Looking back at the most intriguing and popular industry news from the past week between 12th and 16th July on LeapRate.
Online trading and investment specialist Saxo Bank has added equities to its offering on social trading platform TradingView. Saxo already offers 182 Forex and Metals pairs for trading via TradingView. The social trading platform has a client base of more than 29 million monthly users around the globe. Clients of Saxo can now trade FX, as well as a range of more than 3,000 individual stocks and single-stock CFDs on US exchanges through the TradingView charting platform.
Forex software provider Your Bourse has entered a partnership with Match-Prime Liquidity. Even though the liquidity provider started its operation in October 2020, it has already connected several well-known brokers to its liquidity pools. Match-Prime Liquidity’s offer for Forex & CFD brokers combines deep, multi-asset liquidity for more than 1000 instruments, including cryptocurrencies and equities, with ultra-fast connectivity.
LMAX Group signed an agreement to sell a 30% stake in the company to J.C. Flowers & Co. LLC. The institutional execution venues operator for FX and crypto currency trading revealed today that the companies have a greed on a cash consideration of $300 million valuing LMAX Group at $1 billion. LMAX Group and private investment firm J.C. Flowers will team up to accelerate the company’s next phase of growth and innovation, look for penetration in the FX and crypto currency markets globally, particularly in the US and Asia.
Tools for Brokers (TFB), an international technology company, revealed that Exclusive Capital has joined its ecosystem. The company will utilise the Trade Processor liquidity bridge on the MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 platforms to provide liquidity and trading experience for their clients. Exclusive Capital is a multi-asset investment firm that provides liquidity, brokerage technology, and portfolio management services. The company delivers a personalized approach to financial management, offering services tailored to the clients and their financial goals and circumstances.
Australian broker FP Markets has expanded its offering. Through the MT5 platform, the broker offers, over 500 new global share CFDs can be traded. The new CFDs come from a range of different market sectors. Traders can now trade share CFDs from markets such as pharmaceuticals, biotech, big tech and tourism. FP Markets has been able to add to its CFD selection, which already included large companies such as Facebook and Google.
Globally regulated trading provider CFI Financial Group has expanded its offering to over 7000 trading products and added new markets to the list it already covers. The new products included in CFI’s offering include new stocks and ETFs and with the new markets, the company now covers products from US, UK, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. All of the new and previously available CFDs on stocks and ETFs clients can now trade with zero commissions.
Goldman Sachs has released its 2021 second quarter report showing a slight fall in net revenue and net profits for the bank compared to its first quarter figures. The Q2 net revenue for 2021 was $15.39 billion, down from the Q1 figure of $17.7 billion. It puts the year-to-date earnings for the company at $33.09 billion. The net profits for Q2 stand at $5.49 billion. Also down from the Q1 earnings. Despite the slight drop in financial performance, this is still a strong financial showing. This is demonstrated by the returns that shareholders in Goldman Sachs are seeing. The Q2 earnings per share figure is $15.02. This is a significant increase from the 2020 Q2 earnings per share.
BidFX and XTX Markets revealed the roll-out of XTX Markets Execution Algo on BidFX Algo Hub. XTX Markets Execution Algo is an implementation shortfall execution algorithm BidFX clients can now benefit from and access as algorithmic trading in FX continues to increase. XTX Execution Algo went live on BidFX in 2020 in an initial targeted client roll-out. The solution can reduce slippage to arrival price. BidFX Chief Revenue Officer, John McGrath said he was pleased to see increasing usage of this algo across their global client base in 2021 and that the company was glad to make it available for clients to add to their Algo Wheel.
R.J. O’Brien & Associates (RJO) announced the promotion of two senior executives. The Chicago-based futures brokerage and clearing firm revealed that Terry Gilhooly has moved to Global Chief Operating Officer (COO) from COO, North America and Heather Rucci assumes the role of Chief Human Resources Officer, from Managing Director, Human Resources. In their new positions Gilhooly and Rucci will continue to report to RJO Chairman and CEO Gerald Corcoran.
ETX Capital revealed that it has obtained a licence from the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) in South Africa. The London-based broker is now officially authorised to operate in the region as a financial service provider. With a strong presence in the UK market, ETX Capital recently confirmed its plans to expand into Europe and beyond. ETX clients in South Africa can benefit from instant execution, tight spreads and low commissions on CFDs on thousands of global markets – across all major asset classes from forex, indices, shares and commodities.
Bambu has added to its potential for growth with the acquisition of Tradesocio. The digital wealth technology provider currently provides a range of different wealth technology platforms for financial institutions across the globe. There are 20 different companies using the technology that it provides. Headquartered Singapore, Bambu also has subsidiaries in the UK and the USA. Also based in Singapore, Tradesocio has offices in regions that Bambu does not currently operate in and thus increases the number of regions that the company covers.
Sylwester Jezierski, marketing manager of X Open Hub, sat down with us to discuss changes in the industry, further improvement in the company and the recent frenzy around the post pandemic landscape of the financial industry. Sylwester said: “As the waters begin to clear following the Brexit transition period, the repercussions for financial services firms are beginning to crystallize.” Sylwester added that in times of extremely high market volatility and equally high trading volumes like 2020 has shown, the need for risk management and seamless executions is critical. These events has driven a big infrastructure investment in X Open Hub and in other financial technology providers.
SIX has revealed the acquisition of international London-based index and ETF data specialist ULTUMUS LTD. With this move, SIX aims to improve its data offering and to support its overall strategy to bring new data to its clients in a fast-growing market. The deal closed yesterday, however the financial terms of the transaction are not disclosed. SIX and ULTUMUS are long time partners. ULTUMUS’ data universe encompasses around 7’700 ETF products and accounts for 95% of the market.
Electronic trading platforms and technology services provider in FX markets and part of CME Group, EBS, lanched a EBS Direct platform. First launched in 2013, EBS Direct is a relationship-based quote-driven market and supports disclosed, as well as non-disclosed trading via a GUI and API. The updated version of EBS Direct offers customer trading on EBS Direct better processing times – below 50 microseconds – and faster market data. This enhancement will improve price discovery, provide greater certainty of execution and significantly advance fill ratios for market participants.
Derivatives marketplace CME Group revealed its financial results for Q2 of 2021. The report details international average daily volume (ADV) reached 5.1 million contracts in Q2 2021. Compared to the same period last year, these figures show a 6% rise. The company noted that outside North America, these numbers were driven by global growth in Agricultural and Interest Rate products, which registered 30% and 40 % increase, respectively. Agricultural products hit record quarterly volumes in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), as well as Asia Pacific and Latin America.
Plus500 has posted an H1 trading update which covers 2021 trading up to the 30th June. The company reported a healthy performance, although it does show a decrease in revenue from the H1 for 2020. However, Plus500 believes that there are mitigating circumstances for this drop in revenue and is not seeing it as a significant worry. Part of the reason for the significant increase in trading revenue for H1 2020 is the Covid-19 pandemic. This is obviously an unexpected incident, therefore, the company is taking these figures as an anomaly.
IG Group appointed Susan Skerrit as a Non-Executive Director of the company. Skerrit is a US commercial banker who has previously worked at the Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas as President and at the Royal Bank of Canada US Group as Non-Executive Director. She was also Executive Board Member at Deutsche Bank USA and Bank of New York Mellon Trust Company.
