Charles Schwab is acquiring Chicago-based online brokerage optionsXpress Holdings Inc. for about $1 billion, the companies announced Monday.
OptionsXpress stockholders will receive 1.02 shares of Schwab stock for each share of optionsXpress stock, under the terms of the deal, which is expected to close in the third quarter of 2011.
David Fisher, optionsXpress Chief Executive Officer, will continue to lead optionsXpress following the acquisition as its president and a Schwab senior-vice president.
Launched in 2001, optionsXpress was one of the first online brokers to enable investors to trade equity options and futures. As of February 28, 2011, optionsXpress had 385,200 client accounts, $8.1 billion in client assets and a 12 month average of 44,800 daily average revenue trades.
“We launched optionsXpress in 2001 with the vision of making options and futures trading more accessible for self-directed retail investors,” said James Gray, founder and chairman of optionsXpress in a prepared statement. “After ten years of successfully empowering hundreds of thousands of customers, we are excited to bring our experience with these products to a much larger audience.”
Schwab operates the nation’s largest independent brokerage in terms of client assets, which totaled $1.6 trillion as of February 28, 2011, and nearly 10 million accounts.
Stockholders representing 22.9% of optionsXpress stock have signed a voting agreement committing to vote their shares in favor of the transaction, the company said.
But the deal is already drawing scrutiny from a Dallas-based law firm, Kendall Law Group, which said Monday it was investigating to “determine whether optionsXpress and its Board breached their fiduciary duties by entering into the agreement without properly shopping for a deal that would provide better value for shareholders.”
Kendall Law Group noted that the $17.91 per share to be paid by Schwab was well below the $21 per share price target set by some analysts surveyed by Thompson/First Call.
