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The Swiss National Bank shocked markets on Thursday when it abandoned its Sfr1.20 floor on the euro and cut the interest rate on sight deposit balances to minus 0.75%. The SNB and some investor portfolios will suffer big losses.

Lesser rated corporates and emerging market names could be the biggest primary market beneficiaries of the Swiss National Bank’s shock decision to dump its exchange rate ceiling and cut interest rates on Thursday, writes Lucy Fitzgeorge Parker.

2014 continued to be an active year for financial regulation in the EU, with a push to finalise much of the outstanding primary legislation on the regulatory reform agenda and to move towards implementation of regulation already in place. The derivatives market will be particularly affected by the new regulatory landscape and the market will face many new challenges in 2015 and beyond.

The Singapore Exchange and ICAP’s electronic FX business, EBS, have teamed up to develop a new range of Asian currency products and services which will strengthen the liquidity in the FX over-the-counter derivatives and futures markets in Asia.

Under MiFID II, forward contracts as currently defined will be considered financial instruments, which is raising significant concerns for commodity derivatives market participants as they will be subject to regulation that they weren’t previously.

Concerns are rising among market participants that the European Securities and Markets Authority is showing a lack of understanding of request-for-quote and other trading protocols as it prepares new rules. If ESMA imposes overly-restrictive transparency regulations on these technical systems, market participants may refrain from using them, according to lawyers.

Market participants have been buying vanilla options on the Norwegian krone as the currency continues to weaken as a consequence of the oil price rout. Low liquidity is in turn widening bid-ask spreads.

The Chicago Board Options Exchange is now publishing values for three new volatility indexes using the prices of CME Group’s FX futures options in response to client demand.

Overall interest rate trading that was reported to swap data repositories last week increased by 420% from the previous week, according to data from the International Swaps and Derivatives Association. Overall credit default swap notional that was reported, also increased by 400% from the previous week.

Investors have been picking up options on the euro against the dollar as the euro continues to depreciate amid uncertainty over what happens to Greece and the eurozone.

End-users trading swaps could be exempted from posting margin on swaps not cleared by registered derivatives clearing organizations under a new Congressional rule amending the Dodd-Frank Act. Despite flaws in the original drafting, the amendment to the rule would be a substantive change to the legislation and would clarify the margin posting process, according to lawyers.

John Miesner, the ex-global head of sales at KCG Hotspot, has joined GAIN Capital as managing director, head of global sales for GTX, the firm’s institutional FX electronic communications network.