Marios Demetriades, the son of a former minister, was sworn in today as the new Minister of Communications and Works of the Republic of Cyprus. A little known name in the political scene of his country, Demetriades was a member of the centre-party DIKO, which had decided to leave the coalition government a few days ago. His appointment has therefore been the cause of complaints by DIKO leadership, accusing the President of Cyprus, Nicos Anastasiades for disrespecting the party decisions and appointing “one of their own”. The reason for this article however, is not party antics that have nothing to do with binaryoptionswire and its readers.
What has actually caught our attention with regards to this particular appointment, is the career background of this new member of the Cyprus’ top executive body. A holder of a degree in Business, Finance and Economics, Marios Demetriades is also an Associate Chartered Accountant and Chartered Financial Analyst, while he has also passed the Cyprus Stock Exchange Representative Examinations and holds a Certificate of Eligibility to provide financial services for portfolio management, underwriting of financial instruments and own trading, issued by the Cyprus Ministry of Finance.
Prior to assuming the ministerial post, he was Head of Institutional Sales and Custody at Pireaus Bank (Cyprus), having previously served as Head of Fund Management, indeed setting up the Fund Management and Custody Departments for the Bank. Before that, for seven years he had also worked as Manager of Asset Management in Laiki Investments, a member of the Laiki Bank Group, while he had also briefly worked for HSBC Asset Management in London.
Notwithstanding all these, what is more intriguing for us here at binaryoptionswire is the fact that since August 2012, Mr Demetriades has been a Non-Executive Director at FXPro Financial Services Ltd. With FXPro being admittedly one of the ten largest retail FX companies in the world, it will be interesting to observe what impact the appointment of a person who has obviously been “in the know” about the significant issues pertaining to the retail forex industry, might have on the formulation of government policies.
Cyprus is already an important jurisdiction for forex and binary options brokers and has also proven to be a resilient financial services centre, despite last year’s crisis and the ensuing bail-in of deposits in its two largest banks.
With the country on the long path towards recovery, having an industry insider sit on the top-executive body where policies are drafted and decisions are taken collectively, might mean that issues pertaining to the retail forex and binary options industry might get even more attention. Time will only tell how this new addition to the Cyprus’ cabinet might help the country further consolidate its position as a jurisdiction in the industry.
