4876 Santa Monica Avenue, Box 111. San Diego, CA 92107 +1 (619) 225-7882 fax +1 (619) 523-3862

September 24, 2015

Australian Securities & Investments Commission VIA FAX +61 3 5177 3999 Financial Conduct Authority (UK) VIA FAX +44 0207 066 1099

Financial Supervisory Authority (FIN-FSA) VIA EMAIL Jarmo.Parkkonen@fiav.fi, Jyri.Helenius@fiav.fi Malta Financial Services Authority VIA FAX +356 2144 1188

RE: REQUEST FOR EMERGENCY INTERVENTION

To Whom It May Concern:

I am the CEO of Commercial Network Services (CNS). We are a global online service provider hosting thousands of (mostly) retail FOREX traders located in more than 160 countries. In order to provide our subscribers with the highest quality of service, we peer our network with more than 1000 other networks worldwide, all settlement free ( https://radar.qrator.net/as29697 ). This provides an ideal connection between our subscribers hosted trading applications and their broker – your regulated entities. Many traders with latency sensitive strategies rely on the stable and very low latency network provided by our private peering connections to various brokers and other industry participants. PrimeXM (PXM) is a technology service provider to the FOREX industry. They provide their clients – your regulated brokers – a MetaTrader bridge, order routing and aggregation engine1. In short, the trading terminals of the retail traders of PXM client brokers connect to the PXM network to execute trades on the global FOREX market.

1 http://www.primexm.com/connectivity

To our knowledge, these brokers are: Benchmark Group Sensus FX Optimax ADSS BDFX DCFX Broker Firewoodfx Valbury Capital Armada Divisa LMAX MTCOOK Saxo Synergy FX Tickmill FxEthos Forex FS DCFX FinFX-PRO Traders Trust Go Markets PXM has been connected to the CNS network thru settlement free private peering links in the United States and United Kingdom for some time. Many retail traders use these low latency circuits to connect their trading software to your regulated brokers hosted by PXM. PXM also uses these same circuits to connect their back-end with an ASIC regulated broker hosted in the UK, who we provide transit service for. Because both networks are connected to ours, they have been enjoying the free and private transit connectivity as a benefit of simply being connected to our ON NET network. This provides for a more ideal trading environment for those retail traders too – not necessarily hosted by CNS - because the connectivity on the back end between the broker and PXM is transiting our private network rather than commercial transit routes. On Tuesday morning (September 22, 2015) we received from PXM a demand for payment in order to continue these same settlement free peering connections between our networks. We declined their demand as a matter of policy. PXM’s CEO Clive Diethelm sent a response within minutes which contained, among other things, their intent to terminate the settlement free peering links this coming weekend. Mr. Diethelm has a history of irrational behavior. Just last year he approached all connected VPS providers for the same reasons, and after all declined his request for payment to maintain these mutually beneficial peering links, he targeted CNS specifically for disconnection on short notice out of spite. However, ultimately all VPS providers made their intent clear to Mr. Diethelm, which was to disconnect their peering links as well if CNS was disconnected. At that point, Mr. Diethelm recanted and all providers to my knowledge have remained connected without any major issues. I have no information to suggest Mr. Diethelm has targeted any other connected provider for peering fees.

In this case, Mr. Diethelm’ s irrational behavior of only 3 days’ notice before effecting what could be a substantial change to the trading conditions for some unknown retail traders demonstrates a systemic risk to retail traders of your regulated brokers who are hosted by PXM. I reasonably believe this current behavior is for no reason other than spite. We immediately reached out to affected brokers on Tuesday. I hoped they would be able to protect their end-traders by convincing PXM that it is not reasonable to effect any changes in their traders trading environment, especially with only three days’ notice, and certainly not out of spite. Unfortunately, PXM brokers are at the mercy of PXM because PXM operates the network and infrastructure to connect their retail traders to the global FOREX market. They are simply powerless to do anything about Mr. Diethelm’ s irrational behavior or such short notice. After not hearing any positive news back by Wednesday morning, we issued a service advisory to all CNS FOREX traders to alert them of a potentially substantial change to their trading environment. As a neutral service provider, we do not monitor what any trader is doing. Their hosted environments are their own property. We simply are a conduit for retail traders to trade. We have no real means to identify which traders may be running latency sensitive trading strategies and could be affected by this action of PXM. In my experience, many traders tend to simply keep their trading terminals running and do not monitor the day to day. In fact that has become our slogan “keep it running”. Many may not be readily reachable because they reside in remote areas or are on vacation, etc... I reasonably believe that there are traders who will have not received reasonable notice of what could be a substantial change to their trading environment and are at imminent risk of experiencing financial losses due to the irrational behavior by PrimeXM’s CEO, Mr. Clive Diethelm. I also have no reasonable reason to believe Mr. Diethelm/PrimeXM will cease this action without immediate emergency regulatory intervention. I request you find it within your authority as regulators of PXM brokers to order PXM to maintain these connections until reasonable notice has been provided to all retail traders who may be affected by Mr. Diethelm’s decision to terminate these circuits. I remain reachable by email. Barry@CommercialNetworkServices.com Respectfully Submitted,

Barry Bahrami Chief Executive Officer cc: Clive Diethelm

Barry Bahrami