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Salesmen and structurers are in demand, survey finds
LONDON – Forex sales professionals and options traders saw the highest turnover this year, and demand for these staff is set to increase in 2007.
JP Morgan launches implied volatility indexes
LONDON – JP Morgan has launched indexes tracking the level of G7 and emerging-market implied volatility, which it says will appeal to the wider institutional investor community.
Senior changes at US banks
LONDON & NEW YORK – JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs have made senior management changes that will come into effect early next year.
Quick, look busy! Here comes Mifid
Chip Lowry , senior managing director of State Street Global Link in Europe, looks at what Mifid will mean for the foreign exchange industry
Banks team up to launch benchmark currency indexes
LONDON & FRANKFURT – Deutsche Bank, UBS and Barclays Capital have signed up with iBoxx to launch currency indexes that they say will act as an industry-wide benchmark.
Forex fraudster fined $29 million and jailed
WASHINGTON DC & SAN DIEGO – The owner of a forex trading company has been fined $29 million and imprisoned for defrauding.
Reuters cuts EM options brokerage fees in half
LONDON – Reuters' decision to revamp its FX options matching system has increased competition for e-broking of options, with the prospect of slashed brokerage fees.
The mixed blessings of co-operation
Co-operation in the foreign exchange industry has generally tended to bolster the market.
Citigroup launches Islamic finance products in Singapore
SINGAPORE – Citigroup has launched commodity murabaha investments denominated in the US dollar, euro, pound sterling and Singapore dollar.
Citigroup and GSB sign memo of understanding
BANGKOK – Government Savings Bank (GSB), Thailand's state bank, has signed a memorandum of understanding with Citigroup in Thailand to start an international banking business that will launch in the first part of next year.
Asia focus for Bank Julius Baer
ZURICH & SINGAPORE – Bank Julius Baer is understood to be transferring Fred Etheart from Zurich to Singapore, where he will develop an institutional foreign exchange sales desk.
ASIA PACIFIC NEWS: ABN Amro pays $4.5m settlement in Vietnam forex trading case
HANOI – Dutch bank ABN Amro has paid $4.5 million to police to settle a dispute over allegations by the Vietnamese government that its traders broke FX trading regulations.
FXall in ruble push
MOSCOW – Multibank platform FXall has added five liquidity providing banks to bolster trading in the Russian ruble.
Algo trading to double, says Eurex
CHICAGO – "The rise in activity of algorithmic traders is impressive, and it's changing the nature of electronic trading," said Andreas Preuss, chief executive of Eurex.
Dresdner rebuilds forex team
LONDON & NEW YORK – Dresdner Kleinwort (DK) has made three senior hires as it rebuilds it FX team after a series of departures to Merrill Lynch in September and October.
RBS and JP Morgan scale back prop trading
LONDON – Royal Bank of Scotland closed its London-based prop trading desk last week in the latest sign of the hardship faced by FX desks at banks.
Margin trading – an untapped opportunity
Brian Maccaba , executive chairman of Cognotec, highlights the huge growth in web-based FX margin trading and argues that banks cannot afford to ignore the opportunities that this presents
ISE prepares FX options launch
NEW YORK – The International Securities Exchange (ISE) has begun publishing the underlying rates for its new ISE FX options, in preparation for launch next year.
BarCap joins LiquidityHub
NEW YORK – Barclays Capital (BarCap) has joined the LiquidityHub bank consortium, which plans to aggregate liquidity and market data for electronic trading, for their clients.
Citi forms FICC group
NEW YORK – Citigroup has merged its global fixed income and emerging markets businesses to establish a new global fixed income, currencies and commodities (FICC) group.
Icap pushes into options
LONDON – Icap plans to launch non-deliverable forwards and develop an electronic FX options trading platform, CEO Michael Spencer told the FX Week annual congress in his keynote address.
Citigroup plays catch-up
Citigroup's recent investment in forex technology appears to be paying off, as demonstrated by the bank's resurgence this year
NFA expels Spencer Financial
NEW YORK – The National Futures Association (NFA) has expelled forex dealer member Spencer Financial from NFA membership following its failure to implement an adequate anti-money laundering regime.