News
Icap gains foothold in China
BEIJING - Icap has cast a wider net into the Chinese foreign exchange market by forming a strategic partnership with the country's largest data and information vendor, Xinhua News Agency.
Currencies shine in Q3
NEW YORK - Record levels of volatility are ensuring rates and currency businesses continue to be the shining lights, as evident in third-quarter fixed-income results released by dealers last week.
City Index drops three in London
LONDON - Retail trading company City Index laid off three foreign exchange staff from its margin FX provider, IFX Markets, in London last Thursday (October 16), as it integrates the FX business with recently acquired FX Solutions.
BarCap picks Caplin for rates
LONDON - Barclays Capital has signed a contract to purchase web-based application Caplin Trader for its fixed-income electronic commerce system.
Interbank lending eases further
LONDON - The Ted spread, along with overnight and three-month Libor, fell for the fourth day in succession after European governments announced bail-out packages on Monday (October 13), and the US followed suit on Tuesday.
Ex-Lehman UK staff find new FX roles
LONDON - Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Standard Chartered and JP Morgan have all moved to make further hires from Lehman Brothers' former foreign exchange team.
Credit Suisse launches currency basket options
LONDON - Credit Suisse has introduced currency basket options on Merlin, its proprietary electronic foreign exchange structured products trading platform, in response to client demand.
Central bank turns broker
ISTANBUL - The Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (CBRT) has stepped in to broker interbank foreign exchange trades, in a bid to quell fears over counterparty risk in the local FX market.
Mixed forecast for FX
LONDON - Foreign exchange teams will avoid the worst of the job cuts in the City of London, although market sources warn no-one will be immune from redundancies.
Hotspot FX hires Asia sales head
SINGAPORE - Hotspot FX has appointed Trent Beacroft as head of Asia sales in Singapore.
The Bank of Korea offers competitive option swap facility
SEOUL - The Bank of Korea (BoK) is introducing a competitive auction swap facility today (October 20), to ease the recent foreign currency funding strains in the market.
BNP and Deutsche give homes to Lehman staff
LONDON - Not all Lehman Brothers' refugees have ended up at Nomura - BNP Paribas and Deutsche Bank have also stepped in to make hires.
Icap in central American venture
LONDON - Icap has partnered with the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (Cabei) to create a central clearing plaform for financial products in central America.
Nomura takes 150 Lehman refugees
LONDON - Richard Gladwin, former global head of foreign exchange at Lehman Brothers in London, is leading an exodus of the defunct bank's FX staff to Nomura, according to market sources in London.
FX traders exercise caution
GLOBAL - Traders worldwide continue to avoid dealing with each other, despite co-ordinated efforts by global central banks to ease the turmoil in the financial market through rate cuts and fund injections.
Caplin Systems a star onboarder
LONDON - Caplin Systems, a London-based web technology vendor, has signed two major European banks to its multi-asset trading platform, Caplin Trader.
Japan traders dump short yen positions
TOKYO - Japanese retail foreign exchange margin traders abandoned $16 billion worth of short yen positions within days last week, in a scramble to limit losses from unwinding carry trades.
Colombia fruitful for Citi settlement
BOGOTA & NEW YORK - Citi's Colombia-based domestic settlement service began settling more than $1.3 billion in FX trades daily in September, representing in excess of 80% of the Colombian wholesale FX market.
Liquidity drought hits ruble options
MOSCOW - Trading volumes released on October 9 show the global lack of liquidity took a serious toll on Russian ruble futures and options trading on the Russian Trading System (RTS), Moscow's international securities and derivatives exchange in September.
RBS's Lintern joins Standard Chartered
LONDON - Standard Chartered has appointed Philippe Lintern as co-head of flow foreign exchange options trading, where he will work alongside Singapore-based Fidelis Oruche.
JSE trades first $20m options contract
JOHANNESBURG - The Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) has traded its first currency options contract with a notional value of $20 million.
JDFX gets smart with Kontrol
ZURICH - Foreign exchange trading company JDFX has capitalised on an increasing focus on risk management within financial markets by launching Kontrol, a system built to eliminate inefficiencies and dangers caused by calculating risk several times a day…