Timur Turlov (Freedom Holding): We Recognized Enough Potential in Croatia to Enter the Market

The dizzying rise among the members of the global financial elite for Kazakh Timur Turlov (36) began in 2008 with the establishment of Freedom Finance in Russia, where he was born, whose brokerage services enabled small Russian investors to access American stock exchanges. Three years later, Turlov moved with his family to Kazakhstan, where in 2013 he opened a branch of Freedom Finance JSC, which became the most active participant in trading on the Kazakhstan stock exchange. Since 2015, Freedom Finance has come under the control of the investment conglomerate Freedom Holding Corp. (formerly BMB Munai, founded in 1981 in the USA), of which Turlov became the majority shareholder and CEO.

Freedom Holding Corp. conducted an IPO in 2019, thereby being listed on the Nasdaq capital market. At the end of last week, the market capitalization of Freedom Holding was $5.16 billion. American Forbes first included Timur Turlov on its list of the two thousand richest people in the world in 2021, estimating his worth at $2.1 billion. The latest estimate of his personal wealth is around $3.2 billion.

Although a range of different financial services is offered within the conglomerate, from investment and consumer banking to insurance, its main focus is on brokerage services on major American stock exchanges (NYSE, NASDAQ, CBOE, CME, AMEX) as well as on European exchanges (LSE and Euronext). The company has its own web investment platform under the brand Freedom24, and its brokers are currently active in attracting small investors in about fifteen countries, including Cyprus, the USA, Germany, France, the United Kingdom… One of the next markets that interests them is Croatia, which is why we had the opportunity for a brief conversation with Timur Turlov.

Your company is considering entering the Croatian market. Do you personally know where Croatia is?  

– Of course I know where Croatia is (Turlov pronounces the name of our country as ‘Horvacia’, ed.), it is a country with a beautiful location and the luxury of not feeling the war that is being fought in Europe, but unfortunately, I have never been there.

Given that Croatia does not have a particularly developed capital market, what attracts you here? 

– A technologically advanced company like ours is capable of reaching most of its customers via the internet. I believe we have one of the best proprietary platforms for opening accounts to provide services to clients, who can fully track everything online. We usually enter a new market when we realize that there is already enough interest among customers from that region and if we see that there are already several thousand customers using services on our platform. We do not come to every country, not out of discretion, but we go where we see there are enough customers. Perhaps not numerically many, but enough that their physical amounts allow at least covering all our costs in that country. The logic of our entry is usually the same for most countries. To be honest, I am not exactly sure how many customers we have in each country. I know we have many in Greece, Poland, France, and Spain. We also have quite a few customers in Germany, fewer still in Austria, but in both of those countries we have fewer than in some Baltic countries. So if we make a mistake by entering the Croatian market, I will immediately sign that I regret it.

You will be able to read the entire interview with Timur Turlov in the printed and digital edition of Lider next week.