Forex Weekly Look Back: FXCubic names Richard Bartlett Head of Sales, Refinitiv launches Order Splitting on its trading platform

Looking back at the most intriguing and popular industry news from the past week between 22th and 26th February on LeapRate.

Global institutional investment network Liquidnet has announced the appointment of John Emmert as Head of Trading Desk for the Americas. The new appointment follows the company’s continued development of its execution solutions in the region. At his new position, Emmert will work on developing new trading experience to bring together specialized institutional expertise and insight, liquidity search tools and real-time analytics across the desk’s algorithmic program and single-stock trading capabilities.

Refinitiv has announced the launch of Order Splitting on its FXall trading platform, a workflow solution that provides greater flexibility and control over the staging and execution of FX trades. The new solution allows traders to split one order into multiple smaller orders that can be traded using different execution methods and across multiple liquidity providers.

Tabula – the ETF provider focused on a fixed income for European institutional investors – has today been announced as the 27th ETF issuer on the Swiss Stock Exchange. This revelation comes after the provider listed its US Enhanced UCITS ETF, meaning that new prospects for passive investments in the Fixed Income space are now on offer. This makes it the 4th new product provider to join the exchange this year, following the two new ETP issuers CoinShares and ETC Group, as well as the structured product issuer Exane. All of these new products joined within the space of just 10 days back in January 2021.

The Saxo Bank Group announced its financial results for 2020 with strong net profit which increased to DKK 750 million from DKK 40 million in the previous year. The Denmark-based Group reported high number of 238,000 new active clients in 2020 and a total number of active clients reaching 660,000. The company stated that its client base has increased 280% since 2018. The financial service provider also registered operating income of DKK 4,316 million in 2020 with a 65% from the DKK 2,611 million in 2019. EBITDA raised to DKK 1,612 million in 2020 from DKK 822 million in the previous year.

Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has launched an immunity policy for certain offenses such as market manipulation, insider trading and dishonest conduct. The new policy allows an individual who was engaged with others in such actions as market manipulation and insider trading in the course of carrying on a financial services business, to seek immunity from civil penalty and criminal proceedings. This policy covers only individuals and not corporations.

SIX, the financial services company that operates the infrastructure for the Swiss financial centre has announced taking a majority stake via growth investment in Canadian-based AI platform specializing in ESG and alternative data sets, Orenda Software Solutions. The move is part of SIX’s strategy to help its customers drive more insights with data, providing consumption-ready data and analytics for faster and more informed decisions.

Marex Spectron has announced adding new energy futures trading and clearing group to its North America arm, based in New York. The team there includes seven seasoned exchange-traded energy market specialists led by Martin Timmins, joined from ED&F Man Capital Markets, Inc to service a broad range of commercial hedgers and institutional investors.

Fintech firm Broadridge has announced a new offering that will work to extend market access to securities-based lending via an end-to-end SBL technology platform while also helping to connect wealth managers to banks and other significant financial institutions. The Bancorp, Inc. will be joining the Wealth Lending Network marketplace as an inaugural funding partner.

Economic and financial data provider Macrobond Financial has appointed Howard Rees as Chief Commercial Officer. Rees will be based in the London office and he will oversee all global sales, customer activities and strategic partnerships. Most recently, Rees served as Head of International Sales at Burgiss, where he led the US private-equity data and analytics provider’s expansion across key markets.

London-based FX technology provider FXCubic announced team expansion with a veteran hire, former head of business development team at Centroid Solutions, Richard Bartlett. Bartlett has a decade of experience in the finance sector as head of global sales for multiple FX brokerages before moving into the B2B side of the FX technology space. Bartlett led the global sales team at PrimeXM for five years.

The developer of technology software for multi-asset brokers Brokeree Solutions has announced MT4/5 Maintenance Package for MetaTrader platforms. The new service allows brokers to outsource platform installment and infrastructure configuration to their specialists. Brokers can request services from the MetaTrader Maintenance Package such as setting up live, demo and backup servers with the full configuration of groups, symbols, swaps, and commissions. Brokers can also get their technical questions about MT4/MT5 servers resolved from the Brokeree team.

ThinkMarkets has now obtained a licence that will grant clients in Japan access to their trading platform, ThinkTrader. This platform will allow Japanese investors to trade CFDs based on cryptocurrencies 24/7, with weekend access included in its functionality. Regulated and authorised by the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Australian ‎Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), ThinkMarkets is a multi-licensed and multi-asset online forex brokerage firm that works to provide its users with a seamless trading experience. The firm recently turned to Japan’s financial services regulator to gain a presence in the Japanese Forex market and has now acquired a licence to make its first moves.

LMAX Group’s subsidiary LMAX Exchange has appointed Christian Skovgaard Larsen as Liquidity Manager. He will be based in London and his responsibilities will include “transparent, precise, consistent execution”, as stated in his LinkedIn profile. Larsen is an expert in the trading industry with expertise in FX spot and derivatives, options, forwards and swaps, NDFs and futures. He has experience in market making, proprietary and principal trading and agency sales-trading & execution.

Forex Weekly Look Back

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) announced that its Board has appointed Annemie Rombouts as Chair of the Corporate Reporting Standing Committee (CRSC). According to the official press release, Rombouts was previously Deputy Chair of the Belgian Financial Services and Markets Authority. Her new appointment as chair of the CRSC is effective immediately.

Moscow Exchange announced that the number of individuals with accounts has grown by almost 1.2 million people year-to-date and now it has reached 10 million. Last year, 5 million new retail investors opened brokerage accounts, more than all previous years together. Over the last six years, the number of retail investors trading on the exchange has increased ten-fold.

Skrill users will, for the first time, be able to withdraw funds directly to their chosen cryptocurrency address. By selecting ‘Crypto Wallet’ on their account and entering both the desired balance and wallet address of either an Ethereum or Bitcoin wallet, customers of the digital payments provider will be able to withdraw immediately and convert fiat balances to an external cryptocurrency wallet.

European Financial services provider RoboMarkets, has announced that it will no longer provide trading services for crypto CFDs. The company has made this decision to protect its clients from the high risk associated with the crypto market. The investment company announced that on 24 March, between 12:00 and 13:00 server time all positions in BTCUSD, BTCEUR, XRPUSD, DSHUSD, LTCUSD, LTCBTC, ETHUSD, ETHBTC, ETHEUR, EOSUSD will be closed by current quotations.

A trading frenzy headed by retail investors on social media has resulted in IG Group restricting leveraged trading in around 900 small cap-stocks, including recognisable firms such as Hiscox, Hammerson, and Superdry. New restrictions have been set largely due to the rise of functionality issues caused by retailing platforms’ immense pressure to keep pace with the rapid growth in retail investing. Retail platforms have reported experiencing outages and crashes during periods of high volume, often resulting in trading having to be halted. It is said that part of this strain has been driven by a sharp increase of new amateur investors.

CFI Financial Group, a online trading services provider, has announced a new partnership with the Middle Eastern TV presenter Georges Kordahi. The popular media personality, Georges Kordahi, will be the new brand ambassador of CFI in the MENA region and the Arab world. The partnership will help expand brand awareness across the Arab World.

London-listed financial broker IG Group announced its decision to remove cryptocurrencies from its offering to UK-based retail clients. Ahead of the removal of the crypto offering, IG Group will raise its margin requirements on existing positions. The move results from UK FCA’s ban on crypto derivatives sale. A post on IG Community Forum states that clients were asked to close all their open spread bets and/or CFD positions on cryptocurrencies by 3 pm on Wednesday, 24 March. After that, the company will close open positions based on the prevailing bid/ask prices.

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