GatisEglitis serves as the Executive Director at EXANTE Sec. Displaying an interest in mathematics at an early age, this became a decisive factor in later years when choosing a specialisation. Currently, EXANTE is an investment company aiming to provide bespoke services to its clients, which include professional traders, brokers, asset managers, banks, and other financial institutions.

Education

Born and raised in Latvia, EXANTE GatisEglitis has a Bachelor of Science degree in International Economic Relations from the University of Latvia. Following his undergraduate studies, he pursued a Master of Science in Finance also at the University of Latvia. After acquiring academic fluency in finance and economics, Eglitis went on to obtain a Master of Finance and Strategic Management degree from the Copenhagen Business School.

Career background

Before founding EXANTE, Eglitis started his career as an Institutional Sales Trader and then as an Institutional Business Sales Manager at Saxo Bank. This allowed him to acquire international professional experience in trading, business development, and institutional sales.

As a member of the executive and investment committees in Malta, Eglitis co-founded EXANTE in 2011 alongside Alexey Kirienko and Anatoliy Knyazev. Eglitis was promoted to Managing Partner at EXANTE in 2016, after five years of working there. In this role, he was directly responsible for strategic planning and business development within the brokerage firm.

Eglitis’ international outlook and professional insights into the financial markets have enabled him to become and indispensable part of EXANTE’s business development team. The team has been vital in turning EXANTE from a local regional player into a global service, by connecting investors and markets from all over the world.

Eglitis’ professional experience in dealing with complex financial instruments has also allowed him to connect with sophisticated investors globally. This means EXANTE can offer investing in credit derivatives, statistical equity arbitrage strategies, and futures, as opposed to more simple investment strategies. According to him, up until 2011, Malta had never had a cutting-edge global broker that would be able to meet the needs of aggressive investment managers such as hedge funds, who typically rely on leverage, competitive prices, and access to a range of derivative instruments.

EXANTE’s growth and development

Starting in 2011, EXANTE offered an opportunity for domestic traders by offering a global infrastructure. This is because EXANTE was created to solve the problem of lack of sophistication in the regional trading market. EXANTE currently boasts over 600,000 financial instruments in more than 50 markets worldwide. Some of these instruments that traders can take advantage of include stocks, Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs), bonds, currencies, options, futures, commodities, and more. All of these instruments are available through EXANTE’s trading platform and their multi-currency account. In fact, Eglitis was the one who developed EXANTE into the one-stop shop it is today, creating a highly efficient trading experience for clients.

Eglitis also says the EXANTE does not only aim to serve high-profile clients with a proven record of trading, but they are also open to dealing with any type of client, regardless of it they are local, international, or long-only equity investors. EXANTE’s interface is made to be intuitive and easy to use for novice traders. In Eglitis’ eyes, it is important for the trading platform to still be accessible to traders who are less experienced – all traders are welcome, and pricing is the same regardless of their volume. This is because EXANTE’s core value is not sophistication, but accessibility. As he puts it, “It doesn’t matter to our business model whether clients make thousands of trades a day or just busy and hold instruments for years. Everyone is welcome and prices are the same for everyone, regardless of whether they are high or low-volume traders.” That said, accessibility is a delicate craft, and it is essential to strike a balance between the parameters of ‘accessibility and functionality.’

The developers have built the platform in such a way that a client can obtain access to each instrument using only one account with a bank card. This is enough to trade any financial product in the world economy, allowing members of the platform to easily compose and create balanced portfolios.

Currently, EXANTE has won multiple awards. The most recent is the Best Trading and Investment Solution Provider in the UK, the Most Sustainable Investment Company in the UK, and the Fastest Growing Multi-asset Broker in the UK – all from Gazet International Magazine.

Other activities

Aside from developing EXANTE, Eglitis has also received numerous offers to take part in events relating to finance, technology, and the future, with the purpose of sharing his forecasts and prospects. In addition to business and finance, Eglitis is also a passionate advocate for a more green and sustainable way of living. This conviction was born from Eglitis’ move from Denmark to Malta, whose relatively barren Mediterranean landscape surprised him. The recent years saw Eglitis and the EXANTE team plant 250 trees and have since been involved in other landscaping and environmental projects. One such project includes encouraging clients to donate to the Il-Gardina in the Anthony Mamo Oncology Centre.