The “background noise” behind everything that happened in the FX industry news sphere over the past week was of course the failure last weekend of Silicon Valley Bank and crypto-lender Signature Bank in the US. A number of FX and CFD industry companies were busy reporting to their customers and partners that they either did or didn’t have exposure of some sort to those entities.

The bank failure aftermath has led to some serious market volatility – not just in the equity markets which had a wild ride this past week, but also in FX. On Wednesday (March 15) the EURUSD rate plunged by two full cents in a flight-to-quality before recovering to basically where it was.

But there was indeed news to report in the FX and CFDs business, with all the key stories appearing first or exclusively at FNG.

Who acquired FCA licensed FX and CFDs broker House of Borse?

Who acquired BrokerTech provider Broadway Technology?

What new monthly trading volume record was set by leading multi-asset broker Exness?

Where did OANDA (re) establish its EU operation?

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

Exclusive: Noor Capital expanding to UK, buying House of Borse. FNG Exclusive… FNG has learned that UAE based Retail FX and CFDs brokerage Noor Capital is expanding to the UK, and has taken control of FCA licensed broker House of Borse Ltd. Noor Capital is part of UAE based conglomerate Al Sayegh Brothers Group, headed by Abu Dhabi businessman Abdul Jabbar Al-Sayegh. The Al Sayegh’s main business is consumer electronics, importing LG and Hitachi products to the UAE.

Bloomberg buys Broadway Technology. Financial information and data giant Bloomberg has announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Austin, TX based fintech company Broadway Technology, which provides high-performance front-office fintech solutions to banks and brokers. No financial terms of the transactions were disclosed. The parties said that the acquisition of Broadway will enable Bloomberg to provide a low latency execution management offering optimized for rates trading, and deliver further innovations in multi-asset software.

Exness posts record $3.055 trillion in client trading volumes for February 2023. Multi-asset broker Exness continued its strong start to 2023, reporting a whopping $3.055 trillion in client trading volumes for the month of February. Despite February having less trading days (20) than other months, Exness topped the $3 trillion mark for the first time ever, setting a record not just for itself but for any Retail FX/CFD broker, ever. This also marks the third consecutive month of increasing trading volumes for Exness, and the record topped January 2023’s volumes of $2.822 trillion by more than 8%.

OANDA launches new operations in the EU. Online trading company OANDA has announced the launch of new operations in the EU. This is the result of a strategic change aimed at refocusing OANDA’s retail trading operations in the EU around the ability to offer a much wider range of asset classes. OANDA’s operations are now run from Warsaw, Poland, under the financial regulatory authority of KNF, the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (PFSA).

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

❑ Exclusive: Exness promotes Elena Krutova to CAO.

❑ Exclusive: Hantec Markets CSO Tony Sharpe moves to Trade Nation.

❑ Thomas Friesleben named Managing Director for StoneX Pro EMEA.

❑ Exclusive: Scope Markets hires Equiti exec Yaser Zidan as MENA Sales Manager.

❑ Exclusive: OvalX exec Tobin Utley moves to Spreadex.

❑ Exclusive: 24 Exchange MD-EMEA Alan Scott leaves to found Smart Money.