ActivTrades Europe with “very positive” balance since moving here

ANDin an interview with Lusa, ActivTrades Europe’s executive president, Ricardo Evangelista, made a “very, very, very positive” assessment of the transfer of the European headquarters of ActivTrades and praised the work of the Portuguese regulator.

“ I have experience with the FCA in England, and I have experience with the CSSF in Luxembourg, and I can say that the CVM [Committee on the Securities Market] owes them nothing in terms of efficiency and ease of proceedings,” he said.

“ Here we keep the functions regulated, but the ‘oversight’ of the operation is all in Lisbon. We report all the activity in Lisbon, pay our taxes in Portugal, but then we have our branches, where we have other functions ", said pointing out that there are some myths around the process speed in Portugal.

“ Since we came to Portugal, the question they have always asked me is: ‘then why did they come to Portugal? How weird’, but I think this is a more self-esteem problem of some Portuguese “, said.

In his opinion, Portugal is a country that, in addition to being part of a European context, has political and social stability and where fixed costs “still remain lower”.

“It’s a country where there is talent, where there is training, with a mature legal system — some people say it takes time, but I think it’s a bit everywhere – therefore, having spent a lot of time away and using this perspective, I think Portugal is a destination at least as attractive as any other,” the manager said.

Ricardo Evangelista explained that the company operates as a financial intermediary in the offer of contracts by difference, also known as CFD.

“It is a financial derivative that allows our customers to speculate on the performance of assets such as, for example, currencies, shares, indices, raw materials, ETF, cryptoactives, etc,” he explained.

Ricardo Evangelista pointed out that there are many products that have gained much projection in the last decade, such as cryptocurrencies. Analyzing the performance of CFDs, the manager says he does not know what the overall evolution of this type of product is, but ensures that your company’s turnover “has grown a lot”.

According to the 2025 Report and Accounts, the company had 18,493 customers at the end of the year, an increase of 44.4% in homologous terms. Faced with 2023, the number more than doubled.

Net deposits more than tripled from EUR 4,4 million in 2024 to EUR 15,1 million last year.

In turn, the net result advanced 36.6% and reached 2.05 million euros.

For the executive president, the growth dynamics is reflected in several metrics, including the number of workers.

ActivTrades Europe is currently divided into three geographies: Lisbon, responsible for monitoring and managing the company's business, with 15 people, a branch in Milan, Italy, where there are six other people, and another branch in Sofia, Bulgaria, where there are 40 people dedicated to customer and commercial service.

For the future, the objectives are set: to continue to increase the number of customers, which, in turn, “will reflect on more transactions, increase in gross sales volume and increase in net sales”.

As for the identified risks, Ricardo Evangelista noted that there are always the risks of markets, which “have been very volatile”, as well as regulatory risk.

In addition, it identified the risks of liquidity providers, market changes, and technological developments.

ActivTrades Europe, registered as ActivMarkets – Investment Company SA with CMVM, acts as an arm of ActivTrades for the European Economic Area, since some of the activities of the ‘mother company’ are not licensed for this area.

For this year, ActivTrades Europe also plans to launch stock trading and social trading, where customers will be able to register and follow other negotiators.

For now, “it’s going well”.

“There are always challenges, there are always opposite winds that arise, but in general it’s going very well,” Ricardo Evangelista said before hitting wood.