FTMO Paid USD 422 Million for OANDA, Blurring Prop-Broker Line

The largest retail-facing deal of the year

FTMO's parent company, OHM Group, spent 8.79 billion Czech koruna - roughly USD 422 million at prevailing exchange rates - to buy OANDA from private-equity house CVC, according to annual filings first reported by Finance Magnates. CVC had acquired the broker in 2018 for USD 160 million, meaning the valuation increased by a factor of approximately 2.6 over seven years.

To finance the transaction, OHM secured a USD 250 million credit facility from a consortium of Czech lenders led by UniCredit in November 2025. The deal completed on 1 December 2025, consolidating a well-known prop-trading operation and a long-established multi-jurisdiction broker under a single corporate umbrella.

OHM's 2025 numbers in context

OHM closed the 2025 financial year with consolidated revenue of 8.9 billion koruna (about USD 427 million), a 30 per cent rise on the prior year. The growth engine was FTMO's core prop-challenge business: paid orders climbed nearly 50 per cent year-on-year to 1.27 million, and returning clients now generate close to 80 per cent of total revenue - a ratio that signals strong retention and a predictable income base.

On the balance sheet, total consolidated assets reached 30.7 billion koruna (approximately USD 1.47 billion) at year-end, reflecting both organic reinvestment and the absorption of OANDA's own asset pool. Group equity stood at 13 billion koruna (about USD 625 million). Those figures place OHM firmly among the larger corporate groups in the retail trading ecosystem, though its model is fundamentally different from that of a conventional broker.

What OANDA brings to the table

OANDA is a veteran in online forex and CFD dealing, holding tier-one authorisations including registration with the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission and membership of the National Futures Association, plus a UK Financial Conduct Authority licence. It operates across multiple jurisdictions including Canada, Japan, Singapore and Australia.

Crucially for FTMO, OANDA's US-licensed business opened the American market - now the group's second-largest after the United Kingdom, according to the filings. FTMO is reported to be the only prop firm in the US currently able to offer MetaTrader 5, a capability inherited directly from OANDA's regulatory permissions. CEO Otakar Suffner and CTO Marek Vasicek have positioned the acquisition as the centrepiece of a broader strategic expansion.

From the perspective of EU readers, however, one detail matters: OANDA does not currently operate an ESMA-passported retail CFD entity of the kind that would place it alongside MiFID II-authorised brokers in the European Economic Area. Nor does it run a live EU or UK affiliate programme. For traders in the EU seeking the specific protections that come with ESMA-regulated execution, OANDA's authorisation footprint is not directly comparable to that of brokers holding CySEC, BaFin or other EEA competent-authority licences.

Prop firm versus regulated broker - why the distinction matters

The deal crystallises a trend that has been building for several years: the convergence of prop-trading firms and regulated brokerages. Understanding the difference is essential for any retail trader evaluating where to place capital.

A prop firm such as FTMO sells evaluation challenges. Traders pay a fee, trade on simulated or funded accounts under defined risk rules, and if they pass, receive a share of profits generated on the firm's capital. The trader does not deposit their own trading funds in the conventional sense. Because prop challenges are generally classified as commercial services rather than regulated investment products, they sit outside the scope of most financial-services regulation.

An ESMA-regulated CFD broker, by contrast, holds client money under strict segregation rules, participates in investor compensation schemes - up to EUR 20,000 under the Investor Compensation Fund in Cyprus, or up to GBP 85,000 under the UK Financial Services Compensation Scheme - and must enforce the retail leverage caps introduced in 2018: 30:1 on major currency pairs, 20:1 on minor pairs, indices and gold, 10:1 on other commodities, 5:1 on individual equities, and 2:1 on cryptocurrency CFDs. Negative-balance protection is mandatory.

None of those protections automatically extends to a prop-challenge product, even if the corporate group behind it also owns a regulated broker. The two activities operate under different legal frameworks, and traders should not assume that buying a prop evaluation from a company affiliated with a licensed broker grants them the same safeguards.

Practical guidance for EU and UK traders

For readers of this site, the takeaway is straightforward. If you want regulated CFD execution with the full suite of ESMA or FCA protections - segregated client funds, compensation-scheme coverage, standardised leverage limits and negative-balance protection - you should be trading with a broker that holds the relevant authorisation in its own right, not relying on a corporate affiliation.

Before funding any account, verify the exact legal entity on the register of the relevant regulator: the FCA register for UK-authorised firms, the CySEC registry for Cyprus-licensed brokers, or BaFin's company database for German-authorised entities. The authorising entity on your client agreement is what determines your protections, not the brand name or the parent group.

Established brokers such as Pepperstone, IC Markets and Trade Nation hold MiFID II and FCA authorisations with the attendant client-money protections. They make no performance promises - nor should they - but they do provide the regulatory infrastructure that the European framework was designed to guarantee. That infrastructure exists precisely because retail CFD trading carries material risk: between 74 and 89 per cent of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs, according to disclosures required by ESMA.

What this signals for the industry

The FTMO-OANDA transaction is unlikely to be the last of its kind. Prop firms have accumulated substantial cash flows from evaluation fees, and regulated brokers offer something money alone cannot buy quickly: licences, compliance teams and established clearing relationships. Expect further M&A where cash-rich challenge providers seek to bolt on regulated infrastructure.

For regulators, the convergence poses a classification question. If a single group both sells unregulated evaluation challenges and operates a licensed broker, how should cross-selling, data sharing and brand association be supervised? ESMA and the FCA have not yet published specific guidance on prop-broker hybrids, but the scale of this deal - and the speed of growth in the prop sector - makes it difficult to ignore indefinitely.

For retail traders, the message is simpler: understand what you are buying. A prop challenge is a commercial product. A regulated brokerage account is a financial service. The protections differ, and the FTMO-OANDA deal does not change that.