Looking back at the most intriguing and popular industry news from the past week between 15th and 19th February on LeapRate.
The fintech-led brokerage and investment firm, SquaredFinancial announced the promotion of Philios Petrides as Chief Data Officer with the task to drive forward the digital transformation of the company. Petrides will be responsible for three interlinked areas of governance, operations and business development.
Asian international fixed income marketplace Singapore Exchange (SGX) and Brussels-based international central securities depositary (ICSD), Euroclear Bank announced the launch of the Orchid bond structure in Singapore, combining domestic bond issuance with global distribution channels.
It has recently been announced that digital assets financial services company Diginex Ltd. has partnered up with worldwide technology and services provider Itiviti to launch a new solution that will enable the trading of cryptocurrencies and crypto derivatives across multiple platforms.
Market infrastructure provider TP ICAP Group has appointed Andrew Polydor as Head of Global Markets. In the newly created position, Polydor will oversee the Group’s Global Broking division. The new responsibility will be in addition to his current role as head of TP ICAP’s Energy & Commodities division which he has held for the past 12 years. Polydor will be supported in leading and growing the E&C franchise by two deputy heads who the Group said will be announced soon.
The multibank FX streaming aggregation and a matching service provider FXSpotStream have named Yuta Inoguchi client relationship manager. Inoguchi will work in the company’s Tokyo office. Inoguchi has previously worked at Commerzbank in Tokyo. He spent there 5 years in several roles, including Relationship Management and Sales. He has worked at companies such as JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and UBS Group.
HSBC Holdings plc has announced the appointment of Celine Herweijer as Group Chief Sustainability Officer. She will take up her new role on July 2021 and report to Noel Quinn, HSBC, Group CEO. Herweijer comes to HSBC from PwC, where she has held roles such as leading PwC’s Global Innovation and Sustainability capability and acting as PwC’s Global Climate Change Leader.
St. Vincent-based brokerage Fullerton Markets has increased the trading flexibility it offers clients with additional trading functionalities and the recent launch of its MetaTrader 5 (MT5) trading platform. The newly opened MT5 trading account will allow traders on Fullerton the opportunity to explore, adapt to, and earn via the Fullerton Suite.
CFD trading platform Plus500 announced its preliminary results for the financial year ended on 31 December 2020. The company also launched a new share buyback program that will run until 11 August 2021. In the heightened volatility of last year, the Israel-based broker reported a somewhat dull fourth quarter but still a significant growth for the financial year. The broker reported $91.9 million for Q4 with a 4% decline compared to Q4 of 2019. EBITDA dropped to $19.9 million from $56.6 million in the previous year, an enormous 65% fall YoY.
Fast-growing multi-asset Forex and CFD investment company Accuindex today announced it has partnered with technology provider for financial services, PrimeXM, in order to integrate with its order routing service XCore. XCore provides Accuidex with low-latency connectivity with flexible pricing and aggregation engine, advanced risk management and full reporting used by over 250 Institutional Brokers, Prime of Primes and tier 2 banks. In the past year, Accuidex has been expanding its product offering to facilitate the demands of its increasing client base of retail and institutional traders from around the world.
The foreign exchange settlement provider, CLS Group, reported strong volumes in January 2021 after investors turned to FX markets amid violent market swings due to fears of a coronavirus-fuelled global recession. CLS saw a rise in swap volumes from $1.26 trillion in December 2020 to $1.36 trillion in January 2021, equating to an increase of 7.9% month-over-month, the figure was also rising by the same percentage yearly.
Online trading services provider CFI Financial Group, announced extending the sponsorship of Oliver Rowland, one of the two drivers behind the Nissan e.dams Formula E team. Throughout the last year, CFI has sponsored Rowland and considered the partnership fruitful. Even despite setbacks caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the company said the synergy had remained elevated.
PrimeXM has just released its trading volumes for January 2021. The broker registered a total of $883.26 billion in monthly trading volume in January across the 3 major Data Center locations. The metrics represent an almost 2% MoM increase compared to December 2020 when it was $866.46 billion. The Average Daily Volume (ADV) in January reached $44.16 billion with over 12%MoM improvement compared to the ADV of December 2020 when it was $39.38 billion. 6th January was the highest daily trading volume of the month with a $58.35 billion turnovers. The total trades registered in January was 28.22 million.
The pan-European exchange Euronext has announced hiring Piero Novelli, a co-president at Swiss bank UBS, to become its new chairman. Novelli’s career spans almost 3 decades. He has served as co-president of Investment Bank of UBS and a member of UBS Group Executive Board since October 2018. He became Co-Executive Chairman of Global Investment Banking in 2017 and in 2016 was sole Global Head of Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A).
