Tiger, Futu post strong overseas gains after Beijing clampdown stalls mainland growth

Brokerages shift to Southeast Asia, US and Europe amid Beijing’s stepped-up drive to root out illegal cross-border securities activity

Tiger Brokers and Futu Holdings, two of the region’s largest online brokerages, posted robust second-quarter growth as they expanded overseas to absorb Beijing’s toughest crackdown yet on illegal cross-border stock trading.

UP Fintech Holding, parent of Tiger Brokers, reported on Wednesday that revenue rose 31.4 per cent year on year to a record US$182.3 million. Net income attributable to shareholders, however, slipped to US$39.4 million from US$41.4 million a year earlier.

“To streamline users’ compliance procedures and reduce tax declaration complexities, we rolled out a dedicated tax reporting tool under our Hong Kong, Singapore and New Zealand regulatory licences,” Wu said in an exchange filing, adding that Tiger also rolled out fractional share trading for Singapore-listed stocks and index options trading in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong client assets grew almost 30 per cent quarter on quarter after Tiger stepped up offline client-acquisition campaigns, while assets in the US jumped nearly 50 per cent and those in Australia and New Zealand rose more than 30 per cent.

Futu, which reported last week, posted revenue of HK$7.2 billion (US$918 million), up 35.6 per cent, and net income attributable to the shareholders of HK$3.64 billion, up 41.6 per cent.

Funded accounts expanded 33.6 per cent to 3.84 million, led for a third straight quarter by Malaysia, with Hong Kong and Singapore also among the top contributors.