Australia – why is it suddenly a retail Forex center?
For those of you who regularly follow our Forex Industry News posts, you’ve probably noticed that recently we’ve reported on the opening of an Australia office, or the receipt of ASIC (Australian Securities and Investments Commission) regulation, by a number of the world’s leading Forex brokerage firms including Saxo Bank, AvaFX, and FxPro.
At the same time, we’ve seen very good volume and revenue growth numbers from some of the leading domestic Australia-based firms such as Vantage FX, AxiTrader, Go Markets, and IC Markets (just announced volumes were up 83% in 2011, with more than four-fold growth in volumes from clients in Asia). And some of the foreign Forex firms with long-term presence in Australia – in particular the largest UK-firms – have reported nice continued growth in the country, such as IG Group, which last week reported that Australia revenue grew by 43% in the second half of 2011 (six months to Nov 30/11) versus the prior year.