Forex Weekly Look Back: Brokeree CCO Elina Bagautdinova talks with LeapRate, IG plans to acquire tastytrade

Looking back at the most intriguing and popular industry news from the past week between 18th and 22th January on LeapRate.

The multibank FX streaming aggregation and a matching service provider FXSpotStream has hired long time R5FX head of technology Amar Vadher. Vadher will continue to be based in London and will join FXSpotStream as Infrastructure and Connectivity Manager. FXSpotStream  has recently been on a hiring spree and expanding its team. Prior FXSpotStream, Vadher spent over five years at R5FX as Head of Technology. He joined the emerging markets FX broker in September 2015.

Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEX) has announced the launch of a cash-settled Mini USD/CNH (US dollar/Offshore Renminbi, or RMB) Futures contract. The new addition is a smaller-sized contract to complement the popular USD/CNH derivatives products, diversifying HKEX’s suite of currency derivatives to support the risk-management needs of global investors.

Centroid Solutions, a provider of technology solutions for FX and CFD trading, today announced the appointment of veteran Cristian Vlasceanu as its CEO. At his new position, Vlasceanu will be responsible for the growth of Centroid’s overall business solutions, with focus on operational execution and product development, ensuring the fintech company’s products positively impact brokers’ performance and help clients reach their full potential.

Chief Commercial Officer of Brokeree Solutions, Elina Bagautdinova, sat down for a talk with LeapRate. Elina has more than a decade of experience in strategic management positions. She talked with us about the technology provider’s focus and plans. Elina explained the difference between money management systems like PAMM, MAMM and Social Trading and what steps are needed in ensuring a smooth transition to multi-server money management systems. She noted that “the demand for the Social Trading platform has been growing among brokers, who want to build internal systems that allow them to provide the service without any potential risk of the client’s leak.”

IG Group Holdings plc announced the proposed acquisition of a high growth US online brokerage and trading education platform tastytrade for $1.0 billion. The landmark deal would expand and diversifie IG’s growth drivers through entry into the world’s largest listed derivatives market – the US. In addition, tastytrade is highly complementary to IG’s existing client offering, adding a provider of exchange traded derivatives and increasing the contribution from agency-only activities. The acquisition will also boost f IG’s existing US business.

The online trading company reported a record performance for H1FY21 with net trading revenue jumping 67% to £416.9 million, compared to the H1FY20 when it was £249.9 million.

Liquidity and technology provider B2Broker introduced a new range of features to its matching engine, B2Trader. The company’s aim is that the latest additions will have client demands be met in record time. According to B2Broker, many crypto exchanges and brokers around the globe are B2Trader. The matching engine algorithm keeps a record of all open orders in a market and generates new trades if the two orders can be fulfilled by each other.

CMC Markets, a global provider of online trading and technology solutions, issued a trading update for the third quarter of the financial year, encompassing the period from 1 October 2020 to 31 December 2020. The London-based company reported strong performance for the period driven by high client income retention. CMC Markets revealed that the business performed well in Q3 with high active client numbers, although at lower levels than earlier in the financial year. The group reported that client income retention remained in excess of 80%, but below the levels reported for H1 2021.

London Stock Exchange has confirmed that the acquisition of financial data provider Refinitiv in a $27 billion deal is expected to close on 29 January 2021. The merger is still subject to regulatory approvals which are expected to be granted soon. Refinitiv’s existing shares on London Stock Exchange’s Main Market are expected to be cancelled at 8:00 am on 29 January 2021 and simultaneously re-submitted under the new ticker symbol “LSEG”.

Pan-European exchange, Euronext announced the appointment of Delphine d’Amarzit to the Supervisory Board of Euronext N.V., as CEO of Euronext Paris and member of the Managing Board of Euronext N.V. from 15 March 2021, subject to regulatory and shareholder approvals. Prior to Euronext, d’Amarzit served as a Deputy CEO at Orange Bank where she was responsible for the oversight of the Operations, Credit, Finance, Risk and Compliance functions. Delphine d’Amarzit has an extensive knowledge of European and French capital markets, having held senior positions within the French Treasury Department for several years with responsibilities for capital markets development, European financial regulation and corporate financing.

CMC Markets, a global provider of online trading and technology solutions, has announced today the launch of CMC Markets Connect. The new unit is the re-branded institutional division of their business. CMC Connect offers a range of services to direct users such as hedge funds, family offices and smaller banks, as well as those who offer trading facilities to their own retail clients. CMC Markets has been operating in the B2B area for two decades.

Fintech firm Broadridge announced appointment of David Ingleson as Chief Operating Officer (COO) for Asia Pacific in order to meet growing demand for delivering technology solutions to financial institutions in APAC region. Ingleson will be based in Singapore and report to Samir Pandiri, President of Broadridge International. In his new role as COO, Ingleson will oversee regional implementation strategies for Broadridge, direct operations and support of Capital Markets clients in the region, and focus on further investing in Broadridge’s local market expertise and capabilities.

Forex Weekly Look Back

Thursday’s session began under the spell of risk-on, following Wednesday’s inauguration of the 46th President of the United States. Joe Biden’s presidency promises the deployment of a massive fiscal stimulus package as well as greater harmony between the Treasury and the Fed, with the central bank’s monetary policy likely to remain dovish for the foreseeable future in order to help create the necessary conditions for a post-pandemic rebound in economic activity.

BME launched AI Roboadviser service. The software will allow financial institutions to optimise their investment recommendation process individually for each investor and at any time. The algorithm learns with each iteration, understanding the preferences and knowledge of each investor, thus generating optimal portfolios. BME has developed a Roboadvisor service with Artificial Intelligence optimizing investments based on the investor’s preferences and knowledge and adhering to each firm’s business regulations.

Zürcher Kantonalbank (ZKB) and Deutsche Börse’s post-trade services provider Clearstream announced their first successfully processed live blockchain-based end-to-end fund transactions, using FundsDLT, a decentralised platform for fund transaction processing. The overall processing time for an investor order was reduced from several hours to just a few minutes.

The Swiss Stock Exchange welcomesd this week CoinShares as a new ETP issuer. The digital asset manager is already the second issuer to join the exchange in 2021. CoinShares’ physical bitcoin ETP further expands the choice of products with a crypto-currency as underlying at SIX. CoinShares is the second ETP issuer to join SIX in a weeks’ time. Their physical bitcoin ETP provides investors with exposure to bitcoin in combination with the benefits of Exchange Traded Products, each unit being backed up with 0.001 bitcoin at launch.

Multi-asset brokerage company ThinkMarkets expanded its product offering for cryptocurrency traders. The broker announced extending trading hours for its cryptocurrency line of trading products. From 00:00 GMT on January the 16th, the firm started offering CFD trading of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin on a 24/7 basis.

Digital asset exchange platform Gate.io has announced the launch of Gate.io Labs, a start-up accelerator, to support talented entrepreneurs with disruptive ideas and the ambition to take their projects to the next level. Gate.io Labs offers entrepreneurs (developers, researchers, founders) with industry support, best practices and resources to help them initiate and grow their start-ups and facilitate the development of their products and services in line with market demands.

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