Forex Weekly Look Back: Soe Hein Min returns to United Strategic, Robinhood appoints three new directors to Markets Board

Looking back at the most intriguing and popular industry news from the past week between 31st May and 4th June on LeapRate.

United Strategic International Group released details surrounding the re-appointment of former owner Soe Hein Min. According to a filing on Companies House, the London-based brokerage group has only recently rebranded itself from Union Standard International Group (USGFX) and has now welcomed Min to its board of directors. Soe Hein Min, a national of Burma, reportedly joined the board in the middle of the week.

Lisa Pollina decided to step down as Non-Executive Director of IG Group, a notification from London Stock Exchange said. The industry veteran was appointed in March 2021 and will step down on 1 September. Pollina has over 10 years experience on the Boards of the Ritchie Brothers Auctioneers, The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, and Two Harbors Investment Corp, among others.

FX technology provider Integral released its trading volumes across its trading platforms for May 2021. The company reported a rise in May following slight month-over-month decreases in April. Integral also registered a steady growth on yearly basis. The company registered average daily volumes (ADV) of $46.9 billion in May 2020. This represents an 8.3% MoM rise compared to April when it reached $43.3 billion.

United Fintech expanded its US operation with the hire of Mark Lawrence from Goldman Sachs as Director and Head of Americas. The new appointment is a major development for the fast-growth firm launched by Christian Frahm to help banks, hedge funds and asset managers to advance their transition to a digital world. Mark Lawrence has spent 14 years at Goldman Sachs in senior sales positions in London, New York and Hong Kong. He recently served as LATAM Head of EFICC (Electronic Fixed Income, Currencies and Commodities).

The UK Financial Conduct Authority announced the extension of the Temporary Registrations Regime (TRR) for existing cryptoasset businesses to 31 March 2022. The regime was put in place last year to allow cryptoasset firms that applied for registration before 16 December 2020 to continue trading while their applications are being assessed. The UK watchdog discovered that a large number of businesses are not meeting the standards, required under the Money Laundering Regulations. The FCA reported that this has led to an unprecedented number of businesses withdrawing their applications.

Eurex recently announced its next move in broadening its presence across Asia, as it launches options and futures on the MSCI China Hong Kong Listed Large Cap as well as the MSCI Hong Kong Listed Large Cap indexes. More prominently, the derivatives exchange has announced its launch of futures on the MSCI China Tech 100 Index, in response to the ever-increasing demand for trading and investment instruments around the Asia-Pacific area.

CySEC regulated Exclusive Capital has teamed up with technology partners, FXCubic and Liquidity Connect to enhance its new MT5 trading platform. Based in London and Cyprus, FXCubic is a fast-growing low latency and technology provider. Its bridge and aggregation solutions will connect Exclusive Capital’s platforms into a single aggregator. FXCubic’s technology will allow Exclusive Capital to manage their liquidity, execution and risk efficiently.

eToro Group Ltd. announced filing a draft registration statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission for its merger with blank check company FinTech Acquisition Corp. V. The two companies submitted a draft registration statement on Form F-4 to the SEC, which is technically not an IPO prospectus.

CMC Markets Connect announced an upgrade of its tech stack to provide faster price construction and increase the range of asset classes available for trading. CMC Connect now gives its clients to an additional 60+ Spot FX pairs and precious metals. The Connect team has partnered with Quod Financial to utilise their AI/ML powered algorithms to upgrade existing infrastructure and improve speed. CMC and Quod’s technical in LD4 between Quod’s quoting servers & CMC’s trading engine optimises price feed management and allows CMC to provide consistently competitive pricing.

Forex Weekly Look Back

Multi-asset execution and order management systems provider FlexTrade Systems and BMLL Technologies, independent provider of harmonised T+1 data and analytics to sophisticated capital market participants, announced that the BMLL Data Feed is available in FlexTRADER EMS. With BMLL’s Level 3 data and analytics financial institutions can leverage the predictive nature of full depth order book data to accelerate their research, optimise their trading strategies and generate alpha.

Robinhood announced the appointment of three new directors to Markets Board. Jon Rubinstein, Paula Loop and Robert Zoellick have been selected to as independent directors. Zoellick and Rubinstein will be joining immediately and Loop on 17 June 2021.

FXSpotStream, the provider of a multibank FX aggregation service for spot FX trading, released its monthly metrics for May 2021. The report showed a 2.81% decrease in average daily volumes, compared to April. FXSpotStream’s ADV reached $47 billion in May, while April hit $48 billion. The ADV for May still stood at a 31.1% increase year-over-year.

Online Brokerage Tradovate announced that it will be one of the first brokers to offer futures trading on FairX when the new exchange launches this month. Tradovate will offer commission-free trades for FairX market participants. Tradovate offers new technology, the latest futures products and new pricing models which are designed to reduce a trader’s total costs. The FairX futures offering is aligned with that goal as the firm provides commission-free trades with no market data fees, subscription fees, lifetime license fees, inactivity fees or platform fees.

Rapidly growing neobroker BUX announced two additions to its leadership team following an $80 million (€67 million) funding round. Mark Lamers will be the company’s new CFO and Erin Stewart will become Head of People and Culture. The new appointments come as BUX is strengthening its efforts to expand its flagship investing app, BUX Zero, across Europe.

Paysafe’s digital payments brand Skrill teamed up with global SaaS platform for businesses, Wix, to create, manage and grow an online presence. The Skrill payment gateway is integrated with Wix in order to allow millions of business owners the ability to accept payments. With more than 200 million users worldwide, Wix’s platform allows businesses including entrepreneurs, designers, developers, creative services or restaurants to create a professional website and manage their business online.

The Singapore Exchange (SGX) revealed the appointment of Pol de Win as Senior Managing Director, Head of Global Sales and Origination (GSO). De Win is going to take the current Head of GSO, Chew Sutat’s place on 1 July 2021.  Will retire from his position on 31 July 2021. Pol de Win brings a wealth of experience in capital markets advisory and execution of financial services sector transactions across Asia, Europe and the US.

Online trading and investment specialist Saxo Markets, today announced the appointment of Richard Douglas as CEO for Saxo Markets in Hong Kong. Fan Xu, CEO of Greater China, will become CEO, Saxo FinTech, a joint venture between Saxo and Geely, its majority shareholder. Prior to the appointment, Douglas served as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Information Officer, Greater China.

Global trading company eToro announced its partnership with Racing League to become an official partner of a team competing in the 2021 competition. The official announcement stated that Yorkshire trainers Richard Fahey and Tim Easterby will be part of eToro Racing and William Easterby will be their Racing Manager.

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