It looks like Korea (South Korea obviously) is becoming the new Dubai with more and more firms partnering up with local outfits to offer margin FX trading. I pointed at Korea's potential as another gateway to mainland China back in May 2009. Until recently the Korean market was all but fully dominated by FXCM with almost all local brokers and IBs working with it. Back then the local regulator has had enough and decided to put a stop to unregulated broker operations and to cap forex leverage from 1:50 to 1:20.
Gain was the second major player to discover Korea's potential and opened a local office in July 2009. Interbank FX soon followed.
Advanced Markets LLC (the US one) made the first move by signing Leading Investment, the first of Korea's (previously) securities only firms to launch margin FX.
2010 opened with another assault on the Korean market: Oanda, huge broker as it is, signed a very lucrative deal with Daewoo Securities - the largest local broker.
And today more news are flowing as Advanced Markets LLC announced that it signed its second partner Shinhan Investment Corporation:
SEOUL and CHARLOTTE — 8 February 2010 – Shinhan Investment Corporation, a leading Korean securities broker, and Advanced Markets LLC, a US foreign exchange broker, are launching an FX margin Trading Platform for Shinhan’s clients. The platform is being introduced to the firm’s approximately 23,000 futures trading clients. FX margin trading will be offered to all of the firm’s eligible clients as part of a phased roll out this year.
Shinhan’s FX margin trading service will be offered in strategic partnership with Advanced Markets, LLC, which offers Foreign Exchange Direct Market Access (FX DMA) to live, competitive quotes streamed by global FX bank Market Makers .
“FX margin trading is an important new market for Shinhan Investment and its trading clients,” said Jung jong-ok, head of the Online -Business Department, Shinhan Investment Corporation. “We are pleased to offer Advanced Markets’ Direct Market Access model, which provides fully transparent, high speed trade executions, enabling our trading clients to see and trade directly on wholesale FX rates provided by more than 10 leading FX banks.”
Shinhan Investment Corporation has approximately 1.4 million clients and more than USD 2.2 billion in assets. The firm is part of the Shinhan Banking group of companies with offices in Korea, China, Europe and the United States.
