Prop firm Propel Capital announced on Tuesday afternoon that it’s shutting down, just 14 months after launch.
The company’s website is now down and completely inaccessible.
In a statement, the company’s CEO and Founder Mitchell Ali, who also runs a payments business called Apex Partners, said that competition in the industry meant business was no longer sustainable.
More specifically, he noted that increasing discounts and looser rules were making it impossible to sell challenges at a profit.
“Over the past 14 months since our inception, we have consistently reiterated the message that we were here to build a sustainable prop firm that could last for many years to come,” said Ali. “However, the sheer volume of competition in the market has led us to a position where I believe that scaling the business would go against our goal of sustainability.
“As you have probably noticed, firms across the industry have significantly increased their offerings, with higher discounts and relaxed rules. I do not believe we can compete with these offers without selling evaluations at a loss, which we refuse to do. We have therefore decided to remove ourselves from the market with immediate effect. We will temporarily pause all operations whilst we decide on our next steps.”
Propel Capital is one of a large number of firms to have shuttered over the last couple of years.
Several firms have gone out of business in suspicious circumstances. For example, German prop Funded Unicorn was operated by an IB, who had previously lost a huge amount of money in a copy trading account, in what looks like it was a rug pull.
Propel Capital is UK registered and its accounts show it had just one employee – Ali – and more than £150,000 in liabilities at the end of its most recent accounting period, with just over £3,000 in assets.
In his statement, Ali said that the firm is looking at potential buyers and will ultimately refund traders who had paid for challenges with the firm.
