Forex Club, one of Russia's largest brokers, has recently completed the acquisition of remaining shares of Akmos Trade, one of Russia's oldest brokers. Terms of the deal weren't announced but I can't imagine this was too expensive. Potentially Forex Club will pay Akmos owners from future generated revenue from existing Akmos's clients, just like many deals in this space are made.
Forex Club announced that following this acquisition it'll become Russia's largest broker with 40% market share. It's not known on what this statement is based and I assume it's Forex Club's own assessment.
It seems that the acquisition was aimed not only at increasing the number of company's clients and presence but also at acquiring Akmos's Metatrader business. Up until now Forex Club was one of the the only few Russian 'dissidents' not to offering this primarily Russian platform. This acquisition will allow Forex Club to start offering Metatrader without any pains and associated costs as all the infrastructure was already set by Akmos years ago.
This is what Forex Club had to say about this acquisition (blame Google Translate not me):
The deal to acquire 100% stake in Akmos Trade was a logical step in the Forex Club's growth strategy in becoming one of the top five leading companies in Internet trading. Achieving this goal is realized through: active development of the product line (particularly the summer 2010 release of the ActTrader Trading Platform for the Russian market, allowing to trade contracts for difference (CFDs), actively increasing geographic presence and market share (particularly in Russian, English, Chinese and Portuguese-speaking regions), as well as acquisitions of companies with strong positions in the local geographic markets.
In addition to increasing the market share of the total number of clients on the Russian-speaking market to the value ok.40% deal with Akmos Trade "FOREX CLUB CC will expand the range of products and services. FOREX CLUB's traders will be able to work with the popular trading platform MetaTrader4, access to the service "investment accounts", the opportunity to work with the foreign exchange market through the "Saint Petersburg" Stock Exchange (FFMS license number 1173), use of the "deposit insurance" and more.
Other notable opponents of Forex Club in Russia are Alpari and FXOpen. If you'd like to expand your knowledge of the Russian market you can read my previous post about it here.
