Derivs - FX

Hedge funds have been flocking to dual currency digital option structures.

FXCM Japan Securities has completed the acquisition of Foreland Forex, the Japanese fx broker.

RBC Capital Markets is said to have hired Oliver Hearsey to focus financial institution equity capital markets.

Royal Bank of Scotland is said to be planning an overhaul global banking and markets division, its investment-banking unit, which could result in additional 5,000 lost jobs.

The China Banking and Regulatory Commission is making marketing and selling financial products aimed at wealthy private individuals harder.

Extraterritoriality poses the risk interdealer brokers will have to register the same trading platform in different jurisdictions or develop different platforms for each, according to Scott Fitzpatrick, director of client relations for Europe, the Middle East and Africa for GFI Group in London, at a breakfast briefing this morning.

End users in Singapore are buying three-month USD/SGD knockout forwards to pick up inexpensive U.S. dollars, according to Eddie Wang, head of FX structuring, Asia fixed income markets at Crédit Agricole.

David Moore has joined Bank of America Merrill Lynch as global head of structured rates and currencies in New York.

UBS has boosted its fx desk in Tokyo with the hiring of three executive directors: Toshimasa Fujii, most recently with Barclays, as head of e-commerce sales; John Shen-Nagakura from Société Générale, as head of FX corporate sales; and Ko Haruki from Goldman Sachs, as head of real-money sales.

Issuing new structured products in Europe would become more expensive and time consuming under rules proposed by the European Securities and Markets Authority.

NASDAQ OMX plans to switch to calculating margins for fixed income derivatives using a yield curve approach, which may reduce cross-margin amounts 25-50%.

Salt Lake City, Utah-based Maverick Trading has announced plans to expand its fx division with the hiring of 50 traders at the rate of 10 a month over the next five months.