An Australian financial technology group has revealed plans to establish an operations and development centre in Glasgow, creating more than 60 jobs over the next two years.
HALO Invest, the wholly owned subsidiary of Sydney-based fintech firm HALO Technologies which is setting up the new centre, aims to “become a leading provider of financial services and technology solutions in the UK”.
Douglas Boyce, formerly of Interactive Investor and FNZ, has been appointed as chief executive officer of HALO Invest.
READ MORE: Ian McConnell: A huge majority but Starmer has boxed himself in already
The project to establish the Glasgow centre is expected to cost around £8 million, and is being supported by £800,000 of grant funding from Scottish Enterprise.
Mr Boyce said: “We had the opportunity to locate anywhere in the UK, but Glasgow demonstrated itself as the ideal city for us to base ourselves with its well-established mix of financial services and fintech talent.”
READ MORE: Labour leader sounds sadly like David Cameron in 2010 and has made big mistakes
He declared: “HALO Invest will be Glasgow’s first purpose-built investment platform and we know that just being here will significantly increase our chances of success.”
HALO Technologies, founded in 2017, is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange.
Its chief executive, George Paxton, believes that HALO Invest “can help its parent company extend its reach into untapped markets by leveraging its expertise and brand reputation”.
READ MORE: Revealed: Scotland's Top 100 private companies
Mr Paxton said: “The launch of HALO Invest in the United Kingdom in January of this year represented a key strategic milestone in our continued growth. With a solid platform of ongoing success in the Australian market on which to build, we are looking forward to taking our unique product offerings to the UK. We know that Glasgow, a world-class city with a highly skilled workforce, will make the perfect base for our UK operations.”
Scottish employment and investment minister Tom Arthur said: ““HALO Invest is a growing international company, and the selection of Glasgow for its latest base is a vote of confidence in the city and will create-high quality jobs.”
He flagged the 2024 EY Scotland attractiveness survey, which was published last month. This showed Scotland retained its position as second only to London among UK locations in attracting new inward investment projects. It also revealed that Scotland won a record number of foreign direct investment projects in 2023.
Mr Arthur said yesterday of the HALO Invest news: “This announcement further underlines Scotland’s reputation as a centre for innovative fintech businesses and its position as the UK’s most attractive location for inward investment outside London.
“The Scottish Government is focused on driving innovation, securing investment, and increasing entrepreneurial activity. With our partners at Scottish Enterprise, we will continue to ensure Scotland is recognised as offering the innovation, skills and expertise that global fintech firms need when setting up a new base.”
Scottish Enterprise said Scotland is home to more than 220 fintech companies, “making it the largest hub outside of London”.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here