High-tech tax break keeps currency trading company in West Michigan, secures 105 new local jobs

By: Dan Calabrese

An Ada Township firm that provides online currency trading services expects to add 105 local jobs over the next five years – thanks in part to a new location it will occupy with the help of high-tech tax breaks approved on Tuesday, March 17.

Global Forex Trading, which operates under the name GFT, will move from its long-time world headquarters in Ada to the former Mazda Great Lakes facility at 618 Kenmoor SE in Grand Rapids Township. GFT, which will invest $13.8 million in the facility, received $1.3 million in tax credits – over seven years – from the Michigan Economic Growth Authority (MEGA).

MEGA coordinated with local officials in Grand Rapids Township and Right Place, Inc. to finalize the deal.

George Bosnjak, a business development manager for Right Place, Inc., said GFT is an example of the sort of company that can help build a more “knowledge-based” economy in the area.

“These people are not exporting a good or a particular automobile,” Bosnjak says. “It’s their ideas, their knowledge. They do all of their own programming, all of their own software development. They have a full in-studio marketing operation. They film all their own TV ads. So they’re very vertically integrated. What they sell is a knowledge-based service.”

GFT offers users accounts through which they can trade various currencies in real-time throughout the world, day and night. Traders use software and systems custom-developed by GFT to access world financial markets.

Source: George Bosnjak, Right Place, Inc.

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Deborah Johnson Wood is development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].

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