USGFX Rebrands Itself As it Continues Serving the FX Market
Union Standard International Group, a FX broker whose license was recently cancelled by the Australian regulator, has re-branded itself as Union Strategic International Group.
The brokerage is now regulated by other financial authorities like St. Vincent and Grenadines, South Africa and the UK. It is to be noted that the broker had got its AFS license suspended by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission which then proceeded to cancel the same last year.
It is clear that the idea is to drop its association with the old brand and project itself as a new brand as it would help it to gain more traction and in due course of time, the association with the old brand would become a thing of the past. It is indeed surprising that there is not a better coordination between the various regulatory authorities as questions are raised on how an entity that has been suspended by one regulatory authority can be approved by another just with a small re-branding of its name.
On its part, the broker had terminated its relationship with its owner, Hein Min Soe, last October. He was the one with large controlling stake in the business till then and his personal financial troubles were suspected to be the reason behind the brokerage going bankrupt last year.
The new re-branded entities have been named as UNITED STRATEGIC INTERNATIONAL LCC (USG SV) for the St. Vincent entity, UNITED STRATEGIC INTERNATIONAL (PTY) LTD (USG SA) for the one in South Africa and UNITED STRATEGIC INTERNATIONAL LIMITED (USG UK) for the one in the UK. It remains to be seen how much of the re-branding would work in terms of gaining back the confidence of retail investors and traders.
The broker had faced a large number of complains from its users last year and this had also led to a suspension of its bank accounts followed by some strict action by the ASIC at that time. This is likely to have some repercussions in the long run as the company goes about with its re-branding exercise. This would also raise questions among retail traders on whether this re-branding would become a standard practice among other brokers whose licenses have been suspended by the different regulatory authorities.
