History
Admirals was established on the 26th of February, 2003, in Tallinn, Estonia, by a former engineer of Russian origin who had previously owned Admiral Telecom, an internet service provider in Russia. [5] [6] [4] [7] In the early 2000s, Tsikhilov decided to relocate his business to Europe. In 2003, he registered a security and commodity contracts broker Admiral Markets. The company secured a license from the Estonian Financial Supervisory Authority, Finantsinspektsioon, in 2009. [8] [4]
In 2017, Admiral Markets issued public bonds but raised only €1.8 mln of the intended €5 mln. [9] The bonds were listed on Nasdaq Tallinn's Baltic Bond List in January 2018. [4] In 2019, the company received recognition as the Best Forex Company in Estonia from the Global Banking & Finance Awards and formed partnerships with Trading Central, Acuity and Dow Jones & Company to provide an analytics portal for its clients. [10] [11] According to Estonian Postimees, in H1-2020 the group generated net revenues of €9.1 mln, a sharp drop from the €31.6 mln earned in the same period the previous year. The company's profit of €19.1 mln, meanwhile, turned into a loss of €1.6 mln. [12] The company was awarded an ADVFN International Financial Awards in 2021. [13]
In March 2021, Admiral Markets rebranded as Admirals and updated its logo. [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] That same year, it became one of the first major retail brokers to end zero-fee trading policies, introducing commissions on stock CFDs and ETF CFDs, while also banning penny stocks. [19]
As of 2022, the company operated in 18 countries and served clients in over 145 countries. Admirals maintained core offices in Estonia, Jordan, Cyprus, Malaysia and the United Kingdom. [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] However, due to the war in Ukraine and subsequent European sanctions, Admirals reduced its workforce in its Minsk office from about 150 to 30 employees, despite previously using this office as a key development center. [25]
In 2023, Admirals saw a sharp financial downturn after its record results of 2022. Full-year 2023 revenues fell by 41% to €40.9 mln. (from €69 mln. in 2022), and a net loss of €9.9 mln replaced the prior year's €23.6 mln. profit. [26] This decline came despite a rise in active clients (up 62% year-on-year to nearly 90,000 in 2023). [26] Following these results, company founder Alexander Tsikhilov returned as CEO, replacing longtime chief executive Sergei Bogatenkov. [26] At the end of 2023, Admirals was declared Estonia's most competitive financial service company in the country's annual Best Estonian Companies competition. [27]
In early 2024, Admirals withdrew its Estonian investment firm license, citing the availability of its Cypriot license and a desire to avoid regulatory duplication (though previously it had touted multiple licenses as an advantage). [1] In April 2024, following three consecutive semi-annual periods of declining revenue, Admirals suspended the onboarding European clients, citing regulatory challenges with CySEC. [28] [29] After implementing the required technical and organizational changes, Admirals resumed onboarding new clients in the EU by March 2025. [30]
In H1 2024, the company reported a net loss of €1.2 million, despite a 9% reduction in operating expenses and a slight revenue increase to €22 million compared to H1 2023. [29] In December 2024, Admirals announced an agreement to sell its Australian subsidiary (owned since 2011) to a non-related party. [31] The sale was completed in mid-2025, with the Australian business acquired and rebranded by rival broker PU Prime. [30] Around the same time, Admirals applied to cancel the license of its Middle East subsidiary (Admirals MENA in the United Arab Emirates), a request approved by the local regulator in November 2025. [32] Beyond these exits, Admirals remains regulated by financial authorities in the United Kingdom, Cyprus, Jordan, South Africa, Canada, Kenya, and Seychelles. [31]
In the first half of 2025, Admirals reported net trading income of €13.3 million (down from €22.0 million in H1 2024) and a net loss of €5.9 million (widening from a €1.2 million loss), while operating expenses fell 20% to €18.3 million. The number of active clients was 23,190. [30]
Management
In 2017, Admirals underwent a management restructuring, with Jens Chrzanowski, Victor Gherbovet, and Mindaugas Deksnys joining the board, along with existing board members Sergei Bogatenkov and James Chernikov. [33] In 2018, Stephen Ayme replaced Simon Roberts as the general manager. [34] [35]
By September 2022, the board was down to two members: Sergei Bogatenkov and Andrey Koks, after Chrzanowski's departure. [36] [37] Following a 51% revenue decline in early 2023, the company's founder Alexander Tsikhilov returned as CEO. As of March 2024, the Management Board consisted of Tsikhilov, Andrey Koks (CTO/CIO), and Anton Tikhomirov. [38]
In October 2025, Admirals announced a further leadership reshuffle. Longtime executives Anton Tikhomirov and Fedor Ragin were appointed to the Supervisory Board (Board of Directors), with Tikhomirov simultaneously resigning from the Management Board to take on that role. [39] Liudmila Bataeva was added as a member of the Management Board, joining Tsikhilov, Eduard Kelvet, and Andrey Koks. [39] The shake-up followed the company's €5.9 mln. loss in H1 2025 and came after the 2024 departures of CEO Sergei Bogatenkov and the head of the Cyprus office, Andreas Ioannou. [39]
Controversies
Since 2017, the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has reported at least five cases of clone firms and websites pretending to be Admiral Markets (Admirals). [40] [41] [42] [43] [44] [45] In May 2025, CySEC warned about a fraudulent website impersonating Admirals. [46]
In March 2020, media outlets reported that Admiral Markets was leaving the Polish market, although the company denied this, stating that its Polish branch was simply undergoing an "affiliation switch." [47] [48] Despite these assurances, the Polish branch closed in March 2021. [5]
In February 2021, Admiral Markets was fined €32,000 by the Estonian regulator Finantsinspektsioon for alleged non-compliance with its investment service obligations. [49] [50] During the crude oil price collapse in April 2020, the company unilaterally changed terms and increased fees for overnight holdings on certain instruments without prior client notification, which prompted further fines for transparency issues. [51] [52] [53] The company contested the fine in court, and in 2021, the Harju County Court annulled the decision; this ruling was later upheld by the Tallinn Circuit Court. [54] [55] [56]
In February 2022, Admirals (Admiral Markets AS) was fined €20,000 by Finantsinspektsioon for errors in mandatory transaction reporting. [57] Also in 2022, Tsikhilov publicly criticized the Estonian government's decision to bar IT workers from Russia and Belarus (following Russia's invasion of Ukraine), claiming it undermined Estonia's competitiveness by creating labor shortages and driving up costs in the tech sector. [25]
