Trading
StanChart raids Lehman Bros for structured products team
LONDON & SINGAPORE - Standard Chartered has poached three senior managers from Lehman Brothers, to expand its Singapore-based global structured products trading operation.
RBS announces new GFI sales force
LONDON, SINGAPORE & GREENWICH, CONNECTICUT - The Royal Bank of Scotland has outlined its sales structure following the acquisition of ABN Amro at the end of last year.
Deutsche Bank continues ETN issues
NEW YORK - Deutsche Bank has launched four commodity-linked exchange traded notes (ETNs), in response to growing demand from retail and institutional investors for exposure to the commodity markets.
Forex expansion continues at Citi
NEW YORK - Citi's foreign exchange business is seeing yet more changes, with new roles and an appointment in sales.
Global managers negative on sterling
LONDON - Despite experiencing its largest devaluation in 16 years, sterling is still overvalued, according to respondents to a Merrill Lynch global fund manager survey.
There will be blood
David Woo, head of global foreign exchange strategy at Barclays Capital in London, notes the movers and shakers among the G-10 currencies
CFTC fines firm $260,000 for lack of capital
WASHINGTON & VIRGINIA - The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has ordered a US retail foreign exchange trading company to pay $260,000 to settle charges relating to undercapitalisation.
Record FX returns no compensation for continuing subprime losses
BOSTON & NEW YORK - Record foreign exchange revenues have proved no match for the credit crisis, with billion-dollar writedowns causing two major banks to report big first-quarter losses in their fixed-income divisions this week.
BNP looks to the long term
LONDON & PARIS - BNP Paribas has restructured its Paris-based central bank and official institutions foreign exchange sales desk by bringing in a new co-head responsible for long-term interest rate product sales.
Banks vow to improve transparency
WASHINGTON, DC & FRANKFURT - The Institute of International Finance (IIF), a banking industry trade group, has promised to improve transparency over risk exposure and executive pay in the wake of the credit crisis.
Fair-value strategies pay off in March
LONDON - Currency managers running value strategies were likely to have the best returns in March, according to strategy research by ABN Amro.
SuperD offers exit pricing
LONDON - Market turmoil and increased regulation has prompted data and software vendor SuperDerivatives to add liquidation, or exit, pricing to its portfolio revaluation services.
Merrill's fundamental edge tops rankings
Fundamentally driven expectations of euro outperformance from Merrill Lynch edged out CIBC World Markets' technical view to take first place in the one-month rankings this week.
How misaligned is USD?
Pete Luxton, global economic adviser at Informa Global Markets in London, assesses USD's deviation from purchasing power parity and how it affects the G-10 currencies
BarCap aims to capture FX volatility
LONDON - Barclays Capital has launched three foreign exchange volatility indexes, the BetaVol, Smart BetaVol and AlphaVol. The indexes, which are designed to provide portfolio diversification and event hedge protection against sudden market downturns,…
Streambase targets Tier II with forex aggregator
LEXINGTON, MA - Technology vendor Streambase is targeting Tier II banks seeking to enter the algorithmic trading arena with a new foreign exchange aggregation product.
Forex options trading surges during turbulent month
CHICAGO & NEW YORK - Foreign exchange options trading surged on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), setting multiple forex trading records during a volatile March.
CFTC wary of Fed's merger proposal
WASHINGTON, DC - The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has urged US Treasury to proceed with caution over its recommendation to merge the US futures regulator and its securities market counterpart, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Watching the market in 3D
Chip Lowry, senior managing director of Currenex, and John Vause, managing director of State Street's Global Link business for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, evaluate the evolution of the FX market's structure
Forex bonuses intact
LONDON - Foreign exchange and rates staff avoided the sharp falls in salary and bonus packages suffered by peers in debt and credit last year, according to research by London-based recruitment company Napier Scott released last week.
India's Centurion Bank signs up to SuperD
LONDON & MUMBAI - Centurion Bank of Punjab (CBP) has gone live with SuperDerivatives' SD-Banks multi-asset derivatives portfolio management system and the SD-IR interest rates pricing and analytics module.
Citi targets EM settlement
NEW YORK & BOGOTA - Citi's domestic settlement service is set to gain a foothold in emerging markets where CLS is currently not active.
Trading records fall during turbulent month
NEW YORK & LONDON - Records tumbled on foreign exchange trading platforms last month, with EBS and Currenex reporting record trading volumes for the month and FXall a record quarter.
India reacts to rise in FX derivatives losses
MUMBAI - Indian accounting regulators have brought forward the deadline for complaince with disclosure requirements related to foreign exchange derivatives, amid rising losses linked to complex hedges by small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).