Ameritrade to Open Walk-In Branches

Ameritrade Holding Corp., the biggest online broker by customer trades, plans to open its first branch office next week in a bid to win more business.

A two-person office in Scottsdale, Ariz., will be followed by one or two more in Austin, Texas. The company may open 20 more if the first are successful, Chief Executive Joseph Moglia said.

“When I walk past branches of competitors, I never see customers or brokers on the phone, but they say that people who open accounts in branches tend to deposit more,” Moglia said. “We might as well test that.”

Omaha-based Ameritrade made an average of 175,000 trades for its 3.1 million accounts last quarter. Charles Schwab Corp., the biggest discounter by customer assets, made 168,000 trades for its 7.5 million accounts. Schwab, which has 342 branches, ended 2003 with $967 billion of customer assets against Ameritrade’s customer holdings of $65.2 billion.

Moglia said the company also would keep open two Oregon offices in Portland and Beaverton owned by Bidwell & Co., a firm with $5 billion of customer assets that Ameritrade bought on Jan. 2, Moglia said. Most of Bidwell’s 100,000 accounts trade online.

Ameritrade has seen its daily trades on which customers pay commissions climb to about 250,000 this month.

It collects an average of $13.50 per trade, compared with the average of $35.20 collected by San Francisco-based Schwab last quarter. Scottrade, a St. Louis-based broker with 198 offices, advertises online commission rates of $7 a trade.

Ameritrade shares fell 68 cents Wednesday to $15.83 on Nasdaq.