FX week in review: Broker results, platform updates, executive moves, new Retail FX brand
Quite the variety of FX Industry News this past week, covering FX broker results (some great, some less so), the sale of an institutional FX player, the departure of longtime senior executives at Playtech’s financials arm TradeTech, the launch of a new Retail FX brand spun off by a major Australian Retail FX player…
And, most of the week’s top stories appeared first or exclusively at FNG.
Some of the top forex industry news items to appear on the pages of FNG this week included:
Exclusive: Social trading firm NAGA Group raising €5 million. FNG Exclusive… It looks like some Retail FX brokers are taking advantage of the amazing rise in industry trading volumes (and revenues, profits…) they have seen over the past few months of market volatility, to raise capital to help drive continued growth. How is NAGA planning to raise the money? Where is NAGA licensed? How much has NAGA grown so far in 2020? Get all the details, exclusively at FNG.
Exclusive: VantageFX spins off new Retail FX brand Moneta Markets. FNG Exclusive… FNG has learned that Sydney, Australia based retail FX brokerage group VantageFX has established a new offshore retail FX brand called Moneta Markets. Moneta Markets (at monetamarkets.com) is a trademark of Vantage International Group Limited, the group’s licensed Cayman Islands subsidiary. The brand will be aimed at a separate demographic of trader than parent VantageFX, namely more beginner / novice traders, and of course those outside the company’s licensed jurisdiction in Australia.
B2Broker updates B2Core to offer expanded range of features and improved all-round functionality. B2Broker, a leading liquidity and technology provider of solutions to the forex and crypto industry, has announced a range of updates and enhancements to B2Core. The unveiled B2Core earlier this year and was a major overhaul of its client cabinet solution, previously known as Trader’s Room. B2Core includes basic tasks such as organising the work of forex brokers and crypto exchanges, back office for employees and administrators, front-end for traders, verification and registration of customers and a huge range of payment functions.
CMC Markets shares soar (again) to all-time high after rosy Trading Update. The good times continue to roll in the Retail FX and CFDs space. CMC Markets, which over the last couple of years had been lagging peers IG and Plus500 among the “major” online CFD players in the UK, today released a trading update for the just-completed April-to-June-2020 quarter, which is its first quarter of fiscal 2021 (CMC has a March 31 fiscal year end). And the market seemed to like what it heard. After releasing its full-year (to March 31, 2020) results a few weeks ago – which sent its shares up 29% at the time to a multi-year high – CMC shares traded up about another 10% in early LSE trading Friday morning, topping £3 for the first time.
Exclusive: FxPro UK sees volumes halved in 2019. FNG Exclusive… FNG has learned from regulatory filings that FxPro UK Limited, the FCA licensed arm of global Retail FX and CFDs broker FxPro, saw a significant decline in activity last year as ESMA and FCA initiated reforms took hold. However, we understand after speaking with FxPro officials, that trading volumes in the UK entity, as well as elsewhere within the FxPro group, have significantly recovered in 2020 and surpassed the levels seen in 2019 – a phenomenon we’ve witnessed at a number of other leading FX and CFD brokers.
SGX buys out BidFX for $128 million. Singapore based multi-asset exchange and FX derivatives marketplace SGX has announced that it would acquire the remaining 80% stake in BidFX from its other shareholder TradingScreen for a cash consideration of approximately US$128 million. BidFX was previously a subsidiary of TradingScreen, which had been incubating BidFX and spun it off in 2017. SGX said that the move that would expand its reach beyond FX futures into the global FX over-the-counter (OTC) market. As part of its multi-asset strategy to build FX into another core pillar of growth, SGX first acquired a 20% stake in BidFX in March 2019, with the aim of bringing together FX futures with OTC markets.

Key FX industry executive moves reported first or exclusively this past week on FNG included:
- Exclusive: Muhammad Rasoul leaves Playtech-TradeTech
- Exclusive: ex SafeCharge CEO David Avgi launches new ePayments venture UNIPaaS
- First Derivatives adds BMC Software CEO Ayman Sayed to its board
- Former First Direct CEO Alan Hughes named Chairman of Equals Group
- ForexCT’s Steven Marsh banned for high pressure sales