Do not invest more money than you can afford to lose.
The Danish investment services and retail forex broker Saxo Bank is planning to close its offices in Russia, Poland and Greece, reports the Russian-language site Forex Magnates, which got confirmation from Saxo Bank’s PR department.
“Saxo Bank changes it geographical presence in Russia, Greece and Poland,” the broker’s PR office told the site. “Many of our clients are already being serviced by our larger offices, so our decision would not affect their interactions with us.”
According to Saxo Bank’s representatives, the decision about the closure of the Russian office in particular, was prompted by “certain circumstances, which diminish the expedience of physical presence”. Most likely those are the Russian regulations, which require locally-based forex brokers to obtain a license from the country’s megaregulator Bank of Russia.
So far it has granted licenses to Finam Forex, TrustForex and Teletrade and refused to Profit Broker. Other major forex brokers on the Russian market, such as Alpari, have applied for a license, but still don’t have one, while several banks, such as Russia’s VTB and Alfa-Bank are considering the setting up of daughter companies for forex brokering and applying for a license.
Perhaps another reason for Saxo Bank’s decision to close its office in Russia are the reports about new amendments to Russian federal laws, including the one on the self-regulation of the financial markets. They provide, among other restrictions, for the blocking of websites of forex brokers who do not have a license from the central bank. The draft amendments are still to be passed by the lower chamber of Russia’s parliament.
While closing its offices in the three European countries, Saxo Bank is seeking expansion in China.
Saxo Bank, founded in Copenhagen in 1992, is a brokerage firm and a market maker. It holds a banking license from Denmark’s Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA). It offers trading in more than 30,000 instruments, including forex, binary options, CFDs, stocks, futures, and bonds through its proprietary online trading platforms SaxoTrader and SaxoTraderGO, which has versions for Android and iOS devices.