FNG Exclusive… FNG has learned that just two months into his role as Head of Arabic Office for New Zealand based Retail FX and CFDs broker Blackbull Markets, Waleed Salah is on the move again and has joined Valutrades. His new title at Valutrades will be Head of Sales MENA, but effectively he will be charged with building the Valutrades business and brand in the Arabic speaking world.

The Egypt-based Waleed Salah had joined Blackbull Markets in April 2021 (as was also exclusively reported by FNG) from Australia based VantageFX, where he had a similar role. Prior to VantageFX Waleed Salah worked for a number of years for now-bankrupt USGFX as their Middle East Director. He has also worked for ATFX, RoboForex and FBS.

We understand that one of the reasons that Mr. Salah left Blackbull was that the company has been having some problems accepting and onboarding MENA based clients.

Valutrades is an FCA licensed broker and is run from London led by Graeme Watkins, who has been CEO since 2015. The company is controlled by Indonesian investors Aman Lakhiani and Anil Bahirwani. The move marks an expansion into the MENA region and its first real presence there for Valutrades, which saw healthy revenue growth in 2020.

FNG spoke with Valutrades CEO Graeme Watkins, who commented:

“We are super excited to welcome Waleed to the team. We feel he is the perfect compliment to our strong value proposition of low spreads, low commission, excellent customer service. Since we have not been active in the MENA region before and since we believe this region lacks some of the credible value propositions of other regions we are excited to start sharing what we have to offer.

“Waleed will be in charge not only of sales but establishing us in the region by presenting our business in a fully localized way including over time adding offices, staff and local language services while maintaining Valutrades core beliefs of positive, customer focused, organic growth that has positions us well in recent times.”