Five years after selling his FX giant, Custom House Ltd., to Western Union for $370-million (U.S.), Peter Gustavson has wrangled some members of his old team to start a new venture.© Kacper Pempel / Reuters
Free from the constraints of his non-compete agreement, Peter Gustavson is diving back into the foreign exchange market.
Five years after selling his FX giant, Custom House Ltd., to Western Union for $370-million (U.S.), Mr. Gustavson has wrangled some members of his old team to start a new venture.
Until now, the entrepreneur was limited in what he could do because of contractual obligations he made with Western Union. In the meantime, he started a venture capital fund and donated $10-million to the University of Victoria, which renamed its business school the Peter B. Gustavson School of Business.
Now that his non-compete agreement with Western Union has expired, Mr. Gustavson is rebuilding a FX specialist from the ground up all over again, starting with five branch offices across Canada.
Mr. Gustavson says he "never really did plan on getting back in the industry." But he heard complaints from former clients – today FX-focused firms have arguably forgotten the importance of customer service. Instead of pleasing clients, "their focus is quarterly earnings," he said.
The new venture will target corporate foreign exchange clients and will focus on providing them with long-term FX strategies instead of simply dealing in spot transactions.
Currently the new firm has 30 people – many of whom used to work at Custom House. By year-end the plan is to double that headcount, and then take the new company global.
Seeing as how this is Mr. Gustavson's second foray in the foreign exchange market, the new company has an appropriate name: EncoreFX.
Tim Kiladze