Advanced Markets adds Forexify and Corbel as investors
The last two rounds of investment in Advanced Markets Group was a major capital boost in 2010 led by GFI Group, and another in 2007 made by Macquarie Group. Advanced Markets will continue to operate as an independent business under its current brand and leadership.
Forexify and Corbel have made a significant investment into Advanced Markets Group, an institutional foreign exchange liquidity and prime-of-prime service provider, in order to fund the new growth phase.
Forexify is a Puerto Rico-based merchant bank founded by Mushegh Tovmasyan in 2015. The firm specializes in FinTech companies that have the potential to disrupt legacy business models.
Corbel Capital Partners manages approximately $500 million of institutional capital that makes non-control investments in the form of creatively tailored structured debt or equity securities.
Existing shareholders Macquarie Group and GFI Group, a wholly-owned subsidiary of BGC Partners, have reduced their stakes to accommodate the new investors.
Anthony Brocco, Founder and CEO, Advanced Markets, said: “These new investors represent an important step in achieving our global strategy. Key industry relationships through Forexify will enable us to dynamically expand our product offering and technology capabilities, ensuring we continue to meet the needs of our fast-growing and diverse institutional client base.”
Mushegh Tovmasyan, Chief Investment Officer at Forexify, commented: “The top tier of this industry has seen a lot of consolidation in recent years driven by regulatory changes and increased capital requirements. Advanced Markets’ unique footprint, institutional ownership credentials, and remarkable market access, provided by Prime Brokers such as UBS, Standard Chartered and Macquarie Group, make it the ideal company to lead a new era of trading.”
Michael H. Jones, Principal, Corbel, said: “Advanced Markets presents a hugely exciting opportunity. The strong track record and leadership, combined with the positive market outlook made this an easy investment for us; we’re proud to partner with Forexify and its management to drive Advanced Markets’ next phase of growth.”
Lachlan Green, Macquarie Bank Division Director and Non-Executive Director of Advanced Markets Holdings, added: “We look forward to partnering with the industry experience of Forexify and Corbel in supporting Advanced Markets’ expansion into new markets and relationships.”
The last two rounds of investment in Advanced Markets Group was a major capital boost in 2010 led by GFI Group, and another in 2007 made by Macquarie Group. Advanced Markets will continue to operate as an independent business under its current brand and leadership.
Advanced Markets is a prime of prime broker offering wholesale services to institutional clients globally, providing technology access, trade execution and prime brokerage solutions directly to banks, hedge funds, commodity trading advisors, corporations and other institutional market participants.
Headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina with subsidiaries around the world, Advanced Markets’ continued growth is driven by the combination of the firm’s Direct Market Access/Straight Through Processing (“DMA/STP”) model and low-latency trading infrastructure in spot FX, precious metals, and contracts for differences (CFD) across financial and commodity products via various regulated entities globally.
Advanced Markets is renowned within the industry for its thought leadership, with recurrent commentary on specialized media such as FinanceFeeds and free webinars, with the most recent being on FX payments for offshore brokers.
We spoke recently to Natallia Hunik, Chief Revenue Officer at Advanced Markets, on gamification of trading and she pointed to major deficiencies in the “payment for order flow” model.
“It is very similar to the social dilemma: do we want the likes of TikTok, Facebook, and other big tech selling our data or would we rather help pay for the huge cost to keep these platforms operating? While we enjoy not having to pay to use these services, we don’t necessarily enjoy the unsolicited ads or the big tech filtering or altering, our news feed based on their own set agenda.
“Similarly, some firms grow their businesses by targeting unsophisticated investors and by removing value from core services (last- looking trades, assigning priority to a specific broker or selling trade data), and yet seem to be able to market this to their customers as somehow being good for them.”
Retail trade flow is the most valuable flow in the world, and there is a reason for that”, Ms. Hunik continued. “Should the amateurs be concerned? I think that we all should be, just like we all should be concerned about the long term consequences of the big tech firms selling our personal data as the agenda that these companies might be pursuing could, in fact, be hurting us as individuals and as a society as a whole.”
