Paul Reinhart has joined Citi from Standard Chartered where he was a director in financial institution sales overseeing FX coverage for real money accounts.

The balance between centralized and local processes in cash management is a complex issue that varies according to the special requirements of particular corporates. Users and providers discuss the issues in this roundtable.

By Wednesday June 2, 17 banks had committed themselves to join the FX division of the Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME). AFME works with allied organizations, the US-based Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association and the Asian Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, in communicating the views of the financial markets industry to regulators, policymakers, and the general public. AFME envisages the FX division being operational at the end of the summer.

EUR/CHF has almost completely retraced the intervention-driven spike of a couple of weeks ago and while Swiss National Bank president Philipp Hildebrand gave few clues this morning – “I have no doubt that European authorities will do everything they can to protect the euro,” he said – there are some commentators willing to point the way.

Iranian international news network PressTV released an article, ‘Iran restricting euro transactions’ on Wednesday.

I thought I had put this week’s column to bed when I received another note from Market Securities’ Paul Day that is worth sharing.

07:17 03Jun10 RTRS-Cameron says BP turned down offer to help on spill

The Asian branch of Merrill Lynch has been fined HK$3.5 million (US$450,000) for “systems and controls failings” by mis-marking a trading book in exotic options.

Will Patrick at the CME points out that today (Friday June 4) is the monthly FX options expiry day on the CME and that the exchange has a few notable strikes rolling off. Note that “the majority are rolling off at 2pm Chicago, which is 3pm NY, 8pm London” as opposed to the 10am NY OTC market cut.

ICAP set the ball rolling this week, putting all other reported volumes in the shade.

Traiana, ICAP’s post-trade company, has announced that Morgan Stanley is the first customer to go live with Traiana’s real-time FX margin solution.

The UK Financial Services Authority has fined JPMorgan a staggering £33.32 million ($48.8 million) for “failing to protect client money by segregating it appropriately”. Had the bank not complied with the FSA as soon as the regulatory breach was detected, it would have been fined £47.6 million, but for good behaviour it received a 30% discount.

The EU’s single-currency system is under great stress but will not reach breaking point so long as Germany wants it to survive.

The euro will survive. But the self-preservation instinct of its architects must mean the defenestration of Greece.

Amid the threat of competitive devaluations, the US and the eurozone need help from the new emerging market powers.

The German chancellor’s short-selling ban had no impact other than to increase speculation about the future of the eurozone.

President tries to eliminate parallel FX market; Claims irregularities taking place

Platforms struggle to process trades; Aggregation services claim a victory

The Financial Services Authority has slapped Alpari with a £140,000 fine and its former money laundering reporting officer (MLRO), Sudipto Chattopadhyay with a fine of £14,000. According to the FSA report, Alpari failed to have in place adequate anti-money-laundering systems and controls and failed to monitor customer accounts, particularly customers based in Nigeria.

It is generally assumed that there has been some lessening of appetite among the eurozone core for enlargement to the East. What has not been sufficiently questioned is whether or not the benefits, to other nations in the queue for euro admission, now sufficiently outweigh the fiscal sacrifice required.

It seems that CME has taken a new approach to hiring senior staff. We spotted this on Twitter this week.

SEB has confirmed that Alistair Crane (ex e-commerce sales at Standard Chartered) is “joining shortly” in its e-commerce sales department.

Nomura has confirmed this week (it took a while) that Steve Ashley and Chris Fleming, both from RBS , are joining the Japanese bank in the London and Tokyo offices respectively.

A month ago theweeklyFiX wrote about defections from Barclays Capital’s US sales team in New York. (FX people moves: Exodus from Barclays) On Tuesday the bank announced several new hires, although not all to the seats vacated.

Leading FX platform FXall announced two senior appointments this week; both of who are ex-State Street staff.

theweeklyFix inexplicably missed the move of Beat Nussbaumer to UniCredit a week or so ago.

It was an old friend, still trading forward cable, who first alerted me to the beginnings of a Libor/OIS basis blowout a couple of weeks ago. But at the start of this week the move took a more desperate turn as the hunt for dollars accelerated with rumours of a Spanish bank being unable to cover its short-term USD funding.

Following last week’s unilateral ban on naked shorting of sovereign debt, associated credit default swaps and top-10 German financial stocks, German chancellor Angela Merkel’s finance ministry leaked draft proposals to extend the ban.

Caplin Systems, provider of single-dealer platforms for the capital markets, announced this week that Crédit Agricole has gone live with its new online single-dealer portal for fixed income and structured notes trading, developed using Caplin Xaqua and Caplin Trader.

Smart Live Markets is the first broker to offer spread betting on the MetaTrader4 platform.