James Sullivan will keep his job. That detail, buried in Thursday’s acquisition announcement, reveals more than the usual corporate platitudes about Alpha Prime Markets’ purchase of Divento Financials Ltd.
The cash-and-share deal, confirmed on 20 March, keeps Sullivan—who founded the financial education business in 2008—at the helm as CEO. For Alpha Prime, the London-based proprietary trading company, the move isn’t about absorbing a competitor or expanding geographically. It’s about building a pipeline.
Alpha Prime operates a live trading floor in London, where traders worldwide access the firm’s platforms after demonstrating success on test accounts. Now those traders will have direct access to Divento’s accredited courses, creating a closed-loop training system that Alpha Capital Group CEO George Kohler describes as essential to the firm’s growth strategy.
“This marks another important expansion as we continue to offer our traders access to more advanced technology, resources and, in this case, training courses endorsed by the CISI and accredited by VTCT,” Kohler said.
The acquisition adds Divento to Alpha Capital Group’s stable of subsidiaries, which includes Alpha Prime Markets, Alpha Capital, and Alpha Futures. Founded in 2021 by Kohler and director Andrew Blaylock, the group has accumulated more than 17,000 TrustPilot reviews with a 4.7-out-of-5 rating.
But it’s Divento’s credibility that Alpha Prime is really buying.
Since 2008, Divento has designed globally recognised financial trading qualifications, working with clients including the Department for Work & Pensions, the City of London Corporation, and various UK universities. Every course carries accreditation from a professional awarding body and endorsement from the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment. The Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation—Ofqual—regulates them all.
That regulatory stamp matters in an industry where training quality varies wildly. Prop trading firms have proliferated in recent years, many offering minimal educational support beyond basic platform tutorials. Alpha Prime is betting that formal, accredited training will differentiate it from competitors who prioritise volume over trader success.
The economics make sense for both sides. Alpha traders gain access to courses that previously sat outside their budget, benefiting from economies of scale now that the education provider operates in-house. Divento, meanwhile, taps into Alpha Prime’s reach and resources to scale beyond its traditional client base of institutions and universities.
“Clients will be able to undertake training online or within our training room at Alpha Prime, where they’ll also be able to learn from being around a live trading floor, giving vital real-world experience,” Kohler explained. “Unlike other prop firms, we want our customers to win….and this is yet another way that we can help people from all backgrounds fulfill their potential as traders.”
The physical trading floor gets mentioned twice in Alpha Prime’s materials—a deliberate positioning choice in an era when most prop firms operate entirely online. The message: proximity to actual trading creates an advantage that remote education cannot replicate.
Sullivan sees the deal as a chance to democratise access to professional trading education. “Through this deal, we look forward to working closely with George and the team at Alpha Prime and tapping into their reach and resources to really take advantage of the potential to scale the company and help even more people learn about financial trading through a trusted, experience and accredited provider,” he said.
He added: “We can now provide access to our courses to people who might not previously have had the opportunity, and help prepare them for a future career in financial services, whether that’s in trading roles or other positions within the financial services industry.”
The deal represents a form of vertical integration rarely seen in proprietary trading. Rather than relying on external training providers or leaving trader education to chance, Alpha Prime is bringing the entire development pipeline under one roof. Traders who start on the firm’s evaluation platforms can now progress through accredited courses, gain real-world experience on a physical trading floor, and eventually manage live accounts—all within the same corporate structure.
Whether that model proves more effective than traditional prop firm approaches remains to be seen. But the bet is clear: in a crowded market where most firms compete primarily on fee structures and payout percentages, Alpha Prime is wagering that better-educated traders will generate better returns.
For Divento, the acquisition provides distribution that years of institutional sales couldn’t match. Instead of pitching courses to universities and government departments one contract at a time, the company now has direct access to every trader who joins Alpha Prime’s platforms. That’s a built-in customer base with obvious motivation to improve their skills.
The financial terms weren’t disclosed, though the structure—cash and shares—suggests Sullivan and any other Divento stakeholders now have skin in Alpha Capital Group’s long-term success. That alignment of incentives typically signals confidence on both sides that the combined entity will outperform what either could achieve independently.
Kohler and Blaylock have grown Alpha Capital Group from a 2021 start-up to what the company describes as a high-growth business in just over three years. Adding an education arm with 17 years of institutional relationships and regulatory approval accelerates that trajectory considerably.
The training will be delivered both online and at Alpha Prime’s London facility, where Sullivan’s courses will sit alongside the active trading floor. That proximity is the point. Traders learning about risk management or technical analysis won’t just study theory—they’ll hear it playing out in real-time a few desks away.
Industry observers have noted that the prop trading sector faces increasing scrutiny over trader success rates and the sustainability of various business models. Firms that can demonstrate genuine investment in trader development—through accredited education rather than generic webinars—may find themselves better positioned as regulatory attention intensifies.
Alpha Prime is making that bet explicit. By purchasing an education provider with Ofqual regulation and CISI endorsement, the firm is effectively putting credentials behind its claim that it wants traders to succeed.
Whether competitors follow suit will depend largely on whether Alpha Prime’s approach actually produces better trading outcomes. If accredited education correlates with higher trader profitability, expect other prop firms to start shopping for training companies. If the model fails to deliver measurable advantages, it becomes an expensive experiment in vertical integration.
For now, Sullivan keeps his title, his company keeps its name, and Alpha Prime gets a training operation that took 17 years to build. The real test comes when those newly educated traders start managing live capital.
