Exclusive: IronFX Data Reveals Story Behind the Headlines
Telling IPO documents of IronFX show an attempt at a new business model that initially generated huge trading volumes… what

Few industry insiders have remained unfamiliar with the story of IronFX. The Cyprus headquartered brokerage has been making headlines as its operations were impacted by complaints from Chinese IBs. The firm’s Chinese offices were stormed by angry clients demanding their withdrawals back in the beginning of 2015.
Subsequent reports from additional clients with pending withdrawal requests have also been circulating around the web. The company, however, claims that it has been conducting business in line with its terms and conditions, maintaining that the clients are responsible for any misconduct by themselves not adhering to these terms and conditions.
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IronFX has repeatedly stated that the company is experiencing ongoing issues with a group of traders who have been abusing its promotions system. Regarding clients with pending withdrawals, they claim to be innocent of any wrongdoing, even reporting instances where some customers claim unsettled withdrawal requests immediately after depositing their funds.
Since the escalation of reports, the company has been investigated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC), a matter that was resolved with one of the biggest settlements in the history of the Cypriot regulator.
It would be most enlightening to discover what really happened to this company, whose reputation has suffered greatly as a consequence of critical web reviews and the complaints launched by CySEC and the Cypriot Financial Ombudsman.
Some internal IPO documents which were obtained by Finance Magnates have shed some light on the situation.
The IronFX Business Model
Back in 2010, when the company started its operations, the firm chose a different approach than most market players at the time. With an extensive team of “account managers”, the brokerage relied upon developing a strong relationship with its clients, which in theory should have resulted in higher deposit rates.
At the same time, the firm picked a market maker model of operation allowing it to capture a bigger part of the revenue than any agency broker would be able to book. With the trades starting to flow into the retail foreign exchange market, the approach initially worked quite well for the company.
Aided by the opening of multiple company offices across the globe, IronFX managed to achieve enviable growth figures. Internal IPO documents which were obtained by Finance Magnates showed that at its peak in the third-quarter of 2014, the company’s turnover totaled over $770 billion.
Note that the trading volumes shown below were generated with 1:500 leverage and with bonuses of up to 100 percent on top of the original deposit of the client. With the considerable marketing costs attached to maintaining so many employees, competitions, sponsorship and advertisement, the trading volumes at IronFX would have had to continue perpetually growing, a trend that was reversed in the last quarter of 2014.
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Bonus, Bonus, Bonus
Bearing in mind the volumes which were registered by the brokerage, it is interesting to observe the evolution of the business model. While in the beginning, the bonus promotions worked just fine and new depositors were incoming, at some point clients stopped depositing.
The tactic that IronFX used to prevent this from happening was to increase the amount of bonuses. Despite the conditions attached to bonus withdrawals, the clients who had opened multiple accounts with the same conditions effectively managed to hedge their risks in the big trend environment in which major pairs had been trading last year.
Clients Labeled as Bonus Abusers
Consider this: you and your spouse open two accounts in June of 2014, both of you get a bonus and you take different directions on the market. One is long the EUR/USD, the other is short the EUR/USD. Both of the accounts utilize substantial margin levels.
In the case of the EUR/USD move last year, a person who opened a 1,000,000 position which is warranted with a 2,000 EUR (assuming the leverage is 1:500) in the account could face two outcomes – losing those 2,000 EUR and the remaining principle on the account if the trader was long EUR/USD, or gaining $1,500,000 by December (assuming you entered at 1.35 and closed at 1.20).
With IronFX being a market making broker, its risk management team could not have foreseen what the effects of a big trend and the trading practice described above would have on such accounts. Aside from the trading volumes being greatly inflated by the up to 1:500 leverage and the bonus promotions, new risks started growing for the company.
Reputation Damage & Downsizing
With the company identifying the trickery the Chinese clients had become particularly partial to, it chose to label them as bonus abusers and deny the repayment of their funds. The damage to the reputation of the brokerage was a surprise for the company, as the news spread quickly and more withdrawal requests started to flow in. The reputation of IronFX started to precede it and trickled down to the day to day operations of the company. Client after client, complaint after complaint, the efforts of the marketing department and the account managers started to lose their influence.

IPO documents seen by Finance Magnates reveal that IronFX actually made $8.5 million from the Swiss franc event, but that didn’t help much. Multiple reports about the downsizing of its personnel and multiple office closures serve as a testament to the unsustainable business model. This contradicts the author’s suspicions that the STP operation of IronFX in the UK might have been hit by the Swiss franc black swan. In reality, only 3 percent of the CHF volumes of the company were put out into the market outside of IronFX.
The company has openly claimed that it is generally internalizing about 90 percent of its flow.
According to the data obtained by Finance Magnates, the company boasts 813 employees, 771 affiliate employees, 485 account managers, 605 affiliate account managers, 7217 introducing broker relationships, and its revenues for 2014 totaled $304 million with profits exceeding $43 million. These figures are taken from its operational peak in 2014, before the big downsizing of its business and office closures in 2015.
How will the company tackle the difficult situation in which it has found itself ? Only time will tell – hopefully there will be a fair resolution for all clients of the company who haven’t abused its promotions, and for the broker itself.
The reason they couldn’t handle it was because: Stephanos Kashiouris – their head of treasury was nothing more than a Junior trainee dealer in FxPro when his brother put him in charge of IronFX. Of course he had no idea this will happen. Markos Kashiouris – is a sleazeball with little to no actual experience in the field, despite what he claims! The company copy/pasted FxPro in every sense. stole their clients, IBs and even Asian staff members and other staff memebers such as compliance etc… and built their business on that! Of course this was bound to crumble down,… Read more »
The arrogance of the CEO is what bothered me the most. His Attitude could only be compared to Donald Trump. He spoke with such derogatory manner towards other competitors and bragged about how he and his employees stay at the best hotels etc etc.
A failed employee or an incompetent competitor. Or both.
Actually neither. I’m an auditor, active in FX industry in Cyprus since 2005, who knows these guys very well!
My corrupt, unprofessional accountant friend, do not confuse having Russian owners with deep pockets to cover $40m in losses as part of business ability. Or the reason they incurred $40m in losses due to the absence of any risk management as business ability. The fact that you as an auditor, break your clients’ confidentiality to write vindictive comments and take sides speaks about your quality. Period.
I didn’t say they were my clients!
Geia sou Marko – Stephane
The personal nature of the attacks takes away any argument you may have. This has become a forum for personal grudges. Let’s have a fact-based discussion please.
I don’t see FXPro going anywhere lately. Maybe it’s the $40m they lost on the Swiss Franc? Since IronFX copy/pasted all the good things from FXPro, why isn’t FXPro taking the world by storm? Sour grapes.
FxPro, at its peak, was the 3rd largest FX broker worldwide (in terms of volume).
If you take in consideration the number of new competition since then (137+ CySEC regulated brokers alone) and the fact that it still stands as one of the major players, you couldn’t really say they are going nowhere!!
Ps: to withstand $40 million losses and continue business as if nothing happened is a big testament to their strength!
If you open an account with 2000 Euro and enter in a 1 Million position, then you’re operating at $100/pip, and a price fluctuation of about 20 pips would wipe you out. So in your example, I think it’s much more probable that both husband and wife were wiped out than one entering with 20 pip precision and holding for a gain of 1500 pips.
Hi Vlad, This is a theoretical example, it doesn’t have to be taken literally, the thing is that those who have managed to ride the trend, have ended up with big profits…
Exactly what I was thinking! Seems like Victor Golovtchenko is as intelligent as the so called staff at IronFX.
There is absolute no evidence that IronFx made a profit in 2014. You reports of a profit of 43, but you point out that you are extrapolating the figures “from its operational peak”. That is not serious. The financial statements 2014 of IronFx were not disclosed till now. We did not know if they were submitted to the CySEC, which is a violation of the Investment Services and Activities and Regulated Market Law of 2007
As stated in the article above these figures are from the IPO documents which were seen by Finance Magnates, the results have not been extrapolated from anything. Since in the end there hasn’t been any IPO, the figures can not be confirmed either.
By the way, let’s not forget that it was never their intention to create a credible, long lasting broker.
Their intention was to hype up the volumes to get the highest IPO evaluation they possibly could. Then sell it to poor unsuspecting buyers who would then find out it was all A HOUSE OF CARDS!!
Unfortunately, for them, the chicken came home to roost FAR earlier than they anticipated.
Markos Kashiouris specializes in this. Historically he has done this several times.
Maybe you can reveal also the financial statements for the first semester of 2015. It will be interesting to see their insolvency.
More personal attacks… I guess people don’t like the competition… The one question I will ask is: these guys have gone through a NYSE IPO DD and a CySEC investigation and nothing came up. Personal attacks are understandable given the competitor panic but at least get your facts right.
IronFX sells and this is plain to see.
It is not true that nothing came up following the CySEC investigation. They had to pay a fine of 335 k, which is almost the maximum penalty that the CySEC can impose.
It is not true that they have gone through a NYSE IPO. They never filed for an IPO in the USA because they simply don’t qualify for that. The IPO story was just PR.
Indeed! IronFX is a massive scam factory, this article is also a part of the scam.
I think your doubts about them filling for IPO is pointing toward the credibility of the documents seen by FM which is the only “factual” evidence i’ve seen coming from party .. the rest is just hate and obvious personal vendettas.
i’m more interested to know if they actually filled for IPO rather than people who don’t like IronFX CEO for whatever reasons.
FM writer, can you confirm your statement and whether IronFX has actully passed the NYSE IPO DD?
It seems that Retail FX has become a battle between the online marketing guys (Israelis) and the brokerage model (IronFX and some smaller ones). Aside the competitor malice written on these forums, isn’t a combination of the two the way forward for the industry? IronFX has put out a model that clearly is ruffling feathers judging from the exchanges on every IronFX article.
The brokerage model is clearly resilient given the way they have grown without any funding, add some Israeli-style online optimization and all is for the taking. Maybe this is what worries everyone…
@Gilad – I don’t see IronFX as much different than many Israeli brokers. With the exception of Plus500 which is marketing driven, the other major ones such as Markets.com and UFX also are affiliate/IB driven with large sales forces making outbound phone calls to pressure leads to deposit. However, unlike other brokers with sales focus models, IronFX has tighter margins due to smaller spreads which exposes them to more trading related risk. Also, despite customer performance, they are still on the hook to pay their partners which seems to be the problem they got into.
LOL… look at the up votes and down votes! IronFX is here, no doubt!
The CySEC investigation is a joke. They are partners with ironfx in this crime.
IronFX wants to cancel all of its clients profit, as they marked most of the company’s clients as bonus abusers, whether they abused the bonus or not.
They have been threatening their clients for months telling them that either they hedge their money from ironfx to anohter broker or their profit or even entire funds will be cancelled.
Interesting approach from a broker that accuses its clients with bonus abuse.
The only problem I have with ironfx is the withdrawls I have had 13withdrawls this year up till august then they stopped my account is still trading. I have not had bonus or pretend money for over 12 months…I am a position trader not a scalper cannot see how they think I may of done any thing wrong..How can they withhold my money…And this is the point there seems NOBODY TO HELP CYSEC DO NOT ACT FOR INVESTORS.I HAVE CRIME NUMBER FROM BRITISH POLICE..HOW CAN I PROGRESS MY CLAIM ..DO I GET CYPRUS SOLICITOR? LARGEST FX BRKER IN THE WORLD… Read more »