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Dubai, Bahrain and Qatar are vying to be the Gulf’s financial hub and the battle is by no means over, with each centre adopting a very different approach.

SPA ETFs is looking into its first international exchange-traded funds. The firm, which has offices in New York and London, offers six ETFs that invest only in U.S. stocks but is considering launches of at least one offering that invests in European companies and at least one offering that invests in Asian companies sometime next year. Neil Michael, head of quantitative strategies, said European clients demand European funds to gain access to stocks on their continent. An Asian fund makes sense, he added, because SPA wants to offer a line of ETFs that is broad enough for advisors to build entire portfolios out of, and a diverse portfolio should have exposure to the growing Asian economies.

Americas Banking Atlas

Saxo Bank has lured Stuart Rice from City Index, where he spent a long time successfully building the company’s image. He will be Saxo’s regional marketing manager located in London.

Rumours persist that all is not well at CMC Markets.

Gossip that Tulletts and GFI are about to merge is once again doing the rounds

Readers who don’t like cycling will probably be pleased that the Tour de France is over.

Natixis Capital Markets has launched an FX operation in the US, and has initially hired a team of 12 sales professionals to run it.

UK-listed currency asset manager Record has appointed James Wood-Collins to the newly created role of client team director. Wood-Collins was previously managing director in the financial institutions group within JPMorgan Cazenove’s corporate finance department, where he advised Record on its IPO on the London Stock Exchange in November 2007. He is due to start at Record on August 4 and report to client-team head Leslie Hill.

FXall has appointed two electronic trading heavyweights to its board. The first is Jerry Putnam, who is at present a senior adviser to NYSE Euronext. Putnam founded and led Archipelago, and so played a huge role in moving the US equity markets out of the pits where they seemed until recently happy to reside and on to electronic trading screens. The second new appointment is Eddie Wen, who is global head of FX e-commerce at JPMorgan. Previously, Wen was the head of quantitative and algorithmic trading strategies at Goldman Sachs.

It would be wrong to say that there is nothing going on in FX, because there is far more to the market than what is taking place in the majors. But looking from the outside, as I do, at EUR/USD, cable and USD/JPY, I can only feel a strong sense of déjà-vu.

Release this week of FX turnover data by a number of central banks, including the Bank of England, Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Bank of Japan, at first suggests that the market continues to boom. The data is broadly comparable to the figures released every three years by the Bank for International Settlements, although it is collected at the trading desk rather than the sales desk.