مارك بريستون
باللغة الانجليزية
Your Royal Highness, distinguished guests, friends and colleagues, I’d like to warmly welcome you to the official launch of our new office in Dubai
It’s wonderful to see so many of you here with us tonight to celebrate this important milestone in our Middle East business. I’ve already had the pleasure of speaking with many of you and I hope I’ll get the chance to meet everyone before the night closes
I’d like to take a little time to talk to you about three simple things; who we are, what we want to become and what this means for you
Most of you are very familiar with FX Solutions but probably know less about City Index
City Index is one of the very first retail trading brokers. Born in 1983 and originating out of the city of London, we’ve grown over the last 30 years to become one of the world’s leading providers of FX and CFDs, executing trades on behalf of clients in over 50 countries worldwide. We have offices in London, Warsaw, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Sydney, Shanghai and now, excitingly, Dubai
We’re proud to be regulated in these regions by the UK Financial Conduct Authority, our lead regulator, as well as the Monetary Authority of Singapore and Australian Securities and Investment Commission
Over the last decade, we’ve embarked on a series of tactical acquisitions to extend our market presence, technology and product coverage including the acquisition of FX Solutions in 2008
As well as being able to service a large retail client base, City Index also has a long and successful history of serving institutions and businesses. For over a decade we have provided a white label solution to Barclays. Barclays fully outsources its CFD trading service to us because they want to share our experience, knowledge and resources to help them to create another profitable arm to their business
One of my first tasks when I joined City Index was to undertake a complete review of our business model, in all regions. I wanted to find out what we do well, what we do less well and what we don’t currently do, but should
Frankly, I don’t believe we’ve invested enough in the Middle East. You, our clients and partners, are at the heart and soul of our business here and I think we can be doing so much more, both as a business and a partnership. At City Index we have some of the brightest individuals working to create the best user experience, the best products, the best websites, the best everything, but our partners and customers here haven’t seen enough of this. FX Solutions in the Middle East is an important part of the City Index business and we’re going to devote a significant proportion of our resources over the next twelve months to re-establishing our ‘edge’ here.
In fact, the process has already begun. I was delighted earlier today to formally open our new representative office here in Dubai. We were also recently granted a representative license by the Central Bank of UAE , and I’m told we’re one of a very small select club of western brokers to have this license. But this is just the beginning. Let me explain more about our plans for our Middle East offering
In the near future, we’ll be upgrading our entire Middle East business to bring it closer to the City Index family. We’ll be launching a new brand in this region, ‘City Index incorporating FX Solutions’. FX Solutions will become City Index.
We’ll upgrade our suite of platforms to equip them with our very latest technology. Our existing MT4 offering will become ‘MT4 enhanced’, which includes a series of exclusive features just for City Index clients that you won’t get at other brokers. For example, we’ll automatically sync your MT4 trades across every platform, tablet and mobile app, meaning you can manage your trades much more زefficiently
Our Advantage Trader download platform will be upgraded to include over one hundred built-in trading strategies, a strategy builder and auto trading. Our mobile and tablet trading apps will also be upgraded with our award-winning mobile technology. These are just some of the examples of how our technology will change for the better in the near future
We’ll be introducing a new proposition called ‘become a better trader’ ensuring everything we do is geared towards helping our clients to become better traders.’ I’m a strong believer in putting the customer at the centre of everything we do, and that their success is our success
We have many long term relationships with clients who have traded with us for years. Clients stay with us because we provide security, reliable trade execution and high quality customer service over the long term and we want more of this type of business
Many of you know Ashraf Laidi, our Chief Global Strategist. He was recently voted the number 1 currency forecaster in FX Week, for the second time in just a few months. We also have a large base of market experts back in our head office in London and they are the best in the business. We will give you even greater access to their thoughts and opinions on the market than ever before
Everything we do from now on - including education, market analysis, trading tools, customer service and beyond - will be focussed on helping and equipping our clients to become better traders
We live in the business of opportunity. As our valuable partners, we aim to help you to generate opportunity and scale your businesses up. As our clients, we seek to help you to spot and take advantage of opportunities in the markets with speed and efficiency
Bringing our partners and clients key opportunities is what we’ve been doing for more than 30 years, and we’re going to maintain our position as a leader in retail services by continuing to do so
To that end, we’ll be scaling up our commercial department to help you, our partners in the Middle East, to grow your businesses. We’ll bring in new digital marketing experts, new designers, new product leads and additional customer service and use all these tools to work with you to grow your operations here. We want a much closer working relationship and we want that to start today
I join City Index at an exciting time in the growth of the company. We’ve had some big successes over the last thirty years and I fully expect us all to benefit from even more success over the next thirty
We’re absolutely committed to a strong business in the Middle East based on growth and profitability. We’re committed to you, our partners and clients. And I know you’ll be committed to City Index and to working with us to grow your businesses. A mutual partnership based on honour, loyalty, hard work and success
So let’s begin
Thank you and have a wonderful evening
