HSBC has sold its Australian Online Brokerage business to ETrade for A$51.3 million ($37.9 million). The deal will give ETrade an additional...

HSBC has sold its Australian Online Brokerage business to ETrade for A$51.3 million ($37.9 million). The deal will give ETrade an additional 40,000 customers and a market share of around 26 per cent of online broking in Australia. As part of the deal, HSBC will refer its retail clients to ETrade for online share brokerage. ETrade will also take over HSBC's contract to host St George Bank's "directshares" product. ETrade said it could take up to four months to transfer HSBC's customers and it expected to make money from the deal by 2007.