Foreign exchange
StanChart moves Africa FX team to Dubai hub
LONDON & DUBAI - Standard Chartered is moving its offshore African foreign exchange trading desk from London to Dubai, as it continues to build operations in the Middle East.
Bear Stearns gets the axe
LONDON AND NEW YORK - JP Morgan has taken a hatchet to Bear Stearns' foreign exchange business in London and New York, with 62 of 73 positions set to be put on notice, according to a senior Bear Stearns official.
The new wave
Paul Caplin, chief executive at Caplin Systems in London, discusses the application of Web 2.0 for foreign exchange trading
FXCM posts $62m
FXCM posted $62.12 million in revenues and a net quarterly EBITA of $25 million in first-quarter results ending March 31.
Quick rolls out new Icap data
TOKYO - Japanese financial information vendor Quick, the country's dominant domestic provider, is adding a suite of new currency datasets and services from interdealer broker Icap to its products.
FX has record Q1 at writedown-hit UBS
ZURICH & LONDON - High volatility drove a record quarter for UBS's foreign exchange business, but could only partially offset the effects of $19 billion-worth of US mortgage- and structured credit-related losses in its fixed-income, currencies and…
SEC cracks down on Ponzi scheme
WASHINGTON, DC - The Securities and Exchange Commission is cracking down on an alleged $27.9 million Ponzi scheme involving foreign exchange trading firm Gold-Quest International (GQI).
CBA reshuffles forex
SYDNEY - The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) has made two key hires for its foreign exchange trading team in Sydney and has restructured its global sales group.
Czech forex volumes double in six months
PRAGUE - The credit crisis led to a sharp rise in Czech koruna forwards and foreign exchange swaps volumes in April, according to statistics released last week.
Saxo in $18.8m acquisition
SYDNEY - Saxo Bank is expanding its footprint in the Asia-Pacific region, with plans to acquire a 35% stake in Sydney-based broker Tricom.
UniCredit hires Craven to drive Asia expansion
HONG KONG - UniCredit has hired Joe Craven to head the bank's fixed-income, currencies and commodities (FICC) sales and trading business in Asia.
Credit Suisse names global head of forex
NEW YORK - Credit Suisse has made Steve Yanez head of its global foreign exchange business in New York as of May 1.
Bawag Bank licenses GFI's Fenics FX
PRAGUE - The Czech Republic's Bawag Bank has taken a three-year licence for pricing and risk management software Fenics FX, to price foreign exchange.
Exchange-traded forex volumes up 41% in April
CHICAGO & NEW YORK - CME Group foreign exchange volume averaged 613,000 contracts a day for the month of April, up 41% on the same month last year. Average daily volumes for FX contracts in the three-month period ending April were also the highest…
New governor overhauls South Korea's FSS
SEOUL - Kim Jong Chang, the new governor of South Korea's Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), has initiated a shake-up of the financial regulator aimed at cutting bureaucracy, streamlining operations and attracting talent from the private sector.
Credit Suisse and Currenex switch on to Fidessa
LONDON - Buy-side technology provider Fidessa LatentZero is set to add interfaces to Credit Suisse, Currenex and Dublin-based foreign exchange broker Baxter-FX to its Minerva OEMS (order and execution management system) by the third quarter.
RBI releases details of rupee futures plans
MUMBAI - The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has recommended a single dollar-rupee contract of $1,000 for the introduction of exchange-traded futures into the country.
Systematic managers profit from volatile March
STAMFORD, CT - Rules-based currency managers outperformed their discretionary peers in March, amid volatility at levels not seen since the bailout of hedge fund Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) in 1998.
BarCap offers retail white-label service
LONDON - Barclays Capital is breaking into the mass and private wealth management markets for foreign exchange with the launch of a white-label margin FX trading service called Barx White Label for Private Investors.
Tide of writedowns rolls on for banks
NEW YORK, LONDON & ZURICH - Foreign exchange results continue to provide much-needed good news for investment banks, as major players announced a fresh wave of billion-dollar credit-related writedowns last week.
Icap and Korea Money Broker form alliance
LONDON & SEOUL - Icap and Korea Money Brokerage Corp, announced on April 24 that they have formed a strategic alliance to further develop electronic spot foreign exchange trading in Korea.
ABN trio joins the PrivateBank-Chicago
CHICAGO - Three former ABN Amro/LaSalle senior forex managers have resurfaced at the PrivateBank-Chicago (PBC), a unit of PrivateBancorp, to head the company's newly established capital markets business.
CFTC slams Alaron Trading
CHICAGO - Chicago-based futures trading company Alaron Trading is due to pay $299,000 in penalties by today (April 28) for failing to supervise employees.