Looking back at the most intriguing and popular industry news from the past week between 5th and 9th July on LeapRate.
LMAX Group appointed Paul Ainsworth to the newly created position of Head of Institutional Sales for Americas. Ainsworth will report to the Managing Director for Americas at LMAX Group, Patrick Bartle, and will be based in New York. Ainsworth joins LMAX Group from Spotex. He brings vast experience and knowledge of institutional sales, having grown and managed global institutional sales teams at companies such as Euronext FX, UBS and Barclays. At his new position, Ainsworth will drive the growth of the institutional business across LMAX Group.
Saxo Bank reported marginal improvement for its FX trading for June. This is after May saw a significant drop when compared to the previous months trading through 2021. Saxo Bank saw its monthly volume for June increase to $106.1 billion after the previous yearly low in May at $104.3 billion. However, this isn’t a complete positive report for the bank. While the overall monthly volume has shown a slight increase, there was a fall in the daily average volume.
Earlier in the week, the company appointed Mette Ingeman Pedersen as the new Group Chief Financial Officer and member of the Board of Management and Executive Team. Having worked in leadership positions in major banks and consulting, Pedersen brings solid experience from the financial services industry to her new position.
The Swiss stock exchange has taken steps to provide support by setting up the Sparks equity segment. This is a dedicated area for investors to work with SMEs to strive towards higher levels of growth. The Sparks equity segment is expected to help create an additional ecosystem within the Swiss financial markets. It’s something that the Swiss stock exchange is looking to work towards. Moreover, this will work towards achieving the long term interests of the Swiss markets. It is expected to keep the current upward trend of public investment going.
Gopher Investment made a $250 million offer to the shareholders of Playtech to acquire its financial business Finalto. The 4.67% stakeholder at Playtech is taking steps to convince the board and shareholders. On Tuesday the Gopher released a statement outlining significant aspects of its offer to Playtech. The investment company has asked Playtech’s Board to adjourn the company’s General Meeting, due to take place on 15 July 2021 or for shareholders to vote against the current offer. The Consortium in turn reminded Playtech of the terms of their binding deal and the lengthy approval process which, if the deal is rejected, has to be repeated, leaving Finalto in uncertainty for many month.
The Swiss-founded fintech PrimeXM added a new trading data centre in Singapore to join its London, New York and Tokyo centres. The company also released its monthly metrics for June 2021. The broker reported a total of $1.04 trillion in total trading volumes registered last month across the 3 major Data Center locations with an uptick since last month. The monthly numbers were up by 10.54% MoM, compared to May 2021 when they reached $941.64 billion. The Average Daily Volume (ADV) in April was $47.31 billion, with a 5.51% MoM increase compared to the previous month.
Cboe Global Markets released its monthly trading report for June. The report shows an overall increase compared to both the previous month and year-on-year options trading volumes. On top of this, there is also year-to-date trading increases. June saw Cboe carry out 264,230,000 options contracts. This made for an ADV of 12,010,000 contracts. This is a stark contrast to the futures contracts, which saw decreases across the previous month, year-to-date and in comparison to last June.
European broker RoboMarkets announced adding CFDs on Brazilian stocks to its R Trader platform. The new CFDs are on stocks of the 30 most liquid companies that are traded on Bovespa, the Sao Paulo Stock Exchange. The new trading instruments include stocks of companies such as Petrobras (PETR4), Itau Unibanco (ITUB4), Banco Bradesco (BBDC4), AmBev (ABEV3), Vale (VALE3). Robo Markets revealed that the conditions for trading CFDs on Brazilian stocks include commission from 0.1% (but not less than 10 BRL); Spreads from 0 pips and trading time from 4:10 to 10:55 PM.
Advanced Markets, Forex liquidity and prime-of-prime service provider, announced the appointment of Sammy Christou as the firm’s Chief Risk Officer. Christou spent four years at Equiti Capital, the institutional B2B unit of the Equiti Group, as Head of Trading. He has also previously served in companies such as LCG, Gain Capital and GFT Markets.
FlexTrade Systems revealed that fintech firm Equiti, has selected its MaxxTrader Foreign Exchange platform solution for their Prime of Prime services offering. FlexTrade Systems’ solution allows Sell-side FX broker dealers looking for single source FX trading solution to stay ahead of the game in the fast moving and competitive FX markets. With MaxxTrader, Equiti will be able to provide their prime of prime customers with seamless global FX liquidity aggregation, trade execution management, and institutional trading capabilities.
eToro revealed it has become the main partner of Romanian football champions CFR 1907 Cluj. The global trading company has signed a multi-year deal with one of the oldest football clubs in Romania. CFR 1907 Cluj has dominated Liga 1 in recent years with four titles in a row. Through the partnership eToro shows its commitment to the Romanian market. The company will see its logo feature on all official club teamwear including the playing shirt.
FX technology provider Integral revealed that UAE retail brokerage GoDoFX has selected Integral MarginFX to support the growth of its FX and CFD business. Founded earlier this year by industry veterans in the UAE forex market, GoDoFX group takes a client-first approach and focuses on establishing long-term and sustainable trading relationships with its retail customers.
European fast growing neobroker BUX revealed the appointment of Salim Sebbata as Chief Executive Officer of the company’s UK business. Sebbata takes the leadership position of BUX UK operations from Yorick Naeff, who took on the role of CEO of BUX earlier this year. As CEO of BUX UK, Sebbata will be responsible for the business operations of the company in the UK as well as managing the trading, cash management, client administration and compliance solutions.
Total trading volumes across Moscow Exchange’s markets reached RUB 81.5 trillion in June 2021, registering a 9.69 %MoM increase (RUB74.3 trillion in May 2021). Most sections of the market reported small growth, compared to May 2021: Money Market (-6.45%MoM), FX Market (+3.11%MoM), Derivatives Market (+9.62%MoM), Equity & Bond Market (+14.33%MoM) and Precious Metals Market (+30.66%MoM).
