Trade Republic Plans Hiring Spree After Reaching $5 Billion Valuation

(Bloomberg) --

Berlin-based broker app Trade Republic Bank GmbH, co-founded by former Merrill Lynch banker Christian Hecker, is going on a hiring spree after being valued at over $5 billion.

The company is opening about 250 engineering roles, Hecker said in an interview. The positions will be based in Berlin, Stockholm, or fully remote. The company currently employs about 600 people.

Trade Republic lets customers trade stocks, ETFs, crypto currencies and other financial products, mostly without order commissions or other fees. It was founded in Germany in 2015, and is now also available in Austria, Netherlands, France, Italy and Spain.

“Our goal is to offer our services throughout almost the entire eurozone by the end of this year,“ Hecker said.

Brokerage houses all over Europe reported a surge in retail trading during the pandemic as many people were stuck at home during lockdowns, making retail-focused challengers like Trade Republic a target for venture capital firms looking to put their money to work.

However the boom has since tailed off. Robinhood Markets Inc., another retail broker that rose in popularity during the pandemic, has lost about two-thirds of its value since its July initial public offering. The hits came from all directions: net loss was steeper than anticipated, monthly active users dropped and average revenue per user fell.

Last year, Trade Republic sealed a $900 million financing round with investors such as Sequoia, TCV, Thrive Capital, and Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, valuing the company at more than $5 billion.

The new hires at Trade Republic will be added to a number of departments including core infrastructure, frontend, backend and data. The company has already hired staff from Klarna Bank AB, Netflix Inc. and Stripe Inc. for its technology leadership team, it said.

Trade Republic also brought in Andreas Torner and Gernot Mittendorfer, a former Chief Financial Officer at Austria's Erste Group Bank AG, as managing directors.