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Rumor says they have outsourced their spot-rate engine to a hedge fund, but at this point it's only whispers.

Over the past 25 years, I have met many clever bastards. And I have met many more stupid ones. In particular, I have met a lot of stupid people who think they are clever, and that’s even scarier.

It is inconceivable that SocGen would have been able to rack up such a huge position and loss in a bilateral, OTC market because it would have inevitably filled many of its credit lines.

Time has allowed the dinosaurs – the US exchanges – to evolve and then go hunting once again.

The pace of consolidation in retail FX platforms in the US is starting to accelerate.

Micex, the Russian exchange group that has launched a charm offensive in the west, reports a decent increase in currency activity in January 2008. The exchange says that it recorded 421 trades in US dollar futures in the month with a value of R266.3 billion ($10.8 billion). Average daily volume ran at R15.7 billion ($637 million), which was almost twice as much as in January 2007.

Back in the day, no dealer or broker could live without his Hambros, the little red book that contained a list of active banks, their key staff, telephone and telex (remember them) numbers and Reuters codes. When SocGen took over the venerable UK merchant bank, the book sadly went into decline. For the past few years, the now rechristened Reddbook has been published by 4Cast. While not yet quite restored to its former glories, the book is on the up and it is, once again, an extremely useful reference guide. ACI UK is giving them out free with membership, another reason to join the association.

More on ACI UK

Marcus Browning has sprung a major surprise and left Citi, where he recently took up a new role to build a proprietary team to trade volatility. He is believed to be headed for the buy side. Sources close to Browning say that he has long held ambitions to see if the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, and that while he was extremely happy at Citi, an opportunity arose that he felt was too good to miss.

Reny Morsch-Zlatkovic has rejoined Eurex. Morsch-Zlatkovic spent five years with the company in London, and three years before that with Deutsche Boerse in Frankfurt. She left Eurex to join FXMarketSpace in November 2006. Morsch-Zlatkovic, who is a director of ACI UK, previously worked as a trader at UBS, Chemical and ABN. Her role at Eurex will be in sales, focusing on equity and index products.

Saxo Bank has promoted Tobias Straessle, its chief information officer, to chief operating officer. In an internal memo explaining the rationale for the change, Kim Fournais, Saxo’s joint chief executive, said that the bank is combining its operations and projects, and information technology departments under single global leadership.

While the Securities and Exchange Commission last week signaled its first approvals for actively managed exchange-traded funds, it was not all good news for the industry.