Michael McCarthy has joined the Australian division of retail broker Moomoo.
McCarthy was most recently Chief Strategy Officer at Tiger Brokers. He also had a decade-long stint in the Aussie division of UK broker CMC Markets, as well as stints at City Index and in the investment banking world.
Moomoo is a relative newcomer to the retail broker industry. It was launched as a brand in 2018, although the parent company – Futu – has existed since 2012 and has provided brokerage services in China and Hong Kong since then.
Although Moomoo is technically based and regulated in the US and Futu is Nasdaq-listed, the company appears to have primarily focused on APAC markets.
The company has licenses in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, and Australia. The broker has been particularly successful in Singapore, where it claims that 25% of the city-state’s adult population are using its services.
Currently the firm does not offer CFDs in any of those markets. However, a Hong Kong entity targeting Chinese customers does allow them to trade in leveraged foreign exchange under the Type 3 license issued by the regulator there.
The Australian entity has only really been active for about 12 months now. Earlier this year, Biyi Cheng, who had been Head of Greater China and Head of APAC institutional at CMC Markets was hired by Moomoo as country head for Australia.