Hutton Causes A Stir At FX Week/Infinity Best Banks In FX Awards

LONDON--Citibank may have dominated the FX Week/Infinity Best Banks in FX awards last week by winning nine categories, but it was Will Hutton, editor of the Observer newspaper, who stole the show this year.

In a provocative after-dinner speech at the prize-giving ceremony at Glaziers' Hall in London last Thursday, Hutton argued that the FX market was gradually developing into a tri-polar system between the yen, the euro and the dollar, and foresaw the gradual emergence of a global regulatory authority.

He also bore witness to the revolutionary impact of technology on the financial markets, and the way in which this is transforming the FX industry and threatening the livelihoods of many dealers and brokers in the City of London and around the world.

His speech, made in front of some 130 senior FX market participants, also touched on the growth of dual income families in the US and Britain, and how this has been one of the driving factors in the economic expansion of the last decade in the UK and the US.

In a lively session at the end of his speech, he also fielded questions from the floor from dealers and brokers who disagreed with his vision of the future of the market.

In another surprise for many in the audience, Mark Johnson, Deutsche Bank's head of FX in Frankfurt, made an acceptance speech in German when he picked up the award for best bank in the centre.

The speech was made in front of an overwhelmingly English-speaking audience, and was part of a bet with Deutsche's global head of trading Dan Almeida. Johnson says that he has donated £750 to leukaemia research as part of the arrangement.

The dinner was preceded by a discussion forum on the future of FX in the next millennium.

The debate was led by a panel consisting of Conor Dufficy, head of European FX at Bank of America, Rob Standing, head of European FX and interest rate management at Chase Manhattan Bank, Colin Alexander, head of FX at Infinity, a SunGard Company and Fraser Cowie, sales director at Liffe.

Among the subjects that were addressed were the impact of the introduction of the euro and the growth of e-commerce on the forex market, the Y2K bug and the recent allegations of collaboration between major FX providers to widen spreads in the market (see related story, this issue).

The awards ceremony itself took place during dinner, but before Hutton's speech, and was dominated by Citibank and Prebon Marshall Yamane, which took the lion's share of the banking and brokerage categories respectively.

Overseas delegates who had flown in specially for the event included Carmine Capobianco, head of foreign exchange at Prebon Marshall Yamane in the US, and Jamie Coleman, director of currency analysis for North America at Thomson Global Markets (TGM) in Boston.