Forex industry news that attracted attention abroad in the past week included: FG Acquisition shareholders to vote on ThinkMarkets merger on June 29, South Korean brokerage hit by regulators, suspended opening new accounts for traders, BUX rebranded its investment app from "BUX Zero" to "BUX." The specific news is as follows!

1. FG Acquisition shareholders will vote on the ThinkMarkets merger on June 29

FG acquisition Corp, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in Canada, has filed documents with the Canadian Securities Depository indicating that its shareholders will vote on June 29 on whether to merge with Retail FX and ThinkMarkets, a CFDS trader based in Australia/London. As of May 26, only holders of FG Acquisition's Class A restricted voting shares and Class B restricted voting shares were eligible to vote, according to the filing.

Earlier this month, FG Acquisition and ThinkMarkets announced their intention to merge, primarily to allow ThinkMarkets to quickly and efficiently list on the Toronto Stock Exchange. FG Acquisition valued ThinkMarkets at $160 million prior to the transaction, and the parties plan to raise $20 million through a private placement of convertible bonds as part of the transaction.

According to the parties' preliminary prospectus, ThinkMarkets has accumulated more than $20 million in losses over the past two years, and its revenue has been on a downward trend from 2020 to 2022. Auditor LNP Audit & Assurance Australia said ThinkMarkets suffered a loss of $18.9 million in 2022 and an operating cash outflow of $9.3 million, while net assets at the end of 2022 were just $4.1 million, down from $23.9 million in 2021. As a result, ThinkMarkets was judged to be poorly run and subject to significant uncertainty.

If FG Acquisition's shareholders vote against the deal, FG Acquisition could return its cash reserves of approximately $117 million to shareholders. Under the original articles of association, ThinkMarkets had until July 5, 2023, to submit an agreement to approve the acquisition to shareholders, unless ThinkMarkets sought and obtained an extension. (Through the search of the Foreign exchange APP, the platform's Tianyan score is 7.94 points, although the score is high, but from its exposure station shows that there are 56 customer complaints, investors are advised to pay attention to screening!)

2, South Korean brokerages were cracked down on by regulators, suspending the opening of new accounts for traders

Just last week, South Korea's financial industry regulator, the Financial Services Commission (FSC), announced that it will take measures to "eliminate unfair trading activities in the capital markets," which includes studying rules and regulations for contracts for difference (CFD) trading. Prior to this, CFDS brokerage and trading was active in South Korea, with its main domestic CFDS brokers holding around 3.5 trillion won in client assets.

And last month, the South Korean stock exchange KRX last month exposed a share price manipulation scam in which the shares of a number of leading companies, including Samchully, Daesung Holdings and Daou Data, were manipulated through highly leveraged CFD trading.

After the scam was exposed, They include Samsung Securities, Korea Investment, Shinhan Investment and Deutsche Bank Financial Several leading CFD brokers in South Korea, including Financial, stopped opening new CFD accounts and restricted existing clients from trading CFDS on instruments with trading capabilities.

The Financial Services Commission said it is still investigating the matter with the Financial Supervisory Services Agency (FSS), a government regulator, and the Korea Stock Exchange (FSC). The FSC was quick to point out that it wants to seek regulatory improvements to the current CFD trading system in addition to the ongoing investigation. Improvements may include:

(a) To provide investors with more accurate investment information;

(b) Address regulatory arbitrage associated with credit financing (i.e., CFD leverage);

(c) Strengthening the application and confirmation process for qualified professional investors;

(d) Strengthen the requirements for over-the-counter trading, such as contracts for difference, by qualified professional investors.

The FSC said it will finalize the details and announce them within a month. In addition, the FSC also said that it will increase penalties for improper trading practices in the capital markets.

The National Assembly is currently reviewing a bill to amend the Financial Investment Services and Capital Markets Act to address these issues. Its measures include imposing a fine surcharge of up to twice the unfair profits, banning all capital market trading for up to ten years, banning offenders from serving as executives of listed companies, and the authorities will also review ways to freeze suspicious accounts deemed to be involved in share price manipulation. (Through the search of the Forex APP, the platform's Tianyan score is 1.43 points, and no effective regulatory information has been verified, investors are advised to pay attention to screening!)

3. BUX rebrands its investment app from "BUX Zero" to "BUX"

Amsterdam-based new broker BUX has announced that it has completed the rebranding of its investment application from BUX Zero to simply BUX. The rebranding is the next step in BUX's strategy to further develop its flagship app and help customers build long-term wealth, the company said.

Prior to the rebranding of "BUX Zero" to "BUX", BUX renamed its CFD trading platform "BUX X" to "Stryk" in order to enable traders to more clearly distinguish between its long-term investment platform and its short-term trading platform.