Continuing the week of drama surrounding retail forex broker FXCM Inc (NASDAQ:FXCM) following the company’s ban from its home US FX market, alongside a similar ban to FXCM CEO Drew Niv (pictured above) and his FXCM co-founder William Ahdout, the company’s FCA regulated UK subsidiary Forex Capital Markets Limited (‘FXCM UK’) has indicated in regulatory filings that Mr. Niv and Brandon Mulvihill, MD – Global Head of FXCM PRO, have both resigned as directors from FXCM UK.
Mr. Mulvihill is in charge of FXCM’s institutional business, much of which is based in the UK.
Following last week’s events Mr. Niv (and Mr. Ahdout) resigned from the board of Forex ECN FastMatch, in which FXCM holds an approximate one-third equity stake alongside commercial banks Credit Suisse Group AG (ADR) (NYSE:CS) and BNY Mellon Corp (NYSE:BK).
There seems to be much speculation as to what Mr. Niv’s resignations from FastMatch and FXCM UK ‘mean’. To us, not much really. Clearly, some restructuring is going on fairly rapidly at FXCM after last week’s US ban, which also included the layoff of 150 FXCM employees, or 18% of FXCM’s global workforce of more than 800. However whether Mr. Niv himself is about to be shown the door by his board and by Leucadia National Corp (NYSE:LUK) which we believe is really calling the shots now at FXCM, or whether he will just decide that he has had enough and leave of his own volition, remains in our view an item of speculation.