William Mercer Mcleod‹Corbis/Outline
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E-BROKER
COMPANY E*Trade, Chairman and CEO
ADDRESS www.etrade.com
AGE 51
BIO His company isn't the biggest online brokerage (that's Charles Schwab), but it's
by far the biggest wavemaker. In a year when nothing moved quicker than the
market, Christos Cotsakos set E*Trade on a warp-speed track toward owning every
possible online financial transaction. While Merrill Lynch's brokers were just
getting adjusted to being online, Cotsakos was snapping up an e-bank, creating a
mutual-fund family and buying a financial-news website. E*Trade controls 14% of
the online brokerage market, and its edgy ads ("If your broker is so smart, why
is he still working?") and strategic acquisitions are bringing tens of thousands
of new investors into the fold every month.
The frenetic growth of online brokerages in 1999 owes a lot to a market that
doesn't know when to quit, of course. But E*Trade's rise is largely attributed to
Cotsakos' hunger. The son of a short-order cook, Cotsakos went to Vietnam right
out of high school. Coming back with a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star for valor,
the New Jersey youth attended local William Paterson College. After graduation he
took a job as a cargo handler for a then unknown operation called Federal
Express, where he stayed almost 20 years, eventually running major
international-shipping operations. In 1996 he joined E*Trade, at the time a small
discount broker that fielded trades over the phone or through America Online.
Cotsakos moved the company to the Web and began pushing it as an alternative to
expensive brokers. Today he's fending off those big-name brokers, who have
finally discovered the Internet. But the only thing that makes him look over his
shoulder, he says, is the thought of someone who might just be as hungry as he
is.
BEST LINE "Two kids in a garage--that's who we're most worried about."
FORWARD TILT Cotsakos wants to create a financial portal--a one-stop-shopping
money marketplace where you'll be able to invest, insure, shop, get financial
news and even bank. When E*Trade's June acquisition of online bank Telebanc is
finalized this fall, he'll be well on his way.
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