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December 2012/January 2013 / 4 January 2013 / Steve Shaw, Editor, FX-MM
After an early career at PA Consulting Group, where he specialised in Financial IT systems, Higgins did an MBA in Finance at Cass Business School and then worked in the UK IT finance sector for a number of years. Four years ago he established Gold-i, which has quickly grown from a start-up business into a global market leader.
I asked Higgins about the company’s mission: “When I used to be employed in the real world, I saw a complete lack of technology expertise that you could buy in to do with retail trading. There are a lot of companies out there with business expertise in retail trading and I knew there would be considerable demand for a specialist technical partner to provide them with customisable solutions and run them properly. Our mission, therefore, is to be the world leader in trading systems integration. If you mention our name in any retail trading area in the world, people know us, so I believe we’re achieving that mission quite well.” (more…)
November 2012 / 5 November 2012 / Steve Shaw, Editor, FX-MM
Rémy Dubois, EVP and Managing Director EMEA at Kyriba, talks to FX-MM’s Editor Steve Shaw.
Rémy Dubois is based at Kyriba’s European Operations Centre in Paris, from where he oversees the firm’s European commercial team and operations. He brings over 20 years of management and leadership experience to his role. Before joining Kyriba he spent four years leading SAP’s Large Enterprise business in France. He has also held various international sales and general management roles at leading enterprises and smaller high-growth companies, inc – luding webMethods and Opsware. At Opsware, he successfully led the Large European Operations group as vice president of sales for EMEA.
2012 – a breakthrough year
Kyriba was established in 2000 and specialise in next generation treasury solutions in the cloud. They are a firm with a growing reputation in this space and now serve over 700 clients across the globe. (more…)
October 2012 / 5 October 2012 / Steve Shaw, Editor, FX-MM
Derek Sammann has worked in the global FX market for over 20 years and is responsible for leading the develop – ment, execution and manage ment of CME Group’s global FX and interest rate product lines. He joined CME Group in 2006, having previously worked at Calyon in London and at Banque Indosuez in Paris. He started his career as an FX Options Floor Trader for Cooper, Neff & Associates in Chicago. CME Group recently announced that they have applied to the FSA to create a new London-based derivatives exchange, which they hope to launch in mid-2013. Sammann talks to FX-MM’s Editor, Steve Shaw, about this initiative and how market and regulatory developments are driving CME Group’s ambitious business development plans outside the U.S.
CME Group’s profile outside the U.S. has certainly been growing in recent years and the recent announcement about a new derivatives exchange in London – CME Europe Ltd. – serves to underscore this. Sammann says that CME is targeting a Q2 2013 launch for the new exchange: “We hope to wrap up our FSA application in the coming weeks and now that we’ve made the announcement we can have a more public dialogue. We anticipate that it will take roughly six months for the FSA approval process, so are nailing down all the specifics in a parallel path to provide enough lead-time for our customers and our partners to be prepared for our anticipated launch in Q2 2013.” (more…)
July / August 2012 / 13 July 2012 / Steve Shaw, Editor, FX-MM
Charalambos Psimolophitis has been in the financial sector since 2000. His industry experience spans finance, banking sector research, portfolio management, investment product structuring and investment strategy. In 2009 he was hired by FxPro as their Director of Finance and after a successful period in this role was subsequently appointed CEO of the company. FxPro have recently announced a significant change in their business model. Psimolophitis talks to FX-MM’s Editor, Steve Shaw, about this and also airs his views on some of the broader changes which are underway in the retail FX brokerage industry.
Investing for the future
At the end of June FxPro announced a major development in their global business – they will henceforth be operating under the agency model. This of course has implications for the company’s “mission”. Psimolophitis explains that FxPro’s mission up until now was all about becoming the market’s preferred FX broker, but it has recently changed because the market itself is evolving and the company has identified new opportunities: “In particular we see a new opportunity in providing a range of services to smaller brokers. We will continue to invest in our people and in new technology in order to be the preferred choice for our clients and for new FX traders. We aspire to be the leading provider of eFX solutions, thereby enabling our customers to trade their way to success. (more…)
June 2012 / 12 June 2012 / Steve Shaw, Editor, FX-MM
Martin Knott has worked in international cash management and trade finance at global banks for over 20 years. Prior to joining Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s (BofA Merrill) London-based team in 2010, he worked at Barclays, RBS and ABN AMRO. At ABN he was responsible for GTS in Central and Eastern Europe and Africa working in Amsterdam and Moscow, so he has considerable experience of trade flows in EMEA. In a wide-ranging interview FX-MM’s Editor, Steve Shaw, asked Knott for his views on the events and market developments which are continuing to shape the trade finance industry throughout the region.
2011 Business Highlights
In EMEA, BofA Merrill has been building their trade capability both in terms of their people and their platform. The business recorded double-digit growth in 2011. I asked Knott to take us through the highlights: “2011 was another really good year for the organisation in terms of the trade business, with strong growth across all markets. Our efforts have been recog – nised through a number of industry awards. (more…)
May 2012 / 8 May 2012 / Steve Shaw, Editor, FX-MM
FXall is a respected name in the institutional FX market not only as a platform provider but also as a powerful advocate for greater efficiency in the way that trades are formed. The company recently completed a successful IPO and look to the future with considerable optimism. Phil Weisberg has been at the helm since FXall’s inception in 2000. Steve Shaw talks to him about the company’s recent achievements and seeks his views on market and regulatory trends, developments in the institutional FX trading space and future growth opportunities.
2011 Business Highlights
I started by asking Weisberg about FXall’s “mission” and the company’s key business highlights in 2011: “we’re the leading institutional platform for foreign exchange and our mission is quite simple, we want to make sure that we’re a strategic partner to the institutional FX community and that they can trust us in helping them solve some of their most important execution needs. The way that we’re able to maintain their trust and their confidence is by always conducting ourselves in a manner that’s appropriate to the responsibilities that we’ve been given. (more…)
April 2012 / 10 April 2012 / Steve Shaw, Editor, FX-MM
Philippe Chambadal led the acquisition of SmartStream in 2007. As its CEO, he has transformed the company into a highly respected post-trade solutions provider and trusted strategic partner for a large number of banks, broker-dealers and asset managers. Steve Shaw talks to him about the company’s recent achievements, latest trends and developments in the industry and about growth opportunities for the company.
While market conditions in the financial sector have been challenging since 2008, SmartStream have achieved consistent growth over the last four years. With offices in 18 countries and partnerships in many more, SmartStream are steadily expanding. They provide real-time Transaction Lifecycle Management (TLM) solutions to over 1,500 clients, and more than three-quarters of the world’s top 100 banks use their services. I started by asking Chambadal about SmartStream’s progress in 2011.
“It was both a profitable year and a busy one for us as we launched a number of new solutions. Our Transaction Fees Invoice Management (TFIM) solution launched and we expanded our reference data utility with both large sell side and hedge fund clients, who are using us to manage ETDs, index components and ETFs. (more…)
February 2012 / 3 February 2012 / Steve Shaw, Editor, FX-MM
Although not a household name in Europe, the Henyep Group is very well known in both Asia and the Middle East and has been operating in the financial services industry for over 35 years. Steve Shaw talks to Marios Chailis, Henyep’s Group Marketing Director, about their business, the operating environment and regulatory outlook in the markets in which they operate.
Marios Chailis, a Cypriot, is an engaging fellow with strong opinions on many things which are happening in the markets and the forex industry in general. Chailis, a 12 year internet marketing veteran, specializing in e-commerce and online marketing, was hired by Henyep five years ago to help the group develop their online marketing and retail client acquisition thrust. Prior to joining Henyep he had been working as the marketing manager at Easy Forex for several years, where he helped create the online marketing function and structure the overall marketing strategy. He has also worked in other fast paced industries revolving around the internet and e-commerce, spending several years with notable companies such as Playtech and Empire Online.
Henyep has its roots in Asia and has been around for a long time. The name is Chinese and literally means “Prosperity Forever”. Henyep Development Holdings was founded in Hong Kong back in the mid 1970s as a commodities trading business, making it one of the oldest financial services companies in Hong Kong. (more…)
December 2011 / January 2012 / 5 January 2012 / Frances Maguire talks to Oren Cohanoff about his new role as Head of Corporate Solutions to lead the growth of SuperDerivative’s corporate risk management system, CorporeX.
SuperDerivatives is setting about transforming the world of derivatives by introducing transparency to all major traded derivative classes and is rapidly proving to be a benchmark for independent derivatives pricing, front office productivity tools and revaluation. Oren Cohanoff has come over the fence, morphing from user to preacher. He talks to Frances Maguire about his new role as Head of Corporate Solutions to lead the growth of the company’s corporate risk management system, CorporeX.
Oren Cohanoff joins SuperDerivatives (SD) from Teva, the world’s largest generic pharmaceutical corporation, where he was Deputy Treasurer and Global Head of Financial Risk Management responsible for hedging policy, execution and compliance in the treasury group for all the subsidiaries. In his eight years at Teva he relied on SuperDerivatives’ multi asset front office systems for its accurate pricing and position management in addition to using CorporeX itself after the product was launched. Prior to joining Teva, Cohanoff was a trader for vanilla and exotic derivatives in FX and rates for Bank Leumi. (more…)
November 2011 / 9 November 2011 / Frances Maguire, Columnist, FX-MM
Jiro Okochi co-founded Reval in 1999 to bring an internet technology solution to the underserved market of corporate derivative end-users – treasury organisations that use these instruments to hedge business risk, and he has campaigned on their behalf ever since. Frances Maguire talks to him about the emerging regulatory environment.
Jiro Okochi, CEO and co-founder of Reval, a global provider of a Software-as-a- Service solution for enterprise treasury and risk management, is not a pessimistic man, in fact he is quite a visionary, but he does believe that the financial services industry is in for a bit of a shock when the full ramifications of the legislative changes start to take effect. And while everyone expects the cost of OTC products to go up, he says, the surprise will be by just how much they will increase in cost. The entire derivatives market will be restructured, and any corporates operating under the assumption that they are largely not impacted by the pending reforms will be in for a big surprise. (more…)
October 2011 / 11 October 2011 /
Well-established in the retail market, Alpari entered the institutional market last year by bringing a new pool of liquidity with the launch of QuantumFX. Mark Davison, Global Head of Institutional Sales at Alpari (UK), who oversaw the launch, talks to Frances Maguire about the importance of being different.
The Alpari companies already make up one of the largest global foreign exchange retail brokers, with more than 170,000 active accounts and hitting a new record monthly trading volume of $210 billion in May, representing a 31% growth in just six months.
Having already built up a strong retail brokerage brand, in 2010 Alpari entered the institutional business, and did so with a twist, launching a state-of-the-art trading platform to provide corporates, hedge funds, banks and high frequency trading institutions globally with access to a diverse and deep liquidity pool via a central clearing counter-party model with multiple execution mechanisms. (more…)
September 2011 / 13 September 2011 / Matt Tuck, Managing Director, Global Head of Financial Institutions (FI), Barclays Corporate
Matt Tuck joined Barclays Corporate (the corporate banking arm of Barclays Bank PLC) in January as Managing Director, Global Head of Financial Institutions (FI). He talks to Frances Maguire about his new role in implementing the next phase of growth in the bank’s FI business and what he believes are some of the main issues facing financial institutions today.
Financial institutions continue to operate against a backdrop of substantial change. Indeed the events of the past two months have done nothing but reinforce this notion. As recently as August, we saw the financial markets once again rocked by a renewed period of turbulence and uncertainty feeding from the ongoing fiscal and sovereign debt challenges in the Eurozone; the difficulties surrounding the raising of the US debt ceiling; and a stream of weak economic data which has resurfaced fears of a second global slowdown. Against this ever-changing landscape, Matt Tuck, Managing Director, Global Head of Financial Institutions (FI), at Barclays Corporate believes that institutions need to stay close to their clients and continue to focus on understanding the global interdependencies affecting their business and that of their clients, alongside developing a clear understanding of the local markets in which they operate, to ensure they adapt their strategies accordingly. (more…)
August 2011 / 9 August 2011 / Dean Peters-Wright, Columnist, FX-MM
FX-MM talks to Saxo Bank CEO, Torben Kaaber, about his new role in Saxo Bank and the plans for the near future.
Since inception in 1992, Saxo Bank has gone from strength to strength displaying vast amounts of foresight and staggering performance over the years. The company’s net profit trebled from 2009 to 2010 and this year looks to be another of strong performance in spite of the tough market conditions for the bank. Talking to Torben Kaarber, CEO at Saxo Bank UK , it is easy to understand how Saxo Bank has avoided the pitfalls that other banks have witnessed and how it has sustained its performance and continued to grow substantially in both the institutional and retail trading markets. Torben Kaarber has been with Saxo Bank since 1994 when the bank grew from just ten employees to 70. Today, it is now fast approaching 1,000. After a short spell heading an electrical trading company, he re-joined Saxo Bank in 2004 as the Global Head of Institutional Business overseeing the bank’s offices around the world. (more…)
June/July 2011 / 24 June 2011 / George Xydas, Director of International Operations, FxPro
A great deal can change in the space of a year, especially in the world of FxPro it seems. Since FX-MM caught up with George Xydas, Director of International Operations at FxPro in June 2010, the company has gone from strength to strength with the addition of new instruments, new offices and new sponsorship deals, not to mention the launch of its ECN platform. Eleanor Hill, Editor, FX-MM investigates.
Leafing through the résumé of milestones that FxPro has achieved since its launch in 2006, I can’t help but wonder how the company’s competitors sleep at night. Each and every year, the FX and CFD broker has continued to build on the previous twelve months’ success and 2011 certainly looks set to be no different, with plans including the launch of institutional services. (more…)
May 2011 / 19 May 2011 / Eleanor Hill, Editor, FX-MM
Chris Bozek, Global Trade and Supply Chain Product Head and Maureen Sullivan, North American Trade Sales Head, Global Trade & Supply Chain Solutions, Bank of America Merrill Lynch talk to Eleanor Hill, Editor, FX-MM about the inexorable rise of supply chain financing programmes as well as the lessons learned by buyers and suppliers from the recent economic turmoil. (more…)
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