Gold Magazine March - April 2013, Issue 24 | Page 68

BINARY TRADING

Then one day Laurent read an article about the
CBOT (Chicago Board of Trade) approving
binary options. “I didn’t pay much attention
to it at first but eventually I decided to find out
more,” he says. “I took a trip to Cyprus because
there was some interest on the part of Barclays
in binary options and all of a sudden I saw that
there was an opportunity to start a business
here. The cooperation with Barclays didn’t
work out but I got to see Cyprus for the first
time and it stuck in my head. And that was the
start of the whole journey of Banc De Binary.
The name came to me while I was sitting in the
airport lounge in Larnaca and one of the first
things I decided I wanted to do when I came
back here was to sponsor the lounge”.
It will soon become the Banc De Binary
Lounge. The French-sounding name, he says, is
all “down to the heritage. It’s the family’s roots
coming out!”
What made Oren Laurent choose binary op-

It turned out to be so attractive that it was
overwhelming for the company at the start
of operations. The first trader joined in
June 2010 and the first office had four brokers. Today there are four offices employing 230 brokers.
Did Laurent anticipate such rapid growth?
“Not at all,” he concedes. “In my original
business plan, I hoped to have 10,000 clients by now. In fact, we have 230,000”
How does he respond to the criticism that
binary trading is little more than gambling?
“You can look at binary options as a bet or
you can look at them as an actual trade. If
you are simply guessing and you don’t do
any research into where you’re going to put
money, then you’re definitely gambling,”
he acknowledges, but, he explains: “I like to
look at it this way: it is a fact 92% of restaurants globally fail within two years. Why is
this? Because a young guy decides to build

stayed in any country that I’ve built an office in. I’ve bought a house here and I see
myself being here for quite a while”.
He is also confident that, ”with a new business-oriented government in place, Cyprus
is going to gain a tremendous amount of
outside capital in the next 3-4 years, especially from hedge fund businesses which
are now being stringently regulated in the
US and which will find it much easier here,
especially in Limassol. I think you’re going
to see a whole new Cyprus very soon”.
In the past four months, Banc De Binary
has taken on 80 employees and it plans
to more than double that number by the
end of the year. It has begun investing in
properties and in certain infrastructures, it
is about to sponsor a local football team.
These are indications of the company’s
long-term intentions for Cyprus where Laurent predicts that it will employ 1,200 peo-

We all knew the crisis was coming because
we were aware of the recklessness
that was going on in the market
tions as the focus of his own venture? Why not
hedge funds, for example?
“Binary options was new and I knew that I
could sell something fresh,” he says. “My analogy was with the old story of the CEO of the
shoe business who calls his two salesmen and
tells them to go to Africa and see what they
think. And one of them returns and says, ‘I
don’t know why you even bothered sending
us. They don’t even wear shoes there’ while the
other one says ‘It’s a goldmine! It’s a market
waiting for us!’ I wanted something new and
fresh that no-one had ever heard of. Hedge
Funds we’ve heard of. We know about them.
We know the damage they have done, we
know that some people make money but they
are not new. At the end of the day you have to
think of a concept and my concept was this: To
simplify trading so that anyone can trade, even
against the market, and to provide them with
the tools that let them do what they want.”
The newness was what attracted Laurent to
binary options but was that the key to their
success with traders?
“No,” he says, “it was the simplicity that caught
everybody’s attention in the end and it happened much faster than I could have imagined.
My job was to package and market it but I
never thought it would get this big this fast.
People caught on to the simplicity of it and the
fact that they could profit so easily from it”.

a restaurant, get a few chefs and waiters
together and he thinks it’s easy. He doesn’t
do his research, as opposed to the successful
8% who have done their homework, they
know exactly what they’re getting into and
they have a business plan. Now, would
you call the 92% gamblers? Just because it’s
a restaurant you wouldn’t call it a gamble? I
look at binary options in the same manner.
If you do your research – and we provide
he research, which is another of the reasons
for our success – then you become part of
the 8%. If not, you’re definitely gambling”.
Oren Laurent originally came to Cyprus to
hold talks with Barclays but having seen the
country he decided that it was the perfect
location for Banc De Binary’s European
headquarters. When talking about Cyprus,
he is extraordinarily positive:
“There is something very magical about
this place,” he says. “Whether it’s the people, the warmth, the acceptance, there’s
something about Cyprus that will allow
it to succeed very much in the near future
and it will attract a lot of investors. The
new laws relating to property and passports
are going to attract a lot of people here”.
He speaks of “a sense of belonging” which,
he says, foreigners feel very easily in Cyprus.
“I’ve been attracted to the place and it’s
keeping me here and I believe that others
will feel it as well. This is the longest I’ve

ple here by 2017. Worldwide, he hopes to
have half a million clients by the end of this
year and eventually to have regional offices
in all the world’s major financial hubs but
his Wall Street experience taught him a major lesson: “You can’t make safe predictions
in the financial sector, and especially in an
online industry,” he says. “You can predict
10% growth per year but you could grow
by 300% without understanding why. I’ve
learned that anything I plan in the online
industry doesn’t really have much meaning.
I’m going with the trend right now. The
only sure prediction I can make is that there
will be no CEO office in any of Banc De
Binary’s buildings!”

In my original
business plan,
I hoped to have

10,000
clients
by now. In fact,
we have
230,000

68 Gold THE INTERNATIONAL INVESTMENT, FINANCE & PROFESS IONAL SERVICES MAGAZINE OF CYPRUS

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07/03/2013 11:48