Exclusive: FxPro lays off several key staff in support, marketing and IT
Several personnel at FxPro have been laid off as of June 7 this year, across various departments of FxPro’s operations.
FxPro is widely, and quite rightly, recognized as one of the most successful retail FX companies in Cyprus.
Among the 154 retail FX companies that operate from what has become the global center for retail FX, FxPro towers above the majority, its success undoubted and its corporate efficiency blazing a trail for others to follow.
FxPro’s commercial conduct is also something to behold. The company never transgresses and has a blot-free copybook of correct approaches and is an ambassador for Cyprus as a center which can grow, due to its skilled workforce and vast support industry that includes platform firms, market integration technology providers, strategic consultants and highly knowledgeable customer-facing staff, into a leading force globally.
In this respect, FxPro is a good example. The company has an office in London from which it provides a price feed to other retail brokers (FxPro is NOT a prime of prime).
Having a business-to-business price feed marks the company out from the retail-only Cyprus norm, and places it alongside other Western firms that have FCA licenses and offer out their own liquidity.
The company’s fiscal strength, although not disclosed, is regarded as one of the highest among Cyprus’ competitors that are blighted by similar value propositions and low profit margins.
Today, however, FinanceFeeds has discovered that FxPro has set about making substantial cuts to its workforce.
One particular source, a B2B customer of FxPro, explained to FinanceFeeds this morning “Yesterday , 7 June 2017, FxPro proceeded with a massive lay off of employees across all departments. The sackings included the Chief Sales Officer Vanessa Spyrou and one third of the company’s entire sales floor, together with sackings in Support, Accounting, Marketing and IT.”
Ms Spyrou was a senior figure at FxPro. She joined the company some 7 years ago in 2009 from easyForex (now easyMarkets), as Head of Global Sales & Support, before being promoted in May 2013 to Chief Business Development Officer.
He further explained “FxPro has assumed a pure Market maker role and deleted the words “ECN” or “STP” from their website and communication after the FXCM Scandal beginning of this year.”
“To maximize the profitability of FxPro´s Dealing Desk at the client’s expenses, new dealers were recruited, most of them from warehouse brokers, in an effort to replicate the execution principles used there” continued our source.
“Marketing suffered a massive layoff as well, due to the lack of capacity to generate the new leads required to feed the FxPro machine. The BackOffice, Support & Accounting layoffs were made as an adjustment to the now smaller dimension of FxPro Business” is the opinion of another source close to the matter.
This particular source, who has close connections to senior management at FxPro said “The designated Head of MENA region, and proposed head of the planned Dubai Office, Ms. Elsy Rayess, is first in line to succeed Mrs. Spyrou. This might confirm speculations that FxPro’s Dubai DFSA regulated entity will not come to life.”
FxPro has assumed a pure Market maker role and deleted the words “ECN” or “STP” from its website and communication after the FXCM scandal beginning of this year.
A source close to the matter explained this morning that the firm had suffered some losses during the period of extreme volatility caused by the Swiss National Bank’s sudden decision to remove the peg on the EURCHF pair in January 2015. Industry rumors began to circulate that the firm took an emergency loan from its liquidity partner, but this can absolutely not be substantiated and has been absolutely refuted by the company and other sources.
FinanceFeeds made contact with FxPro’s senior management today in order to gain further detail and clarify the matter, with senior members of staff that we contacted inside FxPro did confirm the layoffs.
One member of the senior executive team explained to FinanceFeeds today “This is indeed correct, however it is important to emphasize that these are layoffs, not redundancies.
“FxPro grew from 120 people to over 200 in less than two years” he said.
“Therefore, if you consider the marketing department, it was initially made up of 6 people, and is now 21. The total effect of the lay off was less than 3% of total headcount of the entire company, and those who left will be substituted with new people” explained the senior executive, who confirmed that the maximum extent was 10 people in total.
