Owen Kerr & Joe Davenport
By offering low-cost, technologically advanced trading, Pepperstone founders Owen Kerr and Joe Davenport have changed the forex industry in four years.
When self-confessed tech geek and computer scientist Owen Kerr met finance whiz Joe Davenport eight years ago, they realised that together they could reinvent the forex trading industry. Theyd both had experience with financial services, and knew that with their combined experience they could create a low-cost way for clients to trade on the foreign exchange market. So they created Pepperstone, with Owen as CEO and Joe as CFO.
Owen used his technological savvy to see where they could improve the current trading systems. "I'm a computer scientist by trade, and I have always been involved in computer science and, in particular, in financial markets computer technology. So when I met Joe, he was working the forex brokerage industry and we really saw some gaps: no-one was really doing discount brokerage in the forex industry." A lot like how CommSec introduced discount equity brokerage, no-one had introduced high-speed technologically oriented forex trading in the forex industry.
Joe, originally from the UK, moved to Australia around 10 years ago and began working for an online forex broker. "My background has been in financial markets, more on the sales and marketing side. I'd worked in retail foreign exchange brokerage in the financial markets for a long time and met Owen through some mutual friends. That's when we teamed up and combined our skills: Owen's on the technology side, I'm on the sales and marketing side."