Euromoney has learnt that Chris Allington has left Goldman Sachs' prop desk for a senior FX role at Standard Chartered. Allington has been at Goldman for less than a year he resigned from Merrill Lynch, where he was co-head of G10 currency trading, in March last year.

Keen to kick off the new year on an optimistic note, Euromoney recently attended a seminar in London hosted by BGC Partners on the subject of recovery. Held in Bloomberg’s glitzy Finsbury Square auditorium, the stage was set for an evening of discussion about how things could only get better. Only the four speakers – Paul Tucker, deputy governor of the Bank of England; government minister Lord Digby Jones; Sir James Sassoon, adviser to shadow chancellor George Osborne’s office; and Jeffrey Hogan of BGC Partners itself – seemed far from optimistic. In a thought-provoking speech about the risks inherent in a shadow banking industry operating at the periphery of regulation, Tucker observed: "It is wrong to say that we are witnessing once-in-a-generation change to global financial services. We are seeing the kind of change that happens once in two or three generations." Digby Jones, in his role as minister of state for UK trade and investment, attempted to lighten the mood with a robust defence of the UK’s manufacturing clout – rather too much of which seemed to rely on the manufacture of Airbus aircraft wings. But recovery was definitely in evidence among attendees once the champagne and some particularly fine canapés were in evidence and UK TV personalities Rory Bremner, John Bird and John Fortune took over. Empathizing with any audience concerns about taxpayer largesse drying up, Bremner decided to channel FDR and declare "You have nothing to fear but recovery itself!" Bird and Fortune urged banks to continue paying bankers large bonuses as an incentive for doing boring things – in case they decided to start doing innovative and risky things again. But one thing on which everyone could agree was what BCG should also stand for: Bloody Good Catering.

Gain Capital has launched a new platform, GTX, which is aimed at the bigger-ticket market. The company says that means qualifying financial institutions, hedge funds, CTAs, high-frequency traders, broker/dealers and high-net-worth individuals. The platform provides order-book depth and integration with Traiana’s Harmony post-trade solution.

Turmoil in banking has changed transaction services. Just as it has become crucial to extract every last efficiency from treasury, clients face new choices and new uncertainties. How should they choose their banks? How can they manage their risks? What should their treasury look like?

Selective devaluation only of short-term efficacy; Power supply crisis looms

Keith Dack has joined UBS, where he will run the bank’s proprietary team in Singapore. Dack, who will report to Dave Tait, has had a long and illustrious career in FX. Over the past 30 years he has worked at Fical, Northern Trust, BCI, Bankers, Barclays, Salomons, DLJ, RBC, Nomura and Commerz, which he joined when it took over Dresdner.

As foreign exchange finds itself under the same legislative spotlight as other asset classes, it looks as if only options and non-deliverable forwards (NDFs) will be have to be cleared through a central counterparty (CCP) in the US. But such legislation might prove very difficult to enforce.

GFT has hired Paul Chesterton from CMC Markets as a sales trader for its UK dealing team. Chesterton, who is a familiar face on CNBC, has extensive experience in the industry – he has also worked at Finspreads and IG Index.

Platforms form lobby group to counter proposals

UBS and Morgan Stanley beef up to regain market share; Broader competition from the French banks

BNP Paribas’ push into prime brokerage took another step forward in January when it was announced it had signed up as an EBS FX prime bank. "Joining EBS as a prime bank is an important part of BNP Paribas’ strategy to build out our prime brokerage offering. Our ambition is to become a top five FX house globally and our prime brokerage business is a vital part of realizing that ambition. Our current strength and potential for future growth in FX prime brokerage stems from factors including our strong balance sheet and a credit rating that makes us a particularly desirable counterparty," says Nathaniel Litwak, the bank’s head of marketing for FX prime brokerage.

Newedge, the global exchange-traded products clearer and broker, has become the first foreign company to be granted a full futures licence by the Korea Financial Services Commission. The company is now able to offer all products listed on the Korea Exchange (KRX), which includes currency products.

No Christmas joy for RBS, where the exodus of staff continued right up to December 25. The latest departure from its FX sales force is Juan Urdaneta, who was director global FX bank sales and is off to Santander. The bank has also lost Paolo Comerci, head of gap risk.

After hundreds of millions of euros of investment, banks are finding that the EU’s single payments area (SEPA) is not the promised land. Early adopters think the blame lies with politicians and want them to save Sepa by forcing through migration. Laurence Neville reports on a flawed but not failed initiative.

CLS Group and Traiana, Icap’s post-trade company, have announced that their joint venture to provide trade aggregation services went live at the end of January. The joint venture says that the system, named CLSAS, will alleviate the processing burdens on participating banks by as much as 90%. The technology behind the system is Traiana’s Harmony network.

In all the talk of regulation, the distinction between settlement risk and counterparty risk seems to have been blurred. The FX market survived the crisis best.

High yield, Korea, financials among key themes; China the top local-currency market

Hotspot says it is now averaging around $30 billion a day in spot transactions, and it will publish its monthly volume statistics from now on. According to John Miesner, the company’s global head of sales, and Bill Goodbody, its business manager, Hotspot completely rethought its business model when it was taken over by Knight Capital for what looked like a modest $77.5 million four years ago. The upshot of this was the ultimate decision to concentrate fully on institutional rather than retail FX. This resulted in Hotspot selling its retail operations to FXCM in January 2009.

Average daily spot jumped 32%, says FEC

Standard Bank has hired Celal Çelikcan as managing director, Turkey. Çelikcan was previously a principal trader at Citi in London, although he was at one time the bank’s treasurer in Istanbul.

BNP Paribas has hired Deane Nuttall from Harmonic Capital. Sources say he will work in hedge fund sales and develop the bank’s commodity trading advisor (CTA) franchise with a focus on high-frequency accounts. Nuttall will report to Miranda Royston, BNP Paribas’ head of hedge fund sales.

What on earth happened to EUR/CHF in Asia on Thursday night?

Carry trade isn’t magic for Lord Adair

We’re becoming used to banker-bashing, but in Davos last week Financial Services Authority chairman Adair Turner indulged in a little FX-bashing. He said: “If I could wave a magic wand here and greatly reduce the carry trade, I’m pretty certain the world would be a better place.”

Cognotec went into receivership last week upon an application by Barclays. First Derivatives have entered into an exclusive agreement with receiver KPMG to buy the stricken firm.

Last July, UK broker Moneycorp published research that showed the lack of understanding of FX risk among UK finance directors.

Gain continued with its Asian expansion. The company opened an office in Hong Kong and signed a white-label agreement with Polaris Securities (Hong Kong). Gain already has offices in Tokyo and Seoul and recently launched its forex.com trading platform in Japan.

Volume figures released this week confirm further increases in FX flow.

European Central Counterparty (EuroCCP), the equity clearing house, will clear currency exchange-traded funds from today (February 5). The securities were launched in November and are listed on the London Stock Exchange, where they are called currency ETCs.

Forex Capital Markets (FXCM) acquired ODL’s US business in January 2009 in the wake of Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s demands for an increase in the capital requirements of retail FX providers. A year later it is little surprise that rumours abound that FXCM is back for the rest of ODL’s operations, spread around the world. So far these rumours are unconfirmed.