Foreign exchange
China forms new department for forex
BEIJING – China’s central bank has created a new department focused on managing exchange rate reforms and monitoring cross-border short-term capital flows.
UBS suffers $4.3bn FICC losses in Q2
ZURICH – Revenues from the fixed-income, currencies and commodities (FICC) business at UBS collapsed in the second quarter of this year, generating Sfr4.72 billion ($4.33 billion) in losses.
New Chinese FX rules a paper tiger
BEIJING - Analysts are unfazed by revisions to foreign exchange regulations governing capital flows and policy on the renminbi exchange rate mechanism made by Chinese regulators last week.
RBS builds Asia-Pacific FX
SINGAPORE & HONG KONG - The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has boosted its Asia-Pacific franchise with senior staff from competing banks for newly created senior foreign exchange trading and structuring roles.
Hotspot expands footprint in Russia
IZHEVSK - Hotspot FX expanding its footprint in the Russian retail foreign exchange market by streaming liquidity to Izhevsk-based Izhcombank's margin forex trading platform.
Schneider Foreign Exchange sees revenues rise by 456%
LONDON - Schneider Foreign Exchange's revenues have surged 456% since the second quarter of 2007, the London-based commercial foreign exchange services provider has told FX Week .
TD Securities continues FX expansion
LONDON - TD Securities is continuing to expand its European FX franchise, with a senior hire from rival Canadian dealer RBC Capital Markets.
Merger could shake up e-FX options
NEW YORK - The potential merger of Tullett Prebon and GFI Group could boost competition for market share in the electronic forex options market, according to analysts.
FXCM abandons currency programmes
NEW YORK - FXCM has abandoned plans to begin trading two currency programmes that aimed to beat the performance of the DXY Index, due to a lack of interest from investors.
Dresdner bulks up trading
LONDON - Constantinos Constantinou is to rejoin Dresdner Kleinwort after decamping to its US competitor Merrill Lynch last year, the German dealer has confirmed with FX Week .
Europe's banks up in forex
LONDON - European banks had a bumper first half of the year in foreign exchange, which was driven by higher customer volumes.
Credit Suisse raids rivals to boost London sales
LONDON - Credit Suisse made a bid to strengthen its salesforce in London with three new hires from top-tier rivals Goldman Sachs and Barclays Capital.
StanChart reshuffles e-FX division in Singapore
SINGAPORE - Standard Chartered is restructuring its electronic foreign exchange business with the creation of a new global FX electronic pricing and trading division.
China's central bank launches forex payment system
BEIJING - China's central bank has launched a foreign exchange payment system to ease transfers between banks on behalf of corporates in the country.
New board at FXall
NEW YORK - Jerry Putnam and Eddie Wen have joined FXall's board of directors, replacing Martin Spurr and Henri Foch who did not run for re-election.
FX thrives in challenging times
FRANKFURT, MEXICO CITY & MONTREAL - International banks are claiming strong foreign exchange revenue gains against challenging overall market conditions in earnings released last week.
Travelex in UK shake-up
LONDON - Travelex is embarking on a restructure within its UK business, which is leading to a number of redundancies, market sources tell FX Week .
Icap adds 15 to Global Access
LONDON - Icap has added 15 customers to its web-based trading application, EBS Global Access, which enables web-based access to EBS Spot, in a bid to move into new markets.
Retail vs professional: a clash of values
An issue that seems to be emerging is the clash of values between the retail and professional markets in how they operate, specifically what happens when deals are done on off market prices.
Olsen Financial Tech opens tick database
ZURICH - Olsen Financial Technologies, a Zurich-based historical foreign exchange tick data vendor, has begun offering unlimited access to its database of foreign exchange tick data back to 1986 and equity index futures dating back to the mid-1990s for…
StanChart relaunches sharia platform
DUBAI - Standard Chartered has relaunched a sharia-compliant version of its online treasury (OLT) foreign exchange trading and hedging platform, after incorporating the version into its global brand for Islamic products, Standard Chartered Saadiq.