FastMatch, Inc., an Electronic Communication Network (ECN) for foreign exchange trading, has appointed two new members to its board of directors, adding Leucadia National Corporation’s President, Brian Friedman, and the group’s Managing Director, Jimmy Hallac, according to a FastMatch statement.
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Mr. Friedman and Mr. Hallac will be replacing former directors Drew Niv and William Ahdout, both of whom have been banned from the National Futures Association (NFA). Yesterday, both individuals were hit with a $7.0 million fine from the Commodity and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for allegations of defrauding customers.
FXCM presently is a passive minority owner of FastMatch, with FastMatch operating as a completely independent entity of FXCM. According to yesterday’s complaint filed by the NFA, FXCM, as well as Mr. Niv and Mr. Ahdout, on numerous occasions failed to adequately supervise its employees.
Drew Niv
The main theme of the complaint was related to the advertisement of the broker’s ‘no dealing desk’ model as superior to the company’s competition. It was claimed to employ ‘dealing desk’ execution.
The dealing desk model was advertised as a market-making model, whereby the brokerage takes the other side of client trades, while the ‘no dealing desk model’ was advertised as straight-through processing of orders via various Liquidity providers.
