January 23, 2014 BY Gerald Segal

FCA cracking down on money laundering, fines Standard Bank £7.6 million

The bank ignored connections to politically exposed persons connected to companies operating from known money laundering jurisdictions The Financial Conduct Authority has issued a press release announcing that it has fined Standard bank PLC £7.6 million for failing to enforce proper anti-money laundering rules and procedures to ensure that corporate customers are not connected to…

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January 23, 2014 BY Gerald Segal

LMAX introduces trading in virtual currency Ven

Unlike Bitcoin, Ven’s price depends on a basket of currencies, commodities and carbon futures UK’s FCA regulated LMAX Exchange has announced its introducing trading for an alternative digital currency named Ven starting today according to a blog post on the Wall Street Journal’s website. This virtual currency has been introduced all the way back in…

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January 23, 2014 BY Gerald Segal

Saxo Bank launches social trading

Saxo Bank is morphing its TradingFloor.com research site into a social trading platform Our twitter feed has just presented us with some fresh information surrounding Saxo Bank’s exposure to the social trading environment. According to their social media account the Danish brokerage is transforming its Tradingfloor.com portal into a fully operational copy trading environment. Up…

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January 23, 2014 BY Gerald Segal

CySEC bans Bonuses tied to trading

Bonuses will only be allowed if funds are free to withdraw whenever the client wishes This could totally change the retail forex industry, and the way client acquisition and retention is done. It’s been only a day since CySEC outlined its priorities for 2014 and today we have the first steps taken in the direction…

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January 22, 2014 BY Gerald Segal

CySEC outlines its priorities for 2014

Renewal of investor confidence in Cyprus, investor training and modernization highlight CySEC’s plans for 2014 Cypriot financial regulator CySEC has assembled briefing with local media yesterday outlining future goals for the Commission and some review of the challenging year already behind us. The press release issued on the matter details the Commission’s priorities for the…

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January 22, 2014 BY Gerald Segal

LeapRate's Alexa ranking drops into the 60,000's

... and just as important, LeapRate readers are spending more time on the site, visiting more pages... We are pleased to report that LeapRate's Alexa ranking of the world's most popular websites has crossed into the 60,000's, just four weeks after we passed the 80,000 barrier into the 70,000's. We'd like to take this opportunity to thank…

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January 22, 2014 BY Gerald Segal

London Capital Group sees loss and drop in Revenues during 2H-2013

Under new management, the big question is whether LCG can make a recovery in 2014. UK spreadbetting and CFDs broker London Capital Group (or "LCG"), which operates the Capital Spreads, Capital CFDs and LCG FX brands, announced summary results for the second half of 2013 on Wednesday. LCG Group revenue came in at £10.9 million, down…

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January 22, 2014 BY Gerald Segal

Why can't big banks succeed in the Retail Forex industry?

Barclays Margin FX exit is just the latest in a string including Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs... As the global retail forex market has grown and matured -- with retail forex volumes hitting an all-time high in mid 2013 -- the predictions of many industry observers included an increasing presence of leading 'traditional' financial institutions in…

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