News
Icap spot forex surges 60% after Lehman Brothers collapses
LONDON - Spot foreign exchange volumes at Icap skyrocketed by more than 60% on September 15 and 16, days after the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
Another FX trader fined
STOCKHOLM - Sweden's financial regulator has imposed a maximum penalty on Forex Bank for insufficient money laundering controls, signalling a global clampdown by regulators on risk management failings at retail foreign exchange institutions.
OMS vendors tackle multi-asset risk
LONDON - Order management system (OMS) vendors are enhancing their multi-asset pre-trade analytics to address the growing trend among financial institutions of broadening the asset classes and geographies in which they trade.
Iosco turns spotlight on commodities
WASHINGTON, DC - The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the UK Financial Services Authority (FSA) are to lead an international regulators' group overseeing the commodity markets.
Sentimental value
Naomi Fink, Japan strategist in global markets sales and trading at the Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ in Tokyo, assesses the slump in corporate sentiment in Japan, and what this bodes for the country's economic growth
Currency strategies add value in September
LONDON - Currency managers employing value strategies are the most likely to have been rewarded by strong profits over the past 12 months, according to research by the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).
Australia adjusts currency basket
SYDNEY - The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has rebalanced its trade-weighted basket of currencies, allocating the Chinese renminbi a greater weighting than yen for the first time.
ETP boom fuels concern over counterparty risk
GLOBAL - Issuance of currency-linked exchange-traded products (ETPs) has soared in the past year, but concerns are emerging over the counterparty risks inherent in these products.
Global dealers slash jobs
LONDON - Lehman Brothers' filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on September 15 has hit its employees hard, with further redundancies announced earlier this week.
StanChart hires in India
MUMBAI & LONDON - Standard Chartered has named Hemant Mishr head of global markets, India, where he will lead a team of almost 100 specialists in products including foreign exchange, fixed income, commodities and derivatives.
CFTC fines FX fraudsters $24m
WASHINGTON, DC - The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has obtained orders for five traders to pay $11.7 million in restitution and disgorgement, and $12.25 million in civil monetary penalties for selling and soliciting illegal foreign exchange…
Gold rush on Lehman's European FX team
LONDON - Dealers are willing to pay top dollar for Lehman Brothers' foreign exchange team in Europe, following the failure of administrator PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to agree a sale of the defunct bank's European fixed-income unit last week.
GFT deepens footprint in London
LONDON - GFT is expanding its London presence, with two hires in the city.
New Fortex FX v5 cuts trade times
REDWOOD SHORES, CALIFORNIA - Multi-asset trading platform vendor Fortex has released its fifth version of Fortex FX, which cuts average roundtrip trade times to five milliseconds from 40 while supporting 500 trades per second.
Canada's Fincad offers beta value
SURREY, CANADA - Software vendor Fincad will begin offering a free beta version of its product valuation tool, Fair Value Insight, in mid-October with hopes to fine-tune the product based on market feedback.
Citi's Alpha trumps Beta
LONDON - Citi's Alpha 1 foreign exchange investable index is outrunning its Beta 1 counterpart, as the market looks at more sophisticated investment strategies to mitigate risk amid heightened volatility.
Dealers report liquidity still 'patchy'
LONDON & HONG KONG - Global foreign exchange markets continued to suffer from lapses in liquidity in another week plagued by turmoil in the financial markets.
RBS launches new forex index
LONDON - RBS launched FX Radar Index, an automated index linked to 20 emerging market currencies, on October 1.
Dresdner heads take top jobs at merged bank
LONDON - Commerzbank has reportedly named Dresdner Kleinwort's Eddie Listorti as head of fixed income and Stefan Gütter as head of sales, in a crucial step in the formation of the newly merged German dealer.
US meltdown spurs central clearer debate
LONDON & NEW YORK - The fallout from the collapse of Lehman Brothers and implosion of insurance company AIG has spurred renewed debate over the central-counterparty model for spot foreign exchange, as concerns over counterparty risk take centre stage.
ODL acquires Fixi's clients
LONDON - ODL Securities has acquired the full client list of London-based investment house Fixi, a senior official at ODL has told FX Week .
LatAm head leaves RBS
NEW YORK - Alistair Boyd, head of Latin American local markets at the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) in New York, has left the bank, according to sources close to the matter.