Newedge, a global multi-asset brokerage, has become the first foreign company to be granted a full futures license in South Korea by the Korea Financial Services Commission, the country’s financial regulator.
The licence allows Newedge’s Korean office to offer all equities and derivatives products listed on the Korea Exchange. Currently, Newedge offers Korean cash equity, stock index contracts and stock futures and options, which include interest rate, currency and commodity products.
The licence also enables the broker to offer offshore futures and options products to domestic clients.
“This full futures licence enables us to better serve our clients by adding new products to our current offering,” said Kevin Lee, managing director of Newedge Korea, in a statement. “Our clients expressed a lot of interest in the 3-years KTB future and USD/KRW Future. Being the first foreign company in Korea able to offer these products is a great achievement. In addition, we expect a strong demand from local clients to trade all the listed futures and options products that Newedge can offer through its global network of 85 memberships.”
Pierre Gay, CEO of Newedge, Asia Pacific, added, “The full licence on Korea Exchange is an important step to further deepen our presence in one of the 8 countries we cover with our Asian footprint. This is aligned to our long term strategy of providing easier and direct access to foreign institutions investing in Asia, and offering domestic players a reliable access to the outside trading world via our global platform.”
Newedge has local offices in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan.