It’s the time of year when many participants from the FX market put on their Lycra and get their legs over. There are two classic amateur bike rides coming up: the fearsome Marmotte is held this weekend and the L’Etape du Tour the week after.

They say that you get what you pay for, but that’s not strictly true in FX. As we all know, the buy side is extremely well serviced and has to pay for very little. It can trade on multiple venues without paying a commission. Of course it could be argued that the explicit cost of trading is insignificant compared to the implicit one, but many banks now allow their clients to put in their own bids and offers on their proprietary platforms.

We all know FX is wonderful, so as well as being the most professional financial market in existence, the industry should be proud of the role it has played in creating many of things we take for granted in the modern world. Without FX, there would have been no internet, no txt msging, no chat rooms, Facebook or Twitter. Though some of that list may not be something to be proud of.

The talk about the need for an alternative to the USD continues – or it doesn’t, depending on which Chinese official you speak to on the day. But as Commerz points out this week, the IMF’s decision to issue up to $500 billion of SDR bonds was a surprise. The expectation had been for issuance of $150 billion. The bank adds that so far, only China, Russia and Brazil have shown any interest in funding the IMF this way and that the SDR – a basket made up of USD, EUR, JPY and GBP – “will hardly vie with the dollar for dominance as the world’s major reserve currency. Especially since the recent statistics on central bank reserves show that in the first quarter the dollar’s share of reserves grew further (from 64.1% to 65%). So, in the crisis, the dollar is the safe haven for central banks, too.”

The FX market bounced back nicely in June. This month sees the welcome addition of numbers from Thomson Reuters, which says it will now publish its monthly figures on the new www.hihifrds.com portal. The company saw a combined monthly spot volume of around $132 billion on its Thomson Reuters Dealing, Matching and Reuters Trading for FX services. This was a 17% increase on its turnover in May.

After working there man and boy, Mike Peacock is rumoured to have left Barclays, where he was head of real money FX sales. Sources say that he has been well looked after and that he has already been replaced by an external candidate, rumoured to be Tim Maloney, who was at Citi.

The CME has hired David Shuler as managing director, alliance and venture management. Shuler will be responsible for directing the exchange’s investments in new businesses and strategic partnerships, including joint ventures, global alliances and other growth initiatives. He reports to Ken Vroman, the CME’s managing director and chief corporate development officer.

HSBC has hired Joe Norena as its global head of FX business management and development, global foreign exchange – effectively this is the role of chief operating officer. Norena is an industry veteran, having served 13 years at Citibank in New York, and 11 years at Deutsche, where he held a variety of senior roles, including COO global FX and commodities. He has been on the buy side since 2005. Norena will report to Frederic Boillereau, HSBC’s global head of FX and metals. An internal memo says Norena, “will be responsible for all aspects of business management and development for global FX, and play a critical leadership role across the business in participating and executing our strategy to provide clients with a seamless and integrated global product capability. His experience of building Deutsche's e-commerce platform will also be invaluable as we continue the growth of our e-commerce business.”

Société Générale has hired Anna Faustini to head its corporate FX desk in New York. The bank says Faustini will be responsible for marketing its strategic initiative to US clients. Faustini, who was previously at Bank of America and before that at Citibank, reports to Arnaud Achour, head of capital markets and syndicate for the Americas, and to the global co-heads of interest rates and FX derivatives, Pascale Moreau and Albert Loo.

Citi has hired Gautier Chauvin, who was previously at Goldman Sachs, to head FX investor sales in France. Chauvin will be based in Paris and report to Jan Bak, head of investor sales Europe.

FX retail leader might look offshore; Regulators’ moves “may not help investors”

Saxo Bank has purchased stakes in two specialist asset managers, taking the entire share capital of Capital Four Management and 51% of Global Evolution.

IMF credit line brings into question robustness of country’s economy.

Lenient treatment of property assets acquired in debt-for-equity swaps shows regulators are still worried by systemic vulnerabilities.

There is a group of investors who don’t feel comfortable unless there’s a benchmark to use. So clearly there’s a need for indices that measure movements in FX.

Officials from the Gulf Cooperation Council have set 2013 as the new deadline for the region’s common currency, according to Standard Chartered, quoting local media reports. The initial deadline for the project was 2010 but progress has been slow and complex, with both Oman and the UAE pulling out of the union. Despite this, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have decided to go ahead. But Standard Chartered says that even if the union is effected, excluding the UAE means the region’s second-largest and most diversified economy will be outside it.

RBS has promoted Mark Barnes to the new role of global head of FX in its banking and markets division. Barnes first joined the old NatWest in October 1994, although he briefly worked elsewhere at the turn of this decade.

Big overseas holders of US dollar assets, with China at the forefront, will not be sold another pup. Instead of supporting wayward US financial policies they will increasingly diversify to other currencies.

I have been looking at some of the technology issues facing Europe’s equity markets. To cut a long story short, the region’s equity markets are fragmenting, leading to a situation where it resembles FX in many ways. This would, for the moment at least, put paid to the argument that FX liquidity will eventually pool on to just one or two platforms.

The Swiss National Bank has made it clear to the FX market that it has set more than a metaphorical line in the sand when it says it doesn’t want EUR/CHF to drop below 1.50. On Wednesday, it came wading in as the rate neared this level and sent it sharply higher to just under 1.5400. Intervention is often spoken of as futile, but that clearly isn’t always true.

Not a day goes by when I don’t see something in the media about Twitter. Even though I have a Twit – or whatever it’s called – of my own, I don’t really understand it. Recently, I got semi-excited about one of my latest followers after I saw her picture. But when I clicked on her link, I discovered she was touting what can only be described as a semi-pornographic website. So it’s not surprising that most financial institutions won’t let Twitter through their firewalls.

Icap has just added various enhancements to its EBS spot platform.

There is a group of investors who don’t feel comfortable unless there’s a benchmark to use. So clearly there’s a need for indices that measure movements in FX. And the announcement this week of indices from FTSE Group and MSCI should at least put the final nail in the coffin of that old story that FX is an asset class in its own right.

This week, I’ve been learning to play an obscure tune called Check your bucket by the late great Eddie Bo. For some bizarre reason, the song immediately came to mind when I heard that Darren Stacey had resigned from UniCredit to go back to BofA/Merrill Lynch. Stacey has a solid reputation and is very well regarded, so he must know what he’s doing.

ClientKnowledge has hired Tracey Kent as a business development manager and Jean Marc Depinay as a quantitative analyst. Kent was previously at Icap/EBS for five years, most recently as a sales executive. Depinay, who has worked in the health industry as a statistical modeller and on the BNP Paribas risk management team, has a PhD in applied mathematics.

Barclays has apparently lured John Green from JPMorgan to do FX sales to the Middle East and Chris Svensson from Deutsche to do FX sales to Scandinavia.

Stability seems to be a characteristic of those banks that are at the top of the pile in FX. But it is a word that does not appear to be in the vocabulary of those running Bank of America/Merrill Lynch. The latest senior person to leave the firm is Vincent Delorenzo, head of FX sales for EMEA. Delorenzo was moved across to sales from his role in short-term interest rate trading following the banks' merger, so he was always going to have a tough time. But he hardly had a chance to get his seat warm before he was getting ready to pack his bags at the bank's Newgate Street building in London. A BofA spokesperson confirmed his position has been put at risk of redundancy. Sources say that as the turmoil continues at BofA, he's unlikely to be the last.

Among the many clichés that came to mind when I started writing this column I had: ‘Another week, another dollar’; and the colloquial ‘USD Brics it’. But what I really mean is that short-termism still reigns in FX.

The CME has thrown down the gauntlet to other trading venues by reducing its threshold for firms to receive a quantity discount. The move will be effective from August 1. The exchange has also slashed its charges for exchange-for-physical and block trades by 43% to $1 a contract for its futures and options (see Platform propaganda).

Someone is putting about the suggestion that a new market paradigm has emerged.