Hirose Financial

Hirose Financial UK is a UK-based retail foreign exchange broker that provides foreign exchange (forex or fx) trading on margin through its own online trading platform called LION Trader and through MetaTrader 4. It is a subsidiary of Japanese foreign exchange company Hirose Financial that provides online trading services.

History
Hirose Company (called Hirose Tusyo) was incorporated in Japan in 2004 to offer foreign exchange trading and investment services after the regulatory changes in Japan in 1998 allowing retail forex trading.

Hirose focused on its Japanese-based currency products to grow its business in an environment with a large number of competitors. , Hirose's global number of client accounts exceed 120,000 and trading volume reached $76 billion.

In 2010, Hirose expanded outside its home country by setting up Hirose Financial UK, and becoming the first Japanese forex broker licensed in London, UK.

Business model
Hirose Financial UK runs a No Dealing Desk (NDD) or straight-through processing (STP) model. This means that client orders are routed directly to liquidity providers (banks or other financial institutions) and Hirose does not act as a market maker.

Technology
Hirose's trading platform, LION, is based on the Act Forex (ActTrader) system, which can facilitate trades using PC application, web based, Android phones, iPhones, and iPads). It also provides traders with custom indicators, trading algos/EAs and programmable strategies as an alternative to MetaTrader.

Hirose uses "Oracle Coherence," an in-memory data grid product to improve execution performance. The application server also uses an "Oracle WebLogic Server".