THE ULTIMA WORLD DMCC: owner, group companies and record

analysisFG BCS LTD became the top holding company of the Russian BCS financial group in 2016, sold the group's Russian business to its owner Oleg Mikhasenko in January 2023 and moved from Cyprus to the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre that December, taking the name THE ULTIMA WORLD DMCC in 2025. The dossier sets out the owner and director disclosures, every subsidiary and affiliate on record with the source of each link, the sales of group companies to the owner and the transactions booked as his contributions or distributions, the note programmes the company guarantees, and the FINRA, CySEC, Russian tax and court records, each with the parties' responses and outcomes beside it. It separates sanctions on former group companies and on the later owner of the Russian business from what screening found for the company itself. ^{1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28}

analysisTHE ULTIMA WORLD DMCC was incorporated on 24 September 2015 as a limited liability company under the Cyprus Companies Law, Cap. 113. Since 22 December 2023 it has been domiciled and registered as a free zone company in the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC) under number DMCC198649, with a licence that permits investment in commercial enterprises and management. Until early 2025 it was called FG BCS LTD, in the DMCC FG BCS LTD DMCC. Its Cypriot subsidiary announced the new name on 11 February 2025 as part of a rebranding; the sources date the change differently, to 9 January 2025 in a notice to noteholders and to 6 February 2025 in the company's LEI record, and the DMCC register entry for the change was not retrieved. ^{1 2 3 4}

analysisThe company's own documents name Oleg Mikhasenko as its sole beneficiary and ultimate controlling party: the April 2025 note prospectus states this and calls him the sole ultimate beneficial owner of the group, and the audited consolidated statements for 2022 describe him as the group's sole beneficiary and ultimate controlling party. Alexey Annenkov has been sole director since 2 December 2022, when Vitaliy Shelikhovskiy left the board; the April 2025 prospectus states that Annenkov is also a director of Seldthorn Private Equity Limited, the Cypriot company the group sold to Mikhasenko in 2022. ^{1 5}

analysisThe audited consolidated statements for 2025 list seven operating subsidiaries at the end of that year: The Ultima Investments Cyprus Limited (98.0%) and, each wholly owned, The Ultima World (DIFC) Limited, The Ultima Structured Products PLC, The Ultima Global Markets (USA) Inc., The Ultima Global Markets Qazaqstan Limited, The Ultima Investment Hong Kong Limited and The Ultima Products HK Limited. FINRA's BrokerCheck report on the US broker-dealer names further affiliates described as owned by the company that are not in that list, among them The Ultima Fintech Qazaqstan, The Ultima Asia Limited, Spidertek Ltd, LTM SV LLC and Brokstock SA (Pty) Ltd in South Africa; the effective dates FINRA gives are filing dates for each affiliation. ^{1 2 3 4}

analysisAccording to FG BCS LIMITED's 2022 statements, the group decided on 10 January 2023 to end its activities in Russia, and on 19 January 2023 it sold BCS Holding LLC, whose brokerage, retail and investment banking, depository and asset-management business made up the whole Russian segment, to Oleg Mikhasenko for RR 9,990 thousand; the difference of about RR 43 billion from the net assets disposed of was accounted for as a distribution to him. A Russian technology-industry publication reported on 19 July 2025 that Mikhasenko had in turn sold the BCS group to its general director, Vitaly Shelikhovsky. The price and terms were not found in the retained records; registry data show Shelikhovsky as the majority participant of BCS Holding from July 2025. ^{5 6 7 8}

analysisThe group's audited statements for 2025, signed by Annenkov as sole director, report total assets of USD 2,463,540 thousand, liabilities of USD 1,626,790 thousand, equity of USD 836,750 thousand and a profit of USD 146,092 thousand, against USD 73,488 thousand for 2024. The company also guarantees notes of its Kazakh subsidiary: under a base prospectus of 17 April 2025, The Ultima Global Markets Qazaqstan Limited may issue notes to accredited investors under a USD 300,000,000 programme, guaranteed unconditionally and irrevocably by THE ULTIMA WORLD DMCC when the final terms so specify. ^{1 6}

analysisOn 16 March 2026 FINRA censured The Ultima Global Markets (USA) Inc. and fined it USD 100,000 by an Acceptance, Waiver and Consent, finding that it had failed to establish and implement an anti-money-laundering programme reasonably designed to detect and report potentially suspicious low-priced securities transactions in correspondent accounts controlled by its affiliated foreign financial institutions; the firm facilitated at least 332 such transactions with a net principal value of about USD 27.5 million. The firm consented without admitting or denying the findings. It says that it paused its trading in September 2024, in particular to enhance its anti-money-laundering programme, and that since early 2025 an updated programme and written supervisory procedures, an automated surveillance tool and an upgraded compliance function ensure compliance with FINRA rules. The fine was paid in full on 13 April 2026, and FINRA records that the order is not a final order based on violations of laws prohibiting fraudulent, manipulative or deceptive conduct. ¹

analysisThe Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) fined the Cypriot investment firm, then BrokerCreditService (Cyprus) Limited, EUR 10,000 on 28 March 2022 for not having effective arrangements and systems to detect suspicious transactions under Article 16(2) of the EU Market Abuse Regulation. The announcement records a judicial review and a judicial-review ruling, available only as links whose content was not retained, so the outcome of the review is not known from the record. On 24 April 2023 CySEC reached a EUR 100,000 settlement with the firm over possible violations in 2019–2021 of the same article and of the organisational requirements for investment firms; the firm had already paid the amount, and the announcement records no judicial review. ^{2 3}

analysisIn Russia, FG BCS LTD asked the Arbitration Court of the Novosibirsk Region to invalidate a tax decision insofar as it demanded 2018 profit-tax arrears of RUB 233,411,600 and RUB 66,164,451 with the related penalty interest and fines. The company argued that it had revised the type, period and source of its Cypriot subsidiary's dividends in 2019 to correct errors in the valuation of derivatives and that the subsidiary had insufficient profit to distribute for 2016; the courts found these arguments unsupported, the first-instance decision noting the subsidiary's retained earnings of USD 112.9 million for 2015 and USD 117.9 million for 2016. The application was dismissed on 13 September 2023, the Seventh Arbitration Appeal Court upheld that decision on 11 December 2023 and the Arbitration Court of the West Siberian District dismissed the cassation appeal on 2 April 2024; the retained record does not show whether the company appealed further to the Supreme Court. ^{4 5 6 7}

analysisIn 2022 Viktor Aranovsky, a former director of the Novosibirsk machine-tool maker PJSC Tyazhstankogidropress, sued that company, JSC BCS Bank, Azimut LLC, JSC Upravlyayushchaya Kompaniya Fondov and FG BCS LTD for joint damages of RUB 90 million, later increased to RUB 121,335,513.36, claiming that the buyers of his shares in 2016 had breached representations that property worth RUB 90 million would stay outside the company sold; the allegations are the claimant's. In 2023 the court barred the registration of Azimut's liquidation as an interim measure, upheld up to a Supreme Court judge, and refused to add Oleg Mikhasenko as a co-defendant, a refusal upheld on appeal. No judgment on the merits was found in the retained record. ^{8 9 10 11}

analysisScreening of consolidated sanctions and politically-exposed-person datasets during the research returned the company's former name, FG BCS LTD, only as a Russian register record of a foreign organisation with no sanctions topics, and Oleg Mikhasenko's name only as a Russian register record with no sanctions or PEP topics. Screening covers only the datasets searched and does not prove that no other listing exists; the match for Mikhasenko is by name. ^{1 2}

analysisSanctions do apply to companies and people around the group. On 21 November 2024 the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated BCS Bank AO, a Moscow-based bank, as one of more than 50 small and medium-sized Russian banks; BCS Bank was no longer part of the company's group at the time, and OFAC's announcement does not mention the company or its affiliates. On 6 July 2025 Ukraine imposed ten-year personal sanctions, including the blocking of assets, on Vitalii Oleksandrovych Shelikhovskyi (in Russian, Vitaly Aleksandrovich Shelikhovsky), a Russian citizen; the Russian taxpayer number in the decision is the one that Russian registry data record for Vitaly Shelikhovsky as director and owner of BCS Holding and general director of BCS Company and BCS FT. The identification rests on the matching name and taxpayer number, and the decision does not mention BCS or the company. ^{3 4 5 6 7}