EFG Hermes Pakistan

EFG Hermes Pakistan Broker Overview

EFG Hermes Pakistan was the trading identity of EFG Hermes Pakistan Limited, a Karachi securities house incorporated in Pakistan on 27 September 1999. The company is a Trading Right Entitlement Certificate holder of Pakistan Stock Exchange Limited and has been listed on that exchange since 20 March 2008. Its business is share brokerage, corporate finance, underwriting, advisory and research. No retail foreign exchange or CFD service is documented under this brand.

The company no longer trades under the EFG Hermes name. It was renamed Intermarket Securities Limited, and the efghermespakistan.com website that carried the EFG Hermes Pakistan brand is no longer in service.

EFG Hermes Pakistan Regulation and License

No foreign exchange or CFD licence is held or claimed by EFG Hermes Pakistan Limited. Its permissions sit in the securities market instead: it holds a Trading Right Entitlement Certificate of Pakistan Stock Exchange Limited, is recorded as a corporate member of Pakistan Mercantile Exchange Limited, and acts as a service provider with MUFAP. Those are securities and commodity market memberships. They do not authorise retail margin foreign exchange dealing and they carry none of the client protections a retail forex licence is meant to provide.

The company record is published by the exchange itself at dps.psx.com.pk/company/IMS.

Is EFG Hermes Pakistan Regulated?

Not as a foreign exchange broker. No forex authority anywhere records a licence for this company, and the company does not advertise one. It is a regulated participant in Pakistan's securities market through its exchange membership, which is a different permission covering a different business and offers nothing to someone holding a margin foreign exchange account.

Intermarket Securities Limited

The operating legal entity behind the EFG Hermes Pakistan brand is the company now called Intermarket Securities Limited. It was incorporated on 27 September 1999 under the repealed Companies Ordinance 1984, converted to a public unquoted company in November 2006, and listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange from 20 March 2008. Its registered office is 5th Floor, Bahria Complex-IV Ext-Block, Ch. Khalique-uz-Zaman Road, Gizri, Karachi, and it now publishes at www.imsecurities.com.pk. The company continues to file audited results and its shares continue to trade.

Is EFG Hermes Pakistan Safe?

The underlying company is a real, long established and publicly listed securities firm, which counts in its favour, but that says nothing about the safety of a foreign exchange account because no such account is offered under this name. The material risk is not the company, it is the brand. A recognisable financial name attached to a domain that is no longer in service is exactly the identity an unrelated operator can reuse, so any forex or CFD site trading on the EFG Hermes Pakistan name should be treated as unconnected to the listed company until shown otherwise.

EFG Hermes Pakistan Pros and Cons

• The operating company is named, publicly listed and verifiable on the Pakistan Stock Exchange company record, with named officers and a published registered office.
• A corporate history running from 1999 and a continuous exchange listing since 2008 give an unusually long and checkable track record.
• There is no foreign exchange or CFD licence and no retail forex offering, so this is not a broker a margin trader can use.
• The EFG Hermes Pakistan brand has been retired and its website withdrawn, which leaves the name open to misuse by others.

EFG Hermes Pakistan Review and Assessment

This is a listed Pakistani securities broker rather than a retail foreign exchange broker, and it no longer trades under the EFG Hermes name. Nothing found points to wrongdoing by the company. The one thing worth acting on is that the brand is dormant and its former domain is dead, so any foreign exchange service presenting itself as EFG Hermes Pakistan today should be checked against the listed company's current identity before any money moves.