Aaron Armstrong (ex-Brevan Howard and Goldman) has left Deutsche’s structuring team for a new role at hedge fund Moore Capital.

Northern Ireland-based financial systems provider First Derivatives has entered into an exclusivity agreement to buy Cognotec with the company’s receiver, KPMG. Cognotec was put into receivership by Barclays last Friday.

The Western government deficits are simply unsustainable. The bond markets may have been tolerant so far, but they will eventually perceive government debt as high risk and demand better returns.

Cognotec, the Irish-based technology provider, has gone into receivership following an application by Barclays last Friday. The software house is known to have been suffering cash-flow problems for some time. KPMG has been appointed receiver. It said it hoped to sell the business as a going concern.

Farewell to Mr Oliver; Welcome Carr and Fletcher.

Lee Oliver is joining Citibank on February 1 as its head of FX and local markets marketing and high frequency content. As a result, he will no longer lead Euromoney's foreign exchange coverage.

Lee has been a tremendous asset in helping Euromoney become the leading publication for FX news and comment. We thank him for his hard work and contribution, as well as his always sunny demeanour (?), and wish him well in his new role.

Lee’s departure gives Euromoney and the weeklyFiX an opportunity to build on the those great achievements already made in our FX coverage.

Euromoney’s foreign exchange coverage, both in the weeklyFiX and in the magazine, will now be carried out by Trevor Carr and Alexandra Fletcher.

Trevor will be responsible for the weeklyFiX’s continuing market commentary, breaking news and opinion. He traded in the foreign exchange and money markets for 30 years. He worked for a variety of prestigious institutions including Midland Bank, Lloyds Bank, Credit Agricole and Bayern LB. Throughout his career he has been a regular contributor to currency option and strategy publications. He can be contacted by email at fx@euromoney.com and on +44 207 779 8416.

Alex joins as a reporter and is responsible for enhancing and expanding Euromoney’s FX news coverage both online and in the magazine. She can be contacted at afletcher@euromoney.com and on +44 207 779 8147.

Any questions about Euromoney’s new-look FX coverage should be addressed to Clive Horwood, the editor, at chorwood@euromoney.com.

It’s not exactly the end of an era, but as most of you already know, this is my last weeklyFiX. It seems like yesterday that I agreed to help Euromoney with its FX coverage for a short period. That was over four years – and 350,000 words by my reckoning – ago.

After the expected fall in volumes in the first quarter of 2009, the FX market has reassessed the risks and volumes are growing once again. The latest data shows the market is in good health.

"Under my leadership FX traders will be treated like Gods, for without them we are doomed. Your bonus will be safe."

A new report this week from Aite Group examines the key components of financial regulation being considered in the US and asks the simple question: “Smart regulation. Is it possible?”

CLS Group and Traiana, Icap’s post-trade company, have announced that their joint venture to provide trade aggregation services has gone live. 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.

For a couple of years after its acquisition by Knight Capital in April 2006, Hotspot dropped off the radar of most FX players, so much so that I have renamed it Tepidspot. So I am a bit surprised to learn that the company is now averaging around $30 billion a day in spot transactions.

The International Securities Exchange has launched its own website at www.fxoptions.com, which it says is the first online trader community exclusively dedicated to FX options. The new site has been launched in partnership with content providers, including Market News International, LearningMarkets.com, Trading Central, Livevol and OptionSource.net to provide access to breaking news, trade alerts, trading and educational tools, as well as market commentary and analysis.

Hathersage Capital Management, the discretionary absolute return currency manager set up by market legend Bill Lipschutz, has hired Momtchil Pojarliev as director and senior portfolio manager. In this newly created role Pojarliev will report and work alongside Lipschutz, one of the superstar traders featured in Jack Schwager’s book The new market wizards.

Henrik Vad has quit his role as an executive director at Saxo Bank to take over as chief executive at the struggling Capinordic Bank. Vad joined Saxo in March 2008 and played a key role establishing a business unit aimed at attracting pension fund business from Danish clients, as well as the acquisition of E*Trade International’s local Nordic online trading business and online bank.

Marcus Bolton is believed to have taken a leave of absence from his duties as chief executive officer the Americas for Tullett Prebon. Euromoney understands the decision was taken earlier this month after an incident involving Bolton and a member of staff in the broker's middle office.

This is my penultimate column.

Last week’s news that the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) wants feedback on proposed restrictions on retail FX seems to have prompted fury from both service providers and their clients.

A report published by options pricing and valuation specialist SuperDerivatives unsurprisingly supports the findings from the Bank for International Settlement’s Quarterly review published in December that is that there has been a bounce back by end users of derivatives. “Our analysis reveals continued growth in the use of FX, interest rates, energy and commodity derivatives because they retain a crucial role supporting real, physical markets, in terms of hedging currency risk, managing resources and enabling cross-border trade,” says David Gershon, SuperDerivatives’ chief executive.

UK spreadbetter and CFD specialist CMC Markets has seen a wave of departures in recent weeks, which inevitably got me wondering if all is well there. Among those who have decided that the grass is greener elsewhere are sales traders Paul Chesterton (see People moves), Michael Owens and Sam Goult; Charlie Leech, Mark Akred, Laura Stuart and Elliot Grant in partners; and Felix Goerlich, a company lawyer.

The choice for those in the retail market wishing to trade on an ECN (electronic communication network) has expanded this week with the latest offering from Alpari (UK). The company says its new MetaTrader 4-based platform offers users, “high-speed, low latency and direct access to ultra competitive Forex prices.” It also enables the use of algorithmic trading, or what Alpari calls “expert advisors”. On top of that, the company is trumpeting its non-dealing desk (NDD) execution and the ability of users to trade on their own bids and offers. But there is a trade off: clients will have to pay commission, which depends on volume traded.

We are often asked to compile a league table of banks based on their FX earnings. It’s a great idea but an impossible task because most banks don’t separate out their FX profitability.

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.

BNP Paribas is continuing to hire. The latest recruit is Isabelle Choudhry, who joined the bank last Monday as head of e-commerce client services. Choudhry reports to Andy Cohen and Thomas Soede, heads of e-commerce marketing.

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. He reports directly to Gareth Thomas, head of trading.

More currency pairs

In a cash-scarce world, electronic bells and whistles take second place to systems and partners that help clients marshal their global liquidity as quickly and visibly as possible. Maximizing working capital throughout the supply chain is now a necessity, not a luxury. Clients and banks must change.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the changing nature of the interbank market, liquidity has returned to most corners of foreign exchange. But uncertainties remain over quantitative easing, Japan and the recovery. The panel gathered at the end of 2009 to find we are still in uncharted territory.

It is always nice to feel appreciated. And in the go-go days of the recent boom years not everybody was. While proponents of exotic financial engineering attracted rapt attention from both buy and sell side, others found their input rather less valued. Among them were many CFOs, who struggled to make their voices heard in the rush to lever up.

Threat of unjustified regulation of FX persists; Market suffers from lack of strong lobby