Pepperstone is an Australian forex and CFD broker providing trading services with forex, stocks, commodities and other asset classes in multiple jurisdictions. The company was founded in 2010 in Melbourne, Australia, by Owen Kerr and Joe Davenport. The group operates internationally through subsidiaries in the UK, Germany, Cyprus, Kenya, Bahamas, and the UAE.
Pepperstone was founded in 2010 by Owen Kerr and Joe Davenport[3][4] but it did not receive its Australian Financial Services License (AFSL) from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) until February 2013.[5]
In 2016, Pepperstone sold a majority of its business to Champ Private Equity.[8] The equity firm later exited the company, selling its stake in 2018 to Tamas Szabo CEO and Fiona Lock.[9] In February 2017, to comply with its FCA obligations, the firm temporarily suspend trading for its UK clients.[10]
After Brexit, Pepperstone could no longer operate in the European Union under its UK FCA license.[11] To continue operations, Pepperstone secured additional licenses from BaFin in Germany and CySEC in Cyprus by 2020.[7] In June 2022, Pepperstone became an Approved Broker Member of the Financial Commission, a self-regulatory organization in the financial services space.[12] In 2022, the UK subsidiary increased net profit by 36% to over £10 million, though it remained below the broker's £12.7 million revenue in 2020.[13] The client funds decreased to £25.16 mln below the previous year's £28.9 mln. Pepperstone reduced employee and legal expenses and tripled marketing expenses instead.[14]
In June 2024, Pepperstone introduced 24-hour CFD trading on US shares on its trading platforms cTrader, MetaTrader, and TradingView.[15]
In November 2025, Pepperstone's CEO Tamas Szabo announced that the company was preparing to launch a spot cryptocurrency exchange in Australia, pending final regulatory approval.[16] In December 2025, Pepperstone secured a Category 5 licence from the UAE Securities and Commodities Authority and opened a new onshore office in Dubai.[17]
Regulation
After Brexit, to remain operational in EU, Pepperstone secured regulatory licenses in Germany and Cyprus. The company also expanded to Kenya and the UAE.[18][19][20] The company is authorized and regulated by several financial authorities: the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), the FCA in the United Kingdom, CySEC in Cyprus, DFSA in Dubai, the CMA in Kenya, SCB in the Bahamas, and BaFin in Germany.[21]
In February 2023, Peter Spanos, Pepperstone's head of market risk, left the company to take a similar role at GO Markets, a rival brokerage firm. Spanos remarked that he was pleased to join a company with a supportive culture.[28] He left GO Markets the following year.[29]
In November 2023, Pepperstone was identified by ASIC as one of seven CFD brokers that breached the leverage ratio limits imposed under a 2020 product intervention order. The firm self-reported that due to a technical error some retail clients were able to trade CFDs with higher leverage than permitted, and it undertook a remediation program to compensate over 1,500 affected customers.[30]
Unlicensed operations
In October 2014, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) discovered that Pepperstone had been operating in Japan without a license from the Japanese Financial Services Agency. It was only after the ASIC report that Pepperstone notified its Japanese clients via email about the lack of a license and informed them that they could only withdraw their funds until 31 December 2014.[5] Japan was Pepperstone's most lucrative overseas market, and the exit came months before the company was reported to be planning an Australian Securities Exchange listing.[31][32]
In May 2020, the Brazilian Comissão de Valores Mobiliários (CVM) issued an order for Pepperstone to cease offering its services in Brazil without authorization, under penalty of a daily fine. The regulator alleged that Pepperstone had been attracting Brazilian clients via its website and social media despite not being licensed domestically.[33]
Insider trading scam
In 2014, the Herald Sun reported that Pepperstone's head of sales, Joel Murphy, was dismissed after blowing the whistle on a $7 million insider trade scam. Murphy uncovered a scheme carried out by Lukas Kamay and Chris Hill, who gained 20,000% in profits, and informed his boss as well as the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. Murphy was dismissed on the day of their arrest and was denied bonuses exceeding $1 million.[34][35][36]
In 2015, Murphy founded the brokerage company EightCap, attracting scrutiny for his decision to hire Hill as a risk analyst. The firm is included on the Investor Alert List published by the Securities Commission Malaysia, which warns that the company "carries on unlicensed capital market activities of dealing in securities."[37] In October 2020, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) introduced leverage limits and other measures to improve protections for retail investors trading in contracts for difference (CFDs).[38] Despite these regulations, EightCap was found to have breached the limits on multiple occasions by offering excessive leverage and misclassifying retail clients as wholesale. In 2023, amid growing regulatory pressure, the company self-reported the breaches to ASIC and agreed to provide compensation to affected clients.[39]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
