Tag: Jan Eric Malkus

Until recently, BDSwiss was regulated in Europe by CySEC as a CIF. The broker was known for attacking clients with misleading marketing campaigns and offshore structures. As a result, the FCA banned BDSwiss, and CySEC also imposed penalties. Consequently, BDSwiss has left the EU and CySEC and is now only regulated by FSA Seychelles. We are upgrading BDSwiss to our Red Compliance List.

All new at BDSwiss Group. The German investor Jan Eric Malkus controls the German Cyprus broker scheme. FinTelegram recently reported on the restructuring of domains and operations at BDSwiss with its new Viverno scheme. A new Chief Commercial Officer (COO) was appointed in February 2023: Andreas Andreou, the former Head of Business Development at HF Markets’ subsidiary in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), announced his appointment on Twitter this week.

2022 was for sure a difficult year for the BDSwiss scheme. For a few months in Q2 and Q3 2022, the CySEC-regulated German BDSwiss has not been accepting new clients. In March 2022, the German BaFin launched investigations against the offshore broker BDS Markets. In May 2022, the FCA banned BDSwiss from the UK due to its offshore activities. Our review today found that the CySEC-approved domains BDSwiss.com and EU.BDSwiss.com have been terminated. Here is an update.

Klarpay is a FINMA-regulated FinTech and received an investment from Payabl Group a few months ago. The latter was founded by former Wirecard executives Ruediger Trautmann, Dietmar Knoechelmann, and his wife Ayelet Fruchtlander-Knoechelmann. Klarpay announced that in Q3 it became a Principal Member of the VISA network and integrated Visa’s B2B Connect, which enables Klarpay’s business customers to perform cross-currency outbound payments. And it introduced Apple Pay.

Jan Eric Malkus is a German entrepreneur and investor who has made a name for himself as an investor in the financial sector, among other things. He is considered the founder of the BDSwiss Group and is still its dominant shareholder through his Cypriot Duronga Holdings GmbH. He is a director in the CySEC-regulated BDSwiss Holding Limited and in its parent company BDSwiss AG in Switzerland. Malkus manages the investments through his investment firms, Vastani and Ventura Investment AG.

In May 2022, FinTelegram reported about the 2020-plans of BDSwiss to establish BaFin-listed Unleashed Capital Bank (ULC). Back then,...

Since Mid-April 2022, the CySEC-regulated German BDSwiss has not been accepting new clients. We have been following the activities of the CySEC-regulated BDSwiss and have reported extensively on their offshore onboarding. We have been threatened several times by their Compliance and Legal Departments for doing so. In our re-check on 1 June 2022, we learned that the BDSwiss website continues to inform visitors that no new clients are accepted until further notice. Moreover, former director Catalina Pantea informed us that she resigned in Jan 2022 and has no clue about the current state of affairs.

While the revenue of CySEC-regulated BDSwiss grew by 149% to €121.7 Mio in 2020, its profit before tax quadrupled to almost €50 Mio. The total trading volume surpassed €1 trillion and client deposits exploded from €102 to €238.4 Mio. The impressive growth was driven by the Contract for Differences (CFD) brokerage, which accounted for more than 99% of the revenues. For 2021, BDSwiss forecasted a profit of more than €66 Mio from the CFD business alone.

The BDSwiss Group d/b/a BDSwiss, Swiss Markets, and BDS Trading. These are the trading names of BDSwiss Holding Ltd, regulated by the Cyprus CySEC. The offshore entity BDS Markets, regulated by FSC in Mauritius is part of this BDSwiss Group. The FCA banned BDSwiss Group in June 2021 The German BaFin launched an investigation saying that BDS Markets has no permission to offer ist regulated services in Germany. In our review, all CySEC-approved domains were redirected to the offshore broker websites. Here is another update!