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Nobody is perfect. I was reminded of this basic fact of life this week by a senior figure at one of the leading multibank platforms.

In a move that looks similar to the action taken by the US National Futures Association, the Swiss Federal Banking Commission has sent out a reminder that an amendment to its Banking Ordinance came into force on April 1.

Barclays Capital has launched a family of investable FX volatility indices, which it claims is another first, although JPMorgan’s VXY and EM-VXY indices, launched in December 2006, are also investable.

No, not this wonderful column – surely it can’t get much better, but that wonderful lingua franca (I think) of the modern trading environment known as the Financial Information eXchange (FIX) Protocol.

A new report from Celent Communications, Evolution of the Interdealer Broker Industry: Smells Like e-Spirit, predicts that there is still plenty of room for expansion in terms of revenue and the amount of business that is transacted electronically. “IDBs are big – and growing,” the report begins, adding: “The industry reached $7 billion revenues in 2007. Heightened market activity due to the subprime crisis, interest rate and currency volatility, and the furious growth of derivatives in emerging markets such as China, India, Korea, and Latin America, will likely ensure an industry annual growth of around 15% over the next two years to reach $9.3 billion revenues in 2009.”

Todd Bickmeyer, who has had previous stints at Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, has resurfaced at UBS in Stamford, where he is on the FX sales desk covering institutional accounts.

JPMorgan has started to clarify what its management structure will be like following its takeover of Bear Stearns. Further details are likely to emerge in due course – with a global head of FX about to be announced. In the meantime, though, Matt Zames has been named as its head of global rates, FX and tax-exempt capital markets/municipals. I have no idea what the second part of his job entails.

ETF Securities’ first-quarter 2008 results show that commodities took first as the top performing asset class

Royal Bank of Scotland has made comprehensive cuts to the real estate and property related securitization businesses in European corporate and investment banking, and it included its newly purchased bank – ABN Amro – in the process.

The Nasdaq OMX Group has decided to extend its designated liquidity provider promotion program to more ETFs and index-linked securities (ILS)

Neither excessive optimism or pessimism is appropriate. US recession is a key component of economic rebalancing and just may be being given the time and conditions for orderly work through.

Yevgenia Trusilova, Network sales manager