Exclusive: iS Prime and ThinkMarkets settle longstanding lawsuit on day before trial
FNG Exclusive… FNG has learned that one of the longest running (and interesting) legal disputes in the FX trading sector has come to a close – and on the day before the dispute was set to go to trial in the UK.
Prime-of-Prime broker iS Prime and Retail FX brokerage firm ThinkMarkets (via its UK arm TF Global Markets UK Limited) have settled a lawsuit stemming from the 2017 sale of ThinkMarkets’ B2B arm ThinkLiquidity to iS Prime parent company ISAM. The acquired ThinkLiquidity business formed the basis for ISAM’s current unit iS Risk (formerly known as IS Risk Analytics).
iS Prime had originally sued ThinkMarkets for $15 million in damages in UK court, claiming that ThinkMarkets was not sending its trades to ISAM group units for execution, as part of an exclusivity clause in the sale agreement. The litigation involved several claims and counterclaims made by both parties. There was other “side show” litigation which resulted, such as a former ThinkMarkets employee in the US being sued by ThinkMarkets after he moved to an ISAM group company.
Previous attempts at arbitration were unsuccessful, and the lawsuit and various counterclaims by the parties (following a number of preliminary decisions by the court over the past two years which dismissed part of the lawsuit and counterclaims) were set to be adjudicated in front of His Honour Judge Mark Pelling KC at the UK High Court of Justice, beginning tomorrow.
Specific terms of the settlement were not released by the parties.
iS Prime provided FNG with the following official statement regarding the settlement:
“iS Prime is delighted with the terms of settlement reached with ThinkMarkets. The outcome is a clear vindication of iS Prime’s position. iS Prime will move on, continuing to provide the outstanding service to our clients which we have always provided.”
ThinkMarkets provided the following comment:
“We look forward to moving on to better uses of our time, with the majority of the IS Prime claim defeated in the strike out application it was time to resolve differences.”
