Zecco Holdings, Inc., announced today that seasoned online brokerage executive Michael Raneri has joined the company as chief information officer, responsible for both technology and product development.
Mr. Raneri has been a member of Zecco's Board of Directors since February 2007.
Mr. Raneri is recognized as a pioneer in electronic trading and a leader in Web 2.0 technologies. As the SVP of Integrated Client Experiences at Charles Schwab, Mr. Raneri led many of the initiatives that fueled the company's rapid growth on the Internet, building compelling integrated experiences across multiple consumer facing electronic products.
"Michael launched the original StreetsmartPro active trader platform as well as key parts of the original schwab.com website. Few can match his experience and understanding of how the online investor uses technology," said Jeroen Veth, CEO of Zecco Holdings. "Add that to his industry leading Web 2.0 experience as the CEO of MeeVee, and you quickly see this is a man ready to apply his experience and transform the way people invest."
Raneri was most recently the CEO of MeeVee.com, a website where consumers can create a personalized online entertainment guide, find and view relevant multimedia content that matches their interests, and participate in an entertainment based social networking platform. With more than 20 years of exceptional leadership experience, built through a variety of management positions at Charles Schwab & Company and Quick & Reilly, Inc. (now Bank of America Securities), he brings additional depth to the management team of Zecco.
"We've grown significantly over the past year, adding important enhancements to our online financial community and trading platforms. Michael will enhance our foundation to create an unparalleled investing experience on top of a high performing, reliable and secure technology platform," added Veth.
Separately, Zecco Holdings, Inc., a leading online investing community that offers access to free stock trading through its wholly owned subsidiary, Zecco Trading, Inc., and Wikinvest, the stock research wiki, today announced a partnership in which Wikinvest will deliver its quality investment research to Zecco.com.
Through the partnership, Zecco's 120,000 members will have access to an unprecedented spectrum of free investment services including company research from Wikinvest when they visit the Zecco Quotes & Research pages.
"Individual investors need access to the best intelligence and tools to navigate the murky waters of today's volatile markets, and they're turning to Zecco and our social investing community, ZeccoShare, for that information," said Jeroen Veth, chief executive officer of Zecco Holdings. "Our partnership with Wikinvest once again shows that Zecco is continuously looking to enhance the tools for our members to conduct research in a more collaborative environment." Previously, Zecco partnered with The Motley Fool regarding its CAPS ratings, and with PredictWallStreet regarding its stock prediction tool.
Zecco And Wikinvest Are Leaders In Collective Investing Intelligence
Both Zecco and Wikinvest are at the forefront of the "Investing 2.0" trend - the interaction of social networking and finance.
Wikinvest brings a broad spectrum of practical information about companies, trends, and issues to the Zecco community. Unlike conventional finance portals that display the same financial statistics, Wikinvest explains the deeper story behind an investment, giving investors the context needed to understand what they are betting on when purchasing a particular stock, or investing in a specific sector.
Zecco offers the unique combination of its broker-dealer, Zecco Trading, and its community, ZeccoShare. The community allows Zecco Trading customers to share verified portfolios and trades, view other users' performance and holdings and form groups (such as "socially-responsible investing," "women on investing," or "boomers and retirement planning"). Zecco members have access to a new level of transparency not previously available to online investment communities, allowing them to gain more valuable information and feedback from their fellow investors through discussion forums, blogs, private chat and more.
"At Wikinvest, our mission is to provide unprecedented depth and quality research to investors for free," said Wikinvest co-founder Mike Sha. "Our relationship with Zecco extends our commitment to giving investors everything they need to make educated decisions - and now act on them - with confidence."