E*Trade vs. CommSec Price War

ANZ owned E*Trade Australia is set to start a price war with online stockbroker CommSec on fees and commissions regarding international trades. E*Trade is planning to open up retail trader and investor access to several overseas stockmarkets from New York to Singapore. The company's profit in the year to September 2009 after tax was $31 million.

Smaller brokers are using the E*Trade online brokerage as their trading platform as regulatory and capital demands are toughened by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC). One such regulation is the increase of liquid capital holdings required from $100,000 to $10 million in future. It is estimated that there are 2 million Australians with trading accounts with E*Trade having more than 25 percent and CommBank's CommSec having more than 50 percent market share. E*Trade Managing Director, Stuart Sayers, has noted that client growth was sixfold since ANZ has allowed banking customers access their trading account from its internet banking suite instead of logging on to a separate site. A feature that CommSec long had with CommBank's NetBank. Here are a list of more Australian stockbrokers.