FX week in review: FTX in Cyprus, SquaredFinancial stake, Plus500-Atletico ends

Gerald Segal 0 Comments June 12, 2022

Who has been hired by high-flying crypto exchange FTX in Cyprus?

Who just bought a 5% stake in FX broker SquaredFinancial?

How did the markets react to CMC Markets’ FY2022 results?

Where else in Europe did neobroker BUX just launch?

Which executives are in, and which are out, at Exness, Equiti Capital, NAGA, and CMC Markets?

Answers to these questions, and a whole lot more, appeared first or exclusively this past week at FNG. Some of the most read and commented-on FX industry news stories to appear over the past seven days on FNG included:

FTX builds out Cyprus office with new hires from (mainly) FX/CFD brokers. FNG Exclusive… Further to our report from March that high flying crypto exchange FTX had set up shop in Cyprus and was going to use the EU island nation as its gateway to offer services to clients in Europe, FNG has learned that the company had indeed made a number of key hires and filled important positions. Many of the new hires at FTX have been executives from the FX and CFD brokerage world. Cyprus, and in particular Limassol, has become one of the main centers globally for managing online brokerages.

Georges Cohen acquires 5% of SquaredFinancial. Cyprus based Retail FX and CFDs broker SquaredFinancial has announced that it has welcomed back co-founder Georges Cohen, who has returned to the company as an investor. Georges Cohen was a longtime Capgemini executive, who left in 1990 to found Transiciel, one of France’s fastest growing information technology consulting groups. In 2003, he sold Transiciel to Capgemini through a share exchange offer. Following this transaction, Georges was tasked to merge Sogeti and Transiciel. Georges successfully led the operation and managed the new entity, which was established in many countries throughout Europe and the United States.

CMC Markets shares sink 21% after FY2022 results release. Shares of London based online trading services provider CMC Markets plc (LON:CMCX) traded down by 21% on Thursday, after the company reported its full results for its fiscal year ended March 31, 2022. CMC dragged down some of its competitors as well, with IG Group (LON:IGG) shares off by 5% on Thursday. The decline is somewhat puzzling, given that CMC had already shared with the markets what it thought Revenues and Profits would be in a Trading Update released in early April. In fact, Revenues came in a little ahead of what CMC had targeted in that early April announcement.

Plus500 ends eight-year run as Atletico Madrid front-of-shirt sponsor. Leading CFDs broker Plus500 (LON:PLUS) has completed an eight-year run as front-of-shirt sponsor for Spanish LaLiga team Atletico Madrid, which began with the 2015 season. Moving forward, Atletico’s new shirt sponsor will be crypto exchange WhaleFin. WhaleFin recently finalized a new five-year, €210 million agreement with Atletico that will see the crypto company pay a whopping €42 million per year for the front-of-shirt rights. That more than doubles the current €17 million a year paid by Plus500 under its most recent deal with the club, signed back in 2017.

Neobroker BUX launches its investing and trading app in Italy. Amsterdam based neobroker BUX is continuing its expansion march across Europe, announcing the launch of its BUX Zero app in Italy. After BUX launched in Spain and Ireland late last year, Italy is the eighth market the company is expanding into, reinforcing the platform’s commitment to making investing more accessible and affordable for everyday European users. A recent BUX study showed that 53% of Italian respondents said that they plan to start investing in the next twelve months, while 70% stated that the main driver to start investing is to guarantee financial security for the future.