EBS: Icap goes online

Inter-dealer broker Icap has confirmed that it is trialling and will soon launch an internet-based version of its EBS spot trading platform. EBS Global Access is scheduled for launch by the end of June and the company says it is intended to provide a cost-effective and easy means of accessing the foreign exchange market’s predominant spot liquidity pool. Icap says that all manually traded EBS products – spot FX, precious metals and non-deliverable forwards– will be available on EBS Global Access. Clients will not have to install any hardware and Icap says they will have the same access to the EBS liquidity pool as existing users. While latency is potentially an issue, Icap says that the benefits are reduced telecom costs and time to market. It is estimated that deployment of EBS Global Access will take less than a week.