Do not invest more money than you can afford to lose.
The French financial regulator, Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) announced it is lifting the ban on binary options broker 24Option. According to AMF’s press release issued on Monday, the broker can resume the provision of its services in France as of July 3.
The company owning the 24Option brand, Rodeler Limited, was banned from operating on the territory of France in August 2016 due to failure to comply with certain professional obligations.
The AMF acted on the grounds of Article 62 of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID), which authorizes it to take all necessary measures to protect investors and maintain the proper functioning of markets, although the broker is licensed by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC).
Acting in line with AMF’s instructions following the ban, 24Option blocked all French traffic to the site and also said it is “working with the regulator to solve this situation as soon as possible.”
“Taking into account the measures taken by this service provider to remedy the situation, the AMF announces today the lifting of this ban, which will take effect from 3 July 2017,” the regulator said in the announcement, without specifying the remedies in question.
We find the French regulator’s move quite surprising, as it is one of the European regulators that most actively goes after binary options brokers – both regulated and unregulated ones – and regularly updates its warning list.
Perhaps the lifting of the ban is related to the fact that 24Option launched Forex and CFD trading, following the example of several other binary options brokerages, such as SpotOption and BDSwiss. As the regulatory pressure against binary options brokers lately escalating worldwide, they are trying to shift the focus to CFDs, in order to survive. One of the biggest players in binary options markets, Banc De Binary, didn’t make it and had to close up shop.
