BNP Paribas came out with an FX special note on Thursday night the essence of which is in the first two sentences:

Forex.com told us in a release this week that it has launched a new pricing structure that reduces spreads by up to 50% on previous minimums. Apparently customers can trade spreads as low as 0.9 pips on some currency pairs including EUR/USD, GBP/USD and USD/JPY.

Currency manager Record announced its final results for the year ended March 31 this week. What caught my eye was that, although notional assets under management increased slightly, there was a marked swing in mandates towards ‘active hedging’ (where clients seek to minimise their exposure to currency risk) and away from ‘absolute return’ (where clients seek to make a return from currency).

At the end of last year MIG announced that it had become the first Swiss-based platform to comply with the edict of the Swiss Financial Markets Supervisory Authority (Finma) that such companies require a banking licence (MIG gets its licence).

May was a voluminous month across the board. We reported last week (Record volumes reported) that Icap, Reuters and CLS and CME enjoyed record volumes. Some of this is was statistical – due to the UK and US public holidays – and some due to the odd market events of May 6.

SuperDerivatives announced a new product on Monday: a new revaluation investigation and analysis system (RIAS). The system “has been developed to assist customers in analysing and investigating valuations for all OTC and exchange-traded derivatives across all asset classes.”

Last week we noted that primary dealers in South Africa government bonds were effectively given a half day to coincide with the start of the world cup (FX comment: When does the world cup start?).

Rob Close retires from his roles as CEO of CLS Group Holdings and President and CEO of CLS Bank International at the end of the month. He joined CLS in November 2000 and has been instrumental in the establishment and development of the world’s largest multi-currency cash settlement system. In this guest column, Rob looks at how the market has changed over the past decade – and where it goes from here.

In April we reported the whispers that Richard Longmore, Barclays’s ex-head of European institutional FX sales, would turn up at Lloyds (FX people moves: More on Longmore). We still think there is some substance behind the talk but it is Lloyds’ policy is to decline to comment on staff moves until they actually occur.

RBS has acted quickly in response to Michelle Neal’s departure (FX people moves: Another from RBS to Nomura) by making Roger Hawes interim global head of electronic markets. Hawes will continue in his role as RBS’s global head of spot FX, reporting to Mark Barnes, global head of FX.

Citi has appointed Stuart Riley as its global head of FX technology. Riley started his career at Citi in 1996 but later moved to RBS and then Deutsche, where he spent seven years rising to head of global finance and FX IT. Riley rejoined Citi in January to oversee the development of the bank’s electronic distribution channels. He replaces Eric Hirschhorn, who left Citi to pursue other interests.

Tony ‘Geez’ Brown, described by friends as something of a cockney wide boy, recently left the London office of the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi.

Nick Downes will resurface at BAML as head of European e-FX sales in August. He left Citibank last month, where he was head of EMEA FX bank sales (Citibank sales head likes his garden).

Yannick Watelle, previously of Calyon, is joining Commerzbank’s FX structuring team in London. He will report to Enrico Ferrante, head of FX structuring.

Three days of higher closes doesn’t exactly indicate a recovery but there could be signs that the EUR/USD sell-off has paused for breath.

Regulation has been on my mind this week: not the big-time Franks/Volcker regulation but the micro regulation that hits individuals. I thought of Alex’s piece a few weeks ago about Sudipto Chattopadhyay of Alpari (FX news: Nigerian sting for Alpari) and a conversation I had with an old mate of mine who’s an IFA.

I’m sure I was joking when I asked if CME was going to get with the 21st century (CME try new Twitter approach), but it seems Saxo took my suggestion seriously.

A copy of a letter from the South African national treasury arrived on my desk. Conveniently the treasury “will release the primary dealers in RSA government bonds from their market-making duties on Friday June 11 2010 as from 11 o’clock until close of business.” It’s called getting your priorities right.

Up until now the only dollar index future with tradable liquidity has been the US dollar index future (DXY) traded on the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE). This may now change with the announcement of the Dow Jones CME FX$Index.

Gain Capital has partnered with South African bank Standard Bank, to launch a joint FX offering for the retail market, called Standard FX Trader.

Brazilian hedge fund Kairos Asset Management (KAM), are using StreamBase’s complex event processing (CEP) platform to “support high frequency trading strategies across multiple asset classes, including derivatives, foreign exchanges and equities.”

FXall has added Japanese broker dealers FX Prime as a new client on its platforms.

According to sources, Alexander Price has left HSBC’s real money desk. Talk is that he’s off to run real money FX sales at Deutsche London. If true it looks like a nice move: HSBC’s real money sales holds a respectable share of the market, 4.52% according to the Euromoney FX poll, but Deutsche holds the top share at 10.64%.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch confirm that James Austin, previously of FX hedge fund sales at BNP Paribas, is to join the Hong Kong office from early September, as director in FX sales. He is currently on gardening leave.

We heard from good sources that BNP Paribas had acquired some serious institutional sales firepower in New York.

It’s been three weeks since we reported a hiring by CIBC but normal service has now been resumed. The Canadian bank has acquired former JPMorgan energy strategist Katherine Spector.

Since launching their new trading operations in Brazil in April, Standard Chartered has added a new rates and FX team.

Michelle Neal, global head of electronic markets at RBS, has left to join Nomura, market sources say.

There have been a few comings and goings in sales at JPMorgan of late.

Peter Larsson has left his job in Nordic FX sales at RBS. Reliable sources tell us that Larsson is yet another hire by Nomura from RBS. Larsson is said to be going to run Scandi sales at the resurgent Japanese investment bank.