Common use of Professional Clients Clause in Contracts

Professional Clients. For the purposes of the Investment Services and Activities & Regulated Markets Law of the Republic of Cyprus, the following entities are regarded as professional clients in all investment services and activities and financial instruments: (i) Entities which are required to be authorized or regulated to operate in the financial markets, including organizations such as Credit institutions, Investment firms, other authorized or regulated financial institutions, Insurance Companies, Collective Investment Schemes and their management companies, pension funds and their management companies; commodity and commodity derivative dealers, locals, other institutional investors; or (ii) A market participant which meets two of the three following requirement: a. Its balance sheet is equal to or exceeds €20,000,000; b. Its net turnover is equal to or exceeds €40,000,000; or c. Its own funds equals to or exceeds €2,000,000. (iii) Clients who meet the requirements of knowledge and experience in trading in complex financial instruments and request that they are treated as Professional Clients. Such a request by a client for classification as an Professional Client will generally be positively considered if two of the following three criteria are satisfied: a. The client has carried out transactions on the relevant market at an average frequency of 10 per quarter over the previous four quarters; b. The size of the client’s financial instrument portfolio defined as including cash deposits and financial instruments exceeds €500,000; c. The client works or has worked in the financial sector for at least one year in a professional position which requires knowledge of the transactions or services envisaged. We reserve the right to request independent documentary evidence to support the above criteria. We will not permit the elective classification to a Professional Client if the above are not met. A Professional client has the right to request to be classified as Retail client in order to obtain a higher level of regulatory protection. It is the responsibility of the client, to request a higher level of protection when they deem it challenging to properly assess or manage the risks involved in trading in complex financial instruments. The highest level of protection will be provided to a client who, although is considered to be eligible to be treated as a Professional, following the client’s request, we agree in writing that he can be treated as a Retail client. Such agreement will specify whether this applies to one or more particular services or transactions, or to one or more types of products or transactions. Please note that a request for a different categorization is subject to our discretion.