prime brokerage
Cobalt, the foreign exchange infrastructure based on shared ledger technology, is now live with Deutsche Bank, XTX Markets and Saxo Bank. Darren Coote, CEO of Cobalt, says, “Having the backing of these three different FX players, one an established bank that has been innovating for over 20 years, a new breed of electronic market-maker and […]
Galen Stops charts the ups and downs of FX prime brokerage over the past 20 years and looks at how this segment of the market might be ripe for innovation going forward. Ask anyone who has been around in the FX market for the past 20 years to list the key developments that have shaped […]
A notable figure in this year’s Bank for International Settlements (BIS) survey of FX turnover highlights the increasingly important role of firms like retail aggregators in the FX market. While in the 2016 survey the “Other” category of the Other Financial Institutions segment of the report (this is largely the retail aggregator/prime-of-prime sector) was responsible […]
It’s been a busy 20 years since Profit & Loss launched. Colin Lambert and Galen Stops have picked out 20 key events or trends during that time and asked senior industry figures for their perspective on them – here’s numbers 20-16. 20. A New Currency for a New Era While the big event of 1999 […]
After upsetting non-bank market makers and then banks in recent weeks, Colin Lambert takes a shot at the buy side in this week’s In the FICC of It podcast when Galen Stops asks him, “will the buy side adopt the FX Global Code?” Our two podcasters discuss next year’s review of the Code as Stops […]
The news this week that Citi served a 90-day notice to the largest non-bank market making firms in FX – including Jump Trading, XTX Markets, Virtu Financial, HC Technologies and, at an earlier point in time, GTS – that it is no longer willing to offer them FX prime brokerage (PB) services, certainly got tongues […]
P&L Report Card This remains a strange area in many ways because while we constantly hear about clients being told they are not big enough for the prime broker to retain them, and of PBs cutting the client tail, just about every PB out there continues to affirm their commitment to building the business! Clearly […]
New regulations will increase the cost of FX prime brokerage (FXPBs) services and all market participants – including executing brokers (EBs) – will have to share these costs, says a new report from Citi.The report, Collateral Damage? How Uncleared Margin Rules Will Revolutionise the FXPB Business Model, argues that FXPB is entering a “new market paradigm” driven by upcoming regulatory requirements that will increase both the value proposition and the cost of the services that they provide.The Uncleared Margin Rules (UMR) alluded to in the title of the report require market participants to post and segregate initial margin (IM) for derivatives transactions, including FX forwards, swaps and options, that are traded bilaterally.
Capitolis has announced that Citi and HSBC are the first FX prime brokers to go live on its novation service.The two banks were live in December 2018 and contributed to bringing the service to market alongside Capitolis. The service, called Capitolis Novation, is a technology platform that automates manual workflows in both FX prime broking and bilateral trading, working collaboratively to provide capital efficiencies for the FX market. The service aims to help reduce overall balance sheet notional and risk exposures that banks currently employ to meet their regulatory capital requirements.
Louisa Kwok has joined State Street Global Link in London as product manager in its trade services business. Confirming her appointment, a spokesperson for the bank says she reports to Kate Lowe, global head of trade services.
Kwok joins after a one year stint at JP Morgan, where she was executive director, product delivery, for the bank’s investment middle office services unit in its Custody & Fund Services business. This was her second term at the bank, having worked there from 2002 to 2009.
