News
China bans pricing in offshore NDF market
BEIJING – Chinese officials last week banned local banks from quoting prices in the offshore non-deliverable forwards (NDF) market in an effort to boost trading onshore, said analysts.
RBS veteran McHugh retires
LONDON – Cian McHugh, global head of FX services, last week retired from the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) in the latest in a series of senior departures.
GFT adds seven new currency pairs; range now totals 64
ADA, MICHIGAN – Global Forex Trading (GFT) last week announced the addition of seven new currency pairs to its list of tradable currencies.
China and Indonesia amend bilateral swap
BEIJING & JAKARTA – The People's Bank of China (PBoC) and Bank Indonesia (BI) have raised the value of their bilateral swap agreement (BSA) under the Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI) to $4 billion.
Reuters attributes Q3 results to growth in algorithmic trading
LONDON – Growth in algorithmic trading and strong FX market activity has influenced Reuters' higher than expected third quarter profit reports.
WestLB expands its commodities desk
Düsseldorf – WestLB is establishing a new multi-product commodities trading desk in Düsseldorf that will cater to domestic and global clients.
Sharia forex hedges take off
KUALA LUMPUR & DUBAI – The market for sharia-compliant forex hedges continues to grow, with Citigroup structuring the first cross-border sharia-compliant cross-currency profit rate swap worth $230 million.
Banca Aletti takes Risque approach
PARIS – Banca Aletti is going live with technology vendor Sophis' Risque front- to back-office system for its FX derivatives business.
The Singapore solution
The FX Week Asia conference held in Singapore last Tuesday attracted some of the industry's leading practitioners to examine the diverse challenges facing the market today. Here, we bring you some of the news from the event
FXMarketSpace ups ante
LONDON – Twenty banks have committed to becoming clearing prime brokers on the FXMarketSpace platform, a senior official at the CME/Reuters venture told FX Week .
Big banks prepare for retail FX push
SINGAPORE – Major banks are about to enter the online retail FX trading market-place "with a vengeance", said Brian Maccaba, chairman of FX dealing platform vendor Cognotec.
Keep it simple, says e-FX trading panel at conference
SINGAPORE – 'Bells and whistles' are an annoying distraction on e-FX platforms according to Christopher Brandon, managing director of London-based $200 million hedge fund Rhicon Currency Management.
Merrill Lynch bucks downward Q3 trend
NEW YORK & CHARLOTTE, N CAROLINA – JP Morgan and Wachovia saw falls in earnings from divisions encompassing FX in the third quarter of this year, while Merrill Lynch bucked the trend with profits up more than a quarter.
Flextrade to launch block trading platform
NEW YORK – Trading technology vendor Flextrade plans to launch the first block FX trading platform for the sell-side and buy-side next month, FX Week has learned.
Regulator forces COESfx to close to new clients
PLAINVIEW, NEW YORK – COESfx, a US-based retail foreign exchange platform, was forced to close to new customers earlier this month after a regulator found that its books did not balance.
HUF makes a comeback
BUDAPEST – The Hungarian forint surged last week following positive market sentiment to a government announcement last Monday (October 9).
Return to volatility brings relief for prop traders
GLOBAL – Last week saw the first significant market volatility for nearly two months as euro/dollar saw its first move out of a 1.26–1.28 trading range for over 50 days.
TradingScreen upgrades its software to give users new hedging capabilities
NEW YORK – Forex technology vendor TradingScreen has introduced FX trading capabilities designed to give users the ability to hedge secondary forex exposure generated by trading in other asset classes.
Vwd expands Tullett package
FRANKFURT – German data vendor vwd has expanded its Data Manager Treasury end-of-day FX and money markets data package with extra information from Tullett Prebon Information, the data arm of broker Collins Stewart Tullett.
BoNY relaunches forex website
NEW YORK – Bank of New York (BoNY) has relaunched its FX website with an upgraded version of the interactive Portfolio Flow Monitor (iPFM), the bank's capital flow product.
SwapsWire volumes nearly double
Electronic confirmation service SwapsWire nearly doubled volumes since February, last month.
Currenex launches catalyst program
NEW YORK – Trading technology vendor Currenex has launched a testing program for third-party software vendors to aid in the development of new products.