Zerafa Advocates in Tel Aviv, Israel

Earlier this week, Dr. Omar Zerafa has been invited to Tel Aviv to be part of a regulatory panel where he spoke about the developments in the Maltese regulatory regime with respect to online financial trading, particularly forex and binary options trading. The seminar was organised by the IVC Research Centre and was held at the Meirhoff Gallery in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Dr. Zerafa described the regulatory approach to online financial trading in Malta and also discussed the importance of being regulated in a reputable jurisdiction. The Maltese regulator has adopted a rather stringent approach to the regulation of online financial trading platforms with the aim of ensuring that applicants for business and persons involved in providing the investment services are well accustomed to operating within a regulated regime and are actually prepared to do so once their licence is issued. Although there are several comparisons being made between Malta and Cyprus, most of which favour Cyprus as a jurisdiction where it is easy to set-up an online financial trading operation, Dr. Zerafa explained that Malta is only willing to accept applicants with a certain level of commitment and strong systems in place. Malta has a reputation to safeguard and this also translates into reassuring clients of such platforms that they are adequately protected by a regulator that primarily focuses on safeguarding the interests of such clients.

The seminar was very well attended and brought together leading figures in the high-tech, venture capital and online financial trading industry.