Brokerage group Trading 212 appears to be having another stab at setting up an office in Germany after acquiring broker FXFlat last month.
The broker has been a popular choice for clients in Germany, with the company historically touting Europe’s largest economy as being one of its primary markets, alongside the UK.
Trading 212 originally registered a German entity in 2020. That included onboarding Michael Lippa as the local CEO. Lippa was previously Head of Germany and Northern Europe at IG Group for over a decade.
However, Trading 212 appears to have scrapped those plans, with Lippa and another compliance executive – Sven Bauer – both leaving the company last year. The company then acquired German-regulated FXFlat in August of this year.
TradeInformer understands that Trading 212 also had plans to obtain regulatory approval in Sweden. However, those plans were also scrapped. Sina Mostafavi, who was likely going to head up the Swedish entity, remains a non-executive director at the Trading 212 group entity.
Now it appears Trading 212 is building out its office in Dusseldorf again. The company is hiring for four different roles, including a Head of Risk, in its office in the country.
It’s plausible the company is trying to protect against the sort of thing we saw two years ago, when Trading 212 had to stop onboarding clients in the UK.
The company has never publicly stated why that happened but, reading between the lines, it is likely the FCA did not believe the company had the corporate governance and operational systems in place to handle the sort of client numbers it had managed to achieve via its stockbroking arm.
The firm has since completely revamped its corporate structure and the company owners injected over £20m into the UK entity. Trading 212 has also hired extensively in the UK, particularly in operational and compliance roles.