and Huagai Capital, as well as existing investors Zhen Fund and China Renaissance K2 Ventures.