Over the past two weeks I've been receiving a steady drip of information about a French bank supposedly screwing up a large GBP-related order.

Word reaches me that FXall is planning to introduce decimal pricing, or pipettes, to its broader platform for corporates and asset managers. The company already offers this on its continuous pricing platforms for higher frequency traders. The move is said to be popular with its bank liquidity providers, who are extra keen at times to be first bid or offer. The enhanced functionality is expected sometime in the first half of 2010.

The latest survey on OTC derivatives market activity in the first half of 2009 from the Bank of International Settlements in Basle shows that daily activity has picked up, while overall risk has decreased. Looking at FX specifically, BIS says that there was a 10% rebound to $49 trillion in notional amounts of FX derivatives outstanding. However, gross market values declined by 31%, partly reversing the 59% increase in the second half of 2008. According to BIS, notional amounts outstanding, “are defined as the gross nominal or notional value of all deals concluded and not yet settled on the reporting date.”

A few weeks ago, ODL Securities changed its management structure. In its wisdom, it felt that this was not newsworthy enough to tell many people, which lead to gossip that Graham Wellesley and Lorenzo Naldini had somehow lost power and influence at the company.

Apparently, media reports that RBS leavers receive a round of applause as they walk out are true. This week, Stefano Lupi, the bank’s well-regarded former head of FX investor sales, and Mathijs Peeters, who describes his role on LinkedIn as Very Important but who was actually running FX and fixed-income sales, both got the clap. Sources say that Lupi is off to Santander, while Peeters is about to go off to Nomura.

ANZ has apparently Paul Haines in London to work under Stewart Morton as an Asian NDF trader. Haines, who started his career at Bank of America, was previously at BP.

Saxo Bank has hired Tom Hougaard as a market commentator. Hougaard is a well-known face in the UK spread betting and CFD community, having previously served long stints at FinSpreads and then City Index. “Tom is an active private day trader who brings with him a wealth of trading and investment knowledge and experience. His in-depth understanding and experience of financial markets will further establish Saxo Bank Financial Spreads and help to build an even greater presence in the UK,” says Albert Maasland, head of Saxo’s London office.

The London Stock Exchange has listed 18 currency exchange traded funds, or currency ETCs as it is calling them. Several years ago, when the exchange was supposedly looking into new products, I asked it if it had talked to EBS, which was its tenant at the time and up for sale. Better late than never though. The exchange says it is the first in Europe to list such products.

The UK’s Financial Services Authority has fined UBS £8 million for a series of breaches that occurred between January 1 2006 and December 31 2007 in its international wealth management business. By accepting the fine at an early stage, UBS has secured a whopping 20% discount.

Not for the first time. NYSE Liffe is to introduce short-date futures to compliment its existing long gilt future. The exchange tried out the same initiative back in 1985 and again in 1998, but the world is a different place now.

If we believed everything we read then we would assume that trading on exchanges is good and in the OTC is bad. But the truth is not quite so simple, as an incident Monday morning shows.

TFX scores own goal with stop loss

Without wishing to denigrate my current profession, I remember when I did my journalism course, I fell about laughing after my lecturer suggested that newspapers were a good place to check facts. I countered that whenever I read one that had something I knew anything about the journalist had usually got it wrong.

Saxo continues to spread its tentacles. The bank has just taken a 40% stake in Initto, the Danish-owned software and IT services provider. Initto has around 200 employees based mainly in India and Ukraine. Saxo says the acquisition will allow it to continue to support and speed up the development of its various trading systems, while Initto will continue to develop software and provide services to its existing client base.

Russian telecom company MegaFon has chosen SuperDerivatives’ SD-Reval service to generate independent revaluations on its multi-asset derivative portfolio.

Volumes figures released by EBS, Reuters and CME show a good pick up in activity in October. The average daily turnover on EBS rose 7% from September to $137.6 billion; the CME posted its highest non-roll month ever, which one of its employees asserts highlights “the trend towards the benefits of trading FX futures on exchange.”

CLS reports that it saw an average daily volume in October of 672,665 payment instructions, a 7.1% increase on September. Year-on-year, the volumes fell 7.6%, reflecting the surge in activity a year ago after Lehman’s collapse.

Whether or not retail punters are best served by direct market access or a market-maker model is a debate that could go on ad infinitum. Both types of service have merits and they both have drawbacks; I think it is healthy to have the choice rather than to have one of them mandated.

As one of my colleagues at Euromoney quipped, if it had a date of April 1, he would have sworn it was an April Fools joke. But as Commerzbank Corporates & Markets writes: “If it was left to the so-called Alba states [that’s the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America to you and me], Latin America is to get a new currency.”

Lianne Matthews has bailed out of Bank of America Merrill and joined former colleague Marco Pelizzoli at Santander. The duo will also be reunited with Phil Kopman, who left BofA a while back to work on a personal venture in the US.

More on last week’s report that Bank of America Merrill had let a number of salespeople go in the US. The move impacted three employees in Chicago, two in Boston and one each on Los Angeles and San Francisco. Brian Friedman, who was running the hedge fund FX sales desk despite a background in trading rate options, has also left, apparently heading off to Goldman Sachs. “Can you give me your normal no comment on this one please?” I asked the ever-so secretive Goldies. It duly obliged.

RBC Capital Markets has hired Mike Bass as its head of FICC Asia (non-Japan) and Mark Otis Zownir as head of USD rates trading, Asia. Both will be based in Hong Kong. Bass was previously at Standard Chartered Bank in Singapore, where he was most recently head of commodities. Zownir was most recently head of JPY rates trading at Citigroup in Tokyo.

Carmen Kan has joined BNP Paribas in the bank’s e-commerce client services team. She was previously at Standard Chartered.

From the outside it looks like one of the ritual JPM purges is underway after the departure of Bill Winters as head of the investment bank. However, one former employee says it’s more likely that the bank is engaged in one of its regular, five-year reorganizations.

In an acknowledgement of how important the post-trade environment is becoming, Icap has announced that Gil Mandelzis, the chief executive of its Traiana unit, has been appointed to the company’s global executive management group.

The limited effects of a system breakdown at EBS suggest the two interdealer brokers no longer dominate FX price discovery. They had better watch out, there’s a new market paradigm on the block and it is hungry for their lunch. Lee Oliver reports.

Brazil’s decision to impose a 2% tax on fresh foreign investments in equities and fixed instruments on October 20 had the expected result and the Brazilian real came under quite strong selling pressure. The fact that the government is taking such action shows just how far many of the emerging markets have developed. A source close to the BM&F Bovespa, the country’s securities, commodities and futures exchange, says that the move is aimed as much at domestic investors repatriating money as at foreigners.

In another clear signal that it intends to build on its huge FX business, UBS has hired market veteran Dave Tait as its global head of proprietary trading. Tait had a long and successful career on the sell side, including stints at Goldman Sachs and CSFB, before moving into the then fledgling hedge fund industry several years ago. He initially worked at Bluecrest, before joining the ill-fated Peloton Partners. Until he was lured back to the sell side by UBS, he was trading at Citadel.

A way to cope with forward premia risk; Increased reluctance to take on counterparty risk

The New York FX Committee will appoint Jeff Feig, global head of G10 FX at Citi, as its chairman when Richie Mahoney steps down in early 2010. Mahoney, head of BoNY Mellon’s global markets and capital markets group, has served on the committee since 1994, so Feig has a lot to live up to.