The top story in the Retail FX and CFDs sector this past week was clearly the cancellation of eToro’s plans to go public, via a merger with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) FinTech Acquisition Corp V.

For the past 16 months – since the planned deal was first announced in March 2021 – quite a number of people in the FX industry were elated that a company in “the business” could achieve a $10 billion valuation (which was later trimmed to $8.8 billion, but still…). Figures like that could attract a lot more capital to the sector, possibly private equity buyouts and the like.

But the dream is no more, with eToro – which had racked up losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars last year, in large part from its push to go public – now scrambling to raise funds from private sources, and laying off a good portion of its work force.

There was of course a lot more this past week – management moves including the surprise departure of a longtime FX broker CEO, some familiar faces in new places, and our semi-annual report on how shares of publicly traded Retail FX and CFD brokers did, in 1H-2022.

Some of the most read and commented-on FX industry news stories to appear over the past seven days on FNG included:

eToro lays off 100 in wake of failed SPAC IPO. Following the cancellation of its plans to go public via a merger with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) FinTech Acquisition Corp V (NASDAQ:FTCV), social trading focused online broker eToro is going to look to cut costs, including laying off a sizeable portion of its workforce. eToro announced late Tuesday that it plans to lay off about 100 workers, with about half the layoffs coming in its Israel headquarters and the other half in offices abroad. That represents about 6% of eToro’s workforce of about 1,700 employees.

Exclusive: Retail FX/CFD broker shares down 13% in 1H-2022. FNG Exclusive Analysis… The first half of 2022 was certainly a forgettable one for most equity market (and crypto) investors, with a decidedly risk-off environment leading to a fairly large sell-off of all types of financial assets. So it should come as no surprise that following what was a fairly strong 2020 and 2021 for Retail FX and CFD brokers, the first half of 2022 was a bit of a different story – at least if you look at the share price action of the publicly traded brokers.

GCEX opens Dubai office, hires ex CFH/Finalto exec Mehtap Önder. GCEX, the London based institutional-focused digital assets and FX brokerage established by former CFH Clearing co-founder Lars Holst, has announced that it is expanding into the MENA region with the opening of a new Dubai office. The company has also hired one of Mr. Holst’s former CFH/Finalto colleagues, Mehtap Önder, as Dubai office head and Managing Director, GCEX MENA. Mehtap Önder was Regional Director of CFH Turkey (now Finalto) from 2014-2019.

Exness sees second-best ever month with June 2022 volumes at $2.25T. Driven by continued market volatility, leading multi-asset broker Exness completed a record first half of the year, with the world’s largest Retail CFDs broker posting a fourth consecutive month with client trading volumes above $2 trillion in June 2022. Exness clients traded $2.249 trillion worth of CFDs in June, up by 12% over May’s $2.004 trillion, and second best to Exness’ record $2.484 trillion in volumes in March 2022.

Top FX industry executive moves reported at FNG this week included:

❑ Orbex Managing Director Mohammed Yaghi resigns.

❑ Exclusive: Abdelhadi Laabi joins Retail FX broker Emporium as CMO.

❑ Exclusive: Rostro adds BCS exec Andrew Richards as Head of Prime Brokerage.

❑ ADSS hires banking exec Alison Higgins as Chief Trading Officer.

❑ Exclusive: Capital.com hires Pepperstone exec Tola Denloye as Sub-Saharan Africa head.

❑ Exclusive: Forex HR specialist Anca Ioana Ionescu joins Axi in Cyprus.

❑ Exclusive: Arun Lakhani joins BidX as Operations Manager.

❑ Exclusive: Equiti Capital adds former Axi exec Steve Reeves to its board.