Turkey’s Global Kapital Group, which operates the GKFX retail FX and GKPro (Powered by GKFX) institutional brokerage brands, has announced the acquisition of Australia based FairMarkets Trading Pty Ltd.

FairMarkets is an ASIC licensed institutional FX and CFDs broker, acting as a liquidity provider for over-the-counter derivatives. The company, which rebranded from ILQ Australia to FairMarkets in 2018, has been fairly inactive for the past couple of years, and so this appears to be a relatively inexpensive and quick attempt by GKFX to enter the Australia regulated market.

The move comes at a curious time, as new ASIC rules limiting client leverage to 30x and requiring negative balance protection are about to come into force this month. When those type of rules were introduced in the UK and the EU in 2018, GKFX stopped taking retail clients in the UK, moving its retail FX operations to Malta based subsidiary AKFX Financial Services Ltd. That change led to a £9 million 2019 loss at GKFX-UK.

A Global Kapital Group spokesperson said of the FairMarkets acquisition:

“We are pleased to have completed the acquisition of FairMarkets Trading which marks an important milestone for our group. I believe this acquisition will strengthen our global presence and bring us one step closer to our goals.”

“A healthy combination of global experience and local expertise is the driving force behind our consistent expansion, and we are dedicated to delivering the best possible customer experience in every market we operate in.”

“The future of trading and investment heavily depends on constant innovation as the world is becoming more and more digitalized and people’s expectations shift towards a simpler and faster experience. We aim to fulfill all modern-day traders’ demands with simple and effective digital financial solutions.”

“We are happy to offer our services in Australia and very excited to step into a new market that has lots of potential.”