FNG Exclusive… FNG has learned that longtime Saxo Bank senior executive Claus Nielsen has become Chairperson of the Board at Copenhagen based neobroker startup Pluto.
Claus Nielsen served as Head of Markets at Retail FX and CFDs broker Saxo Bank for 15 years, from 2003-2018, and also was a member of the Executive Management Group at Saxo. Since departing Saxo he has become involved, mainly as an outside investor and advisor, in a number of Denmark based startups.
Pluto was established in 2021 by former Goldman Sachs trader Joakim Bruchmann. The company was originally known as StockTalk before rebranding to Pluto (at website pluto.markets). Earlier this year the company raised $2.6 million in venture capital, from a number of investors including Berlin based tech investor Magnetic, a number of local unicorn founders (Pleo, Synthesia, Zendesk, Sitecore), Y-Combinator, Nordic Makers and several angel investors.
Pluto is planning to formally launch in July 2024, as an app-based retail investment and savings app.
Claus Nielsen posted the following note on social media about his new involvement with Pluto:
With 15 years of experience leading Saxo Bank’s markets division and witnessing the evolution of the FinTech sector, I’m convinced that now’s the time to push investing into the next paradigm. This entails fixing legacy infrastructure inefficiencies, launching a wider range of assets, making it cheaper and building a superior user experience.
But disrupting a highly capital intensive and extremely regulated industry is near impossible. Multiple startups have tried building a new app on the same old piece of infrastructure. This doesn’t work. In order to be truly disruptive, one must build a bank from scratch.
The Pluto team is doing exactly this, which reminds me of the early days at Saxo Bank. It’s taken the team almost three years so far and will take a few more, but it’s the only viable path forward and the team has proven multiple times that they have what it takes to pull it off.
With a small team, they’ve obtained a massive regulatory approval, raised $3.5m from Y-Combinator and other top investors and put together a world-class team for the mission.
I’m excited to take part in the journey towards creating better investing experiences for everyone.
