Disliked{quote} Hmmm.... YES and... NO. :-) Cyprus, even as EU state has always enjoyed "different" corporation and tax laws comparing to the mainland EU countries. This is why so many companies kept their "head offices" in Cyprus, even they mainly operated in other countries. Many prominent FX brokers used Cyprus to open their businesses as it was much easier to do so and they were not bonded by many regulators. Hence, still many people think they have their account with broker in UK, France or Germany, while in fact they operate under Cyprus legislation....Ignored
we can discuss this issue for ages but the bottom line is that cyprus as other similar countries (usually small ones) they dont have any other resources to "sell" other than the resources of labor aka "services" thats why they must make their countries super friendly to corps.
i would never accuse any european authority of "being relaxed" let it be UK one or Cypriot one... i believe the difference is the above... its easier to walk in to cyprus to the authority and discuss (on foot) ...than even start talking with the UK authority
the past decade cyprus found an "untapped" market which was the forex market, and exploited becoming one of the 3 biggest centers in the world, having skilled plenty workforce cheaper than the other financial "capitals" assisted in that as well.
you will find that any broker that is in Germany, France, UK and even US have either their mother company in cyprus or an affiliate company there... there are in fact too few brokers with no presence there... (even alpari has a subsidiary in cuprus)
even the "big guys" are based there... ALL the "trusted companies" mentioned as alternatives on this thread are one way or another in relation with cyprus...
so companies having a direct or indirect relation with cyprus are hit as well (alpari is one of them)
i am telling you that because i have researched more than 20 forex brokers than went further with real money trading to a remaining 7-8 with them and my last choice (being a european) was ... alpari UK ... what was happened is unfortunate ... and i have actually have on my balance only the capital i had since the the start of the year -300eurs (fucking aussie..."turned" exactly after they closed the trade....;-) )
anyway for me the issue right now is that i still have ( A SMALL) belief that the thing might be cleared out next week... and that are people working on this direction.... but even if that is not the case we are going to get our balances sometime in the future weeks or months....
i just hope in case they do clear the balance issue next week (less than 0.001% chance to be pragmatic) as we have big news ahead and dont want to miss them