BURLINGAME, Calif., Oct. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Zecco Holdings, Inc., (http://www.zecco.com) announced today that veteran online brokerage executive and current Chief Information Officer Michael Raneri will become the company's Chief Executive Officer (CEO) as of January 1st, 2010. Current CEO Jeroen Veth intends to assume a position on the Zecco Supervisory Board.
"I am extremely pleased to announce this choice," said Mr. Veth. "Since we founded Zecco in 2006, we've been looking for the person who can take Zecco to the next stage of growth. Michael Raneri, with his deep experience in online financial services and high-growth companies, is really the perfect candidate to take Zecco to that next level."
Mr. Raneri has been CIO of Zecco since May 2008 and successfully rebuilt the infrastructure and software for Zecco's online experience to support its growing community of users. He has also been an active member of Zecco's Board of Directors from 2006 to 2008.
"I feel privileged to take on my new role and am very excited about the opportunity to help Zecco serve the self-directed investor," said Raneri. "Jeroen built an amazing online brokerage firm from concept to over 170,000 brokerage accounts in just over 3 years."
Zecco Trading has realized a 72% year-over-year increase in accounts, and the Zecco financial community now has over 300,000 members.
Mr. Raneri added, "My goal is to build upon our foundation of success, while putting a major emphasis on product and service improvements. Our customers will benefit from a full pipeline of trading platform enhancements that will be introduced throughout 2010. We will also redouble the investments in customer service that Jeroen initiated. In fact, we are already seeing the fruits of that investment in terms of 48% lower wait times and a 28% increase in our customer satisfaction scores."*
A recognized pioneer in electronic brokerage, Mr. Raneri is also a leader in deploying Web 2.0 technologies. As the SVP of Integrated Client Experiences at Charles Schwab, he led many of the initiatives that fueled the company's rapid growth on the Internet. He led the online tools and content initiatives for the launch of Schwab.com and e.Schwab, as well as the facilitation of Schwab Private Client. In addition, Mr. Raneri served as CEO of MeeVee.com, a TV guide and video search website.
About Zecco Holdings, Inc.
Zecco Holdings (www.zecco.com) is a leading online investing website that offers access to free stock trading and low-cost options trading through its wholly owned subsidiary, Zecco Trading, Inc., member FINRA and SIPC, and foreign exchange trading through its wholly-owned subsidiary Zecco Forex, Inc.
Zecco Trading account users receive 10 free equity trades per month when they maintain a minimum net equity of $25,000 or execute 25 total trades, $4.50 per trade otherwise. Zecco Trading, Inc. provides self-directed investors with discount brokerage services, and does not make recommendations or offer investment, financial, legal or tax advice.
All forex products are offered through Zecco Forex, Inc., which acts as an introducing broker to GAIN Capital. Accounts are held and maintained with GAIN Capital which serves as the clearing agent and counterparty to trades. GAIN Capital Group, LLC is a registered Futures Commission Merchant (FCM) and a member of the National Futures Association (NFA ID# 0339826).
* Likelihood to recommend Zecco Trading taken from daily satisfaction reports between Q3 2008 and Q3 2009. Average answer speed taken from daily call reports between Q1 and Q3 2009.
Zecco Holdings, Inc.
