Bulgaria’s plan to apply for ERM II entry this year, in doubt for some while, was officially put on hold this week.

The Dubai Gold and Commodities Exchange (DGCX) announced on Wednesday that it will launch contracts in USD/CHF, AUD/USD and USD/CAD on June 15. The contracts will be priced in USD and be denominated in amounts of 50,000 of the non-USD currency.

A Portuguese financial house, Fortune, is to sue Saxo Bank for €10 million in losses on its currency pairs, according to Danish press reports this week. Additionally, Fortune is asking that the Danish FSA revoke Saxo’s business licence.

The new pairs offered are AUD/SGD, CHF/CAD, GBP/AUD, GBP/NZD, GBP/ZAR, TRY/JPY, XAG/JPY, CHF/ZAR and ZAR/JPY.

At the start of the week it was interesting to note the differing views of the EU’s assistance programme for Greece and the resultant bounce in EUR/USD to just shy of 1.3700.

Tim Carrington has left his job as head of global derivatives and strategic risk at CIBC. Carrington was global head of trading at Merrill, which he left equally suddenly in September 2007 to reappear at CIBC in mid-2008.

Simon Hogg has left his role at Dresdner; sources reckon he’s headed for Citi’s Autotrader team. Hogg worked on the eFX and systematic proprietary trading systems at Dresdner, developing trading models and management systems.

Market veteran Keith Tebbutt has joined banking software provider Eurobase as business development manager in its banking division. Tebbutt’s 27 years of experience encompass Lava, Icap and First Chicago.

Headline results, detailed analysis, contributions from senior professionals at the leading global FX houses, plus the complete methodology, will be available online to Euromoney subscribers at www.euromoney.com/fxpoll, as well as in the May issue of Euromoney. Full sets of results are available only to subscribers to Euromoney’s dedicated online foreign exchange news service, the WeeklyFiX, at www.euromoneyfix.com/fxpoll .

International cash management review 2010

Review of developments in payment systems 2010

Technology Review 2010

Financial Supply Chain Review 2010

FXall announced this week that it has signed up Japanese FX market provider, SBI Liquidity Market.

(with apologies to Jacobs & Casey)

Volumes on interbank platforms suffered a little during March, with both EBS and Reuters reporting a decline. CME and CLS , however, both reported significant increases.

Last week I asked if a short EUR/TRY trade made sense. I wasn’t suggesting a tradable move over the following week, but the market answered with a resounding yes.

Despite the posturing of some US congressmen it was no surprise that talk of China being labelled as a currency manipulator was premature.

Readers have an opportunity to permanently scotch the myth of the FX market being populated solely by evil currency speculators.

Lloyds has taken on Carl Audebourg (ex Credit Suisse and Citi) as a director within the financial institution FX sales team.

Sources report that Enrico Casini has left Royal Bank of Scotland. Casini, according to his Linkedin profile, was “in charge of institutional sales for all FX and FX derivatives products into Europe, Middle East and Africa plus central banks globally” and that his “managerial duties are supported by strong producing skills (individual P/L of $25 million pa)”. A profit (and I assume he means profit when he says P/L) of $25 million is quite impressive – unless you are one of his clients.

Andrea Anselmetti has left Goldman Sachs where he was co-head (with Kevin Connors) of FX sales. A few weeks ago Goldman also lost Ernesto Mercadante (FX people moves: JPMorgan grabs sales head from Goldman), who, together with Luca Pietrangelli, accompanied Anselmetti in an aborted move to Merrill Lynch back in 2003. Sources say Anselmetti is off to Barclays to replace Richard Longmore, who left last month, as head of institutional FX sales.

Peter Billington has been promoted to head of FX trading at Commerzbank. Previously Billington was deputising the role. He reports to Hui-Sun Kim, global head of fixed income and currency trading.

Helen Nianias

Our April fool’s day story about Citi’s hiring spree appears to have been accurate, at least so far as Citi Japan is concerned. Four hires in one week!

It’s the line-up that bank chief executives can only dream of.

Every global investment bank thinks Asia will be the growth market over the next decade. But they each have very different ways of trying to exploit the opportunity. Getting the strategy right will be crucial. So which countries and products are vital to success? And which banks have the best platforms to build on?

Supply-chain finance has been the big hit of the crisis for transaction banks. The product was pushed over the past decade without any big success and has now taken off as working capital has become crucial to companies’ survival and buyers have recognized the fragility of their supply chains. Can market growth be sustained? Laurence Neville reports.

The financial crisis has drastically reduced the revenue streams upon which many custodians have based their businesses. Unless they can be replaced, custody will become far more expensive for all concerned. By Louise Bowman.

Over the past two years the US custodian has lost money and reputation. The search is on for new fee revenue to support the industry colossus that the bank has become.

Derivatives Week

In an interview with the FiX’s parent publication Euromoney, HSBC’s global head of markets Samir Assaf sets out his plans to increase HSBC’s share of the institutional foreign exchange business.

Oanda are the latest FX brokers to be supported on Currensee, a Facebook for traders.