FX week in review: Broker acquisitions, NAGA and Swissquote revenues fall, executive moves

After something of a quiet period in Q4, M&A activity has picked up in earnest in the FX industry in 2022, with a number of transactions unveiled this past week involving Swissquote, United Fintech (its fourth deal in the past 14 months), NinjaTrader, and XGlobal.

We also are beginning to see 2021 financial results start to trickle in, indicating that Retail FX brokers were seeing a somewhat significant drop-off in activity in the latter part of 2021: Swissquote revenue -21% in 2H-2021, NAGA.com revenue -22% in Q4…

And, the post year-end shuffle of FX industry executives continued, with a number of firms (OneRoyal, Swissquote, Public.com, Equiti, Capex.com, Advanced Markets, LMAX) seeing C-level personnel coming or going.

Some of the most read and commented-on FX industry news stories to appear over the past seven days on FNG included:

XGLOBAL enters South Africa FX/CFD market acquiring 98 Degrees. Cyprus based, CySEC-licensed Retail FX and CFD brokerage group X GLOBAL Markets Ltd, which operates the XGLOBAL Markets brand, has announced a 45% acquisition of South African FSCA regulated broker 98 Degrees Alternative Risk (Pty) Ltd, which has now been rebranded as XGLOBAL Africa. The firm’s local team have been retained so their local knowledge and expertise can be used to best approach the market. This move comes at a time when XGLOBAL is expanding its local presence on a global scale, in its efforts to reach a broader client base for its FX and CFD brokerage offering.

United Fintech acquires Athena Systems. Christian Frahm’s fintech umbrella firm United Fintech has made its fourth acquisition in the past 14 months, obtaining a 25% stake in US-founded Athena Systems. The parties did not disclose the amount paid or other financial details of the acquisition. The 25% acquired is a first step in a multi-stage purchase. United Fintech said that it aims to obtain another 26% of Athena in two years, and the 49% remainder in three years, in a transaction onboarding the company, its clients and employees onto United Fintech’s digital platform. Athena, operating with offices out of the US, Spain and Vietnam, services asset managers and hedge funds worldwide through its renowned software Athena Spark, providing the full life-cycle of software planning, development, implementation and training.

NinjaTrader acquires Tradovate for $115 million. NinjaTrader Group, LLC, a leading provider of trading software and brokerage services to active traders, today announced that it has acquired Tradovate Holdings, LLC, a major online futures brokerage firm and trading technology provider, for $115 million. Tradovate, launched in 2016 and founded by industry veteran Rick Tomsic, pioneered a cloud-based trading infrastructure and innovative pricing model for futures which helped accelerate the transformation of the brokerage landscape. The acquisition creates a retail futures broker with combined trading volume in 2021 of approximately 100 million futures contracts.

Swissquote shares down 5% after reporting FY-2021 results. Gland, Switzerland based online broker Swissquote (SWX:SQN) released a brief statement regarding its full year 2021 results early Thursday, entitled “Swissquote beats revenues and profit guidance with record results.” A number of forex blogs and financial news sites ran articles with titles like “Swissquote sees another record year…”, or “Swissquote pre-tax profit surges 111% in 2021…”. So, why did Swissquote shares trade down by 5% on Thursday? We’d also note that after hitting a high of CHF 212.50 recently, Swissquote shares are now down by 17% from that peak, and sit at CHF 176.80.

Top FX industry executive moves reported at FNG this week included:

Michalis Karakatsanis