Gatis Eglitis

Gatis Eglītis is the Executive Director of Exante. He was born in Latvia and he has acquired a Bachelor of Science in International Economic Relations from the University of Latvia. Following his undergraduate studies, he pursued a Masters of Science in Finance also at the University of Latvia. Having acquired academic fluency in finance and economics in Latvia, he obtained a Master of finance and strategic management degree from the Copenhagen business school.

Before founding Exante, Gatis Eglitis acquired international professional experience in trading, business development and institutional sales by working as an Institutional sales trader, and later as an Institutional business sales manager at Saxo Bank.

He co-founded Exante in 2011 as the member of executive and investment committee in Malta. After five years, in 2016 Gatis transferred to the position of the managing partner of EXT ltd, being directly responsible for strategic planning and business development at Exante.

Gatis' international outlook as well as professional insights in financial markets have enabled him to become an indispensable part of Exante's business development team and have been of vital importance in turning Exante from a local player into a global service, connecting investors and markets all over the world.

Gatis Eglitis professional experience in dealing with complex financial instruments has enabled him to connect with sophisticated investors globally that first brought out the vacuum in platforms that offered investing in credit derivatives, statistical equity arbitrage strategies and futures, as opposed to more plain vanilla investment strategies. According to Eglitis, 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 rely on leverage, competitive prices and access to a range of derivative instruments.

Starting in 2011 in Malta, Exante offered the opportunity for domestic traders who chose to domicile their funds in Malta to fulfill their potential by offering a global infrastructure. At the time, Exante was the sole provider of global access to Malta-based investors. However, it is important to note that trade execution is only half the story. Exante was developed by professional traders such as Gatis Eglitis, for other professional traders, as a solution to the lack of sophistication in the trading market of the region. Exante also hosts a multi-asset fund platform, which operates solely online via the internet. Not only can funds trade global markets, they can also market themselves and their strategies to all of Exante's global customers. As a result, under the leadership of Gatis Eglitis, the company became a one-stop-shop for investors from the entire world.

According to Eglitis, it is important to make note that Exante does not strive to service only high-profile customers with a long and established track record in trading. It is happy to deal with all kinds of clients, be they local or international or long-only equity investors. While Exante's interface is highly intuitive and can accommodate even novice traders, its vast offer can also persuade high frequency quant traders. Gatis Eglitis stresses that it is important to be accessible and not alienate less experienced traders. Whether clients are making thousands of transactions a day or simply buying and holding instruments long-term makes no difference to our business model. All are welcome and the pricing is the same for everyone, regardless of whether they are high or low volume traders. Eglitis notes that sophistication is not the core attribute of Exante – it is accessibility. The company offers access to all financial instruments through one account with a debit card attached to it, from which anyone can trade any financial product in the world, from wherever they are. It has become a necessity to be able to shift as quickly as you can from one asset class to another, if you want to reduce risk. No other company allows its clients to manage their assets so dynamically.

Gatis Eglitis' global outlook has been central to insisting on a persistent improvement and expansion of Exante's trading partners that now includes access to more than 400,000 financial instruments from more than 50 different markets. This vast access allows traders with a global scope to take advantage of various large-scale events that allow them to create globally balanced portfolios.

Gatis Eglitis has been invited to take part in numerous panel discussions dedicated to the latest developments in the world of finance and technology. In addition to business and finance, Gatis Eglitis is a passionate advocate for a transition towards a more green and sustainable way of life. This conviction was prompted by Eglitis' move from Denmark to Malta, whose relatively barren Mediterranean landscape surprised Eglitis. In the upcoming years Gatis Eglitis, together with his team at Exante, planted 250 trees, and since then have been involved in a number of projects. The latest is Il-Ġardina, a garden at the Sir Anthony Mamo Oncology Centre, where Exante is also roping in its customers to donate.