I received a message in my inbox this morning advising me that:
FXCM Proposes Acquisition of Gain Capital
According to the accompanying press release FXCM sent a letter to the members of GAIN's Board of Directors last night:
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According to Michael Greenberg over at ForexMagnates his:
Sources reveal that Gain Capital is about to seal the deal with Interbank FX. No information is yet known and neither company confirmed the information – naturally because Gain is a public company. More details are expected soon.
We have speculated here on the likelihood of continuing consolidation in the retail forex "industry", particularly following the IPOs of GAIN and FXCM. No doubt the trend will continue for a while yet in the wake of regulatory changes, not to mention the activities of those regulators' lawyers! In all the circumstances it's an interesting coincidence that we mentioned IBFX in passing only this morning. Assuming that the acquisition goes ahead as Michael suggests, perhaps Forex.com will eventually start marketing EAs that don't work terribly well to their customers too? They do operate a dealing desk after all!
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We suggested just after Christmas that FXCM were building an acquisitions war chest, and that's how things are now starting to pan out. At the beginning of this month the Wall Street Journal reported that:
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Following their recent IPOs US brokers GAIN Capital and FXCM now seem to be engaged in a battle for the hearts and minds of retail forex traders instead of investors in their respective businesses. In a press release today FXCM announced a new section on their website which they call the FXCM Forex Execution Center. I can't help but wonder if that announcement is in any way related to the new Pricing and Execution section on GAIN's Forex.com website and their Trade Execution Scorecard, which was announced in a press release yesterday.
More on Dealing Desk or No Dealing Desk – Forex.com or FXCM?
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Earlier this week Robert Lande, chief financial officer of US broker FXCM Inc, was interviewed on Bloomberg about the prospects for FXCM following their recent IPO. Robert also talked about the prospects for retail forex in general. Here's that interview:
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The first of what may eventually turn into a trio of forex initial public offerings finally came to fruition yesterday evening when FXCM announced that:
Its initial public offering of 15,060,000 shares of its Class A common stock has been priced at $14.00 per share. The shares are expected to begin trading tomorrow, December 2, 2010, on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “FXCM.” The underwriters have been granted a 30-day option to purchase up to 2,259,000 additional shares of Class A common stock at the public offering price less the underwriting discount from FXCM if the underwriters sell more than 15,060,000 shares in the offering.
Time will tell if the underwriters manage to collect those additional shares at a bargain basement price, but FXCM seem to be well on the way to raising over $200 million in new capital. According to Bloomberg:
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Yesterday I spoke with both Robin Osmond and Martyn Holman, CEO and COO respectively of LMAX, about the launch earlier this week of LMAX Trader and their future plans for both the LMAX multilateral trading facility and the LMAX Trader retail trading platform.
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I'm not sure this is the sort of publicity GAIN Capital would want, particularly during their long drawn out IPO, but these things are sent to try us. The National Futures Association has just announced that:
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The Betfair Group IPO was initially mooted back in 2005, but was then put back on the shelf. On September 21st Betfair announced that they intended to list their shares on the London Stock Exchange and last week the prospectus was published at long last, informing any interested readers that:
More on Betfair IPO a Success. Will FXCM Succeed Where GAIN Did Not?
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In the second in our series of interviews with senior figures from the Forex industry following the release of the final version of the new CFTC regulations, I spoke yesterday with Jason Rogers, FXCM's Brand Ambassador to online communities. I started off asking my standard $64,000 question at the moment about the effect of those new regulations on the forex industry. I asked numerous other questions too, many of which Jason was compelled to answer with "no comment" because of restrictions imposed by FXCM's forthcoming Initial Public Offering. Despite that you will be able to read about FXCM's views on a few other topics of the moment below.
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