FNG Exclusive… FNG has learned from sources in Germany that longtime eToro Head of Germany, Switzerland and Austria, Dennis Austinat, has resigned from the company.

Dennis Austinat had served as Head of Germany and the DACH region for Retail FX and CFDs broker eToro since 2016, joining the company from insurance and banking solutions company Earnix. At eToro he was managing the Sales, Retention and Marketing teams of eToro for the German, Swiss and Austrian markets.

eToro Germany departures

Mr. Austinat’s departure comes after two of his key employees at eToro Germany also left the company in recent months, Michael Wild and Doron Rozenberg. Michael Wild was Managing Director Operations for eToro in Germany, and left to join crypto exchange Binance as Senior Director and MD – Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Doron Rozenberg was Marketing Manager for eToro Germany, and also recently followed Mr. Wild to Binance, as Head of Marketing DACH.

Germany had become a key European market for eToro, with the company reportedly having about seven percent of its global clients coming from Germany. However eToro has apparently seen a large slowdown in the download of its trading app in Germany in 2022, according to German publication Finance Forward with data from Data.ai.

eToro weekly app downloads in Germany. Source: Finance Forward per Data.ai.

eToro layoffs and pulled IPO

The company is also dealing with the aftermath of across-the-board layoffs eToro made earlier this year, after eToro cancelled its plans to go public, via a merger with a NASDAQ listed SPAC. The transaction was to have valued eToro at upwards of $8.8 billion (after being renegotiated down from more than $10 billion), with several hundred million dollars of fresh capital to be injected into eToro as part of the deal. But again, the deal didn’t materialize and eToro shifted gears from growth to improving profitability and cash flow.