Headed by Ralph van Put, these (mostly) Dutch derivative traders were combined in the firm True Partner. They want to be a true friend of everyone, doing everything. Asset management, software development, low latency gateways, consultancy, legal assistance, education, hedge fund : you name it, True Partner is doing it.
A true take over
Suddenly they found a large Taiwanese financial conglomerate, the brokerage Capital Futures. The firm Capital Futures is a listed company (market cap $120m), and their major shareholder is Capital Securities (market cap $1bln). Nobody said capitalists are creative in naming their firms. True announced last Monday April 27th the merger with Capital Futures. The combined entity will continue under the name Capital True Partner.
Everyone knows mergers don’t exist in the real world. Ralph van Put sold his firm.
A true salesman
The CEO of True Partner is Ralph van Put (his real name). Once upon a time he was an option marker maker in the open outcry era, and he founded trading software firm AtomPro. Was sold to Saen where he got CEO. After Saen lost their shirt on the Volkswagen squeeze, Saen was sold to All Options. When All Options got into trouble, Van Put was heading the Hong Kong office. He managed to buy it from Allard Jakobs for €0.3m.
He cut back on the expenses, ditched his Bentley and accepted a position at the Chinese university of Hong Kong. Last month 51% of the software development unit in Chengdu was sold to Capital, this time the asset management unit was sold. Plan is to introduce more hedge funds for customers in mainland China. Anyway, without knowing the financial details it definitely looks like Ralph has made a great deal again.