Next up in our introduction to the distinguished nominees for Leaders in Trading 2023 Editors’ Choice Awards, we bring you the shortlist for Outstanding FX Trading Venue, showcasing excellence in the foreign exchange community.
Over the last year, the foreign exchange landscape has continued to shift with some players restructuring their business entirely, first trades being executed on our nominees’ platforms as well as various new initiatives launched by FX trading venues paired with several new partnerships.
Among the key players in this competitive landscape, The TRADE has selected CME Group FX, Deutsche Börse’s 360T, Eurex and LSEG’s Refinitiv FXall for the 2023 shortlist, following various individual achievements by these venues over the past year.
CME Group FX
CME Group FX returns to this award category following a nomination at last year’s Leaders in Trading awards gala. Most recently, CME Group, announced a restructuring of its foreign exchange businesses in August, seeking to expand trading opportunities and increase efficiency for its clients across futures, cash and OTC markets. CME Group combined its FX derivatives markets and its EBS cash markets business, with the combination set to be leveraged in a bid to increase efficiency, improve client service and enhance product development. Over the last year, CME Group has been focused on creating a tighter alignment across its FX businesses suite with this latest structure the final step of the process. CME Group acquired EBS in 2018 as part of a larger acquisition of London-based NEX Group, forming a combined company for futures, cash and OTC markets.
In 2022, CME Group saw a record year for its exchange-listed foreign exchange products, which was followed by a record day for its FX suite of products in March this year, trading $296 billion notional in one day across over three million contracts. CME Group also boasts over 90,000 users in FX futures raging from corporates, banks, proprietary trading companies, retail, asset managers and hedge funds.
Deutsche Börse, 360T
Following an impactful year within the FX space, Deutsche Börse’s FX trading venue, 360T makes an appearance in this award category. 360T allows users to trade spot, outright forwards, swaps, NDFs, options and listed FX products across its venue. Disclosed, semi-disclosed and anonymous trading is supported by the platform, while firms can also trade via RFQ/RFS, streaming pricing, auto-execution and algos. 360T partners with a broad range of client types globally, including corporates, hedge funds, asset managers and retail brokers, allowing the platform to offer a unique pool of FX liquidity to interact with.
The platform has made streaming mid liquidity via APIs available on its Swaps User Network (SUN) in September, with Deutsche Bank and ING executing the initial trade. In an industry first, Deutsche Bank and ING become the first two banks able to trade FX swaps via API and match at the market midpoint. In addition, 360T SUN is the only platform that currently offers a continuous streaming mid-price for FX Swap instruments. In the same month, Union Investment executed its first block FX) futures trade through 360T alongside revealing plans to implement the 360T EMS. The trade – requested and priced through 360T – was processed directly into Eurex for clearing. Deutsche Bank was the inaugural foreign exchange futures liquidity provider for Union Investment, with the bank set to reap the benefits of central clearing as well as continuing to take advantage of the customisation of over-the-counter (OTC) FX execution models.
Eurex
Also nominated in the 2023 shortlist for Outstanding FX Trading Venue and needing little introduction is Eurex. Eurex offers a range of currency trading and clearing services covering exchange-traded FX derivatives and NDF clearing. The venue provides the ability to trade FX futures, options on FX futures and rolling spot futures alongside a range of currency clearing services, providing participants access to the cleared FX market in a secure manner.
Eurex Frankfurt and Trading Technologies (TT) partnered in February to offer the Eurex EnLight selective request-for-quote (RFQ) solution directly through the TT platform. According to the two firms, the partnership provides institutions of TT’s global distribution network the opportunity to streamline their RFQ and larger scale, complex trade execution activity on a single screen. The integrated platform is available for all equity, equity index and fixed income options and corresponding futures traded on Eurex, alongside foreign exchange derivatives. Eurex was also chosen by State Street and BNY Mellon to centrally clear European transactions in May and September, respectively. Also in September, Goldman Sachs became the latest sell-side institution to join Eurex’s listed FX futures business as a trading and clearing member. Goldman Sachs also acts as a liquidity provider for off-book transactions, as part of the deal. Eurex said the addition was a “major milestone” in its ambition to become a listed FX liquidity hub in Europe.
LSEG, Refinitiv FXall
Following a win in this category at Leaders in Trading 2022, LSEG’s Refinitiv FXall re-joins the shortlist for 2023. Formed in 2001, FXall has served the corporate, asset management, hedge fund and banking communities for over two decades. FXall supports single bank and multi-bank request for quote, algo and resting orders, auto-execution orders, fixing orders and multi-bank batch orders, which allow the submission of up to 200 trade requests at one time. LSEG’s Refinitiv FXall entered a strategic alliance with Saphyre in February to digitise account onboarding for FXall clients through Saphyre’s AI technology. The technology gives liquidity providers the ability to systematically approve accounts and is validated and live for a subset of FXall clients – with all FXall clients expected to receive the offering as additional enhancements. Asset owners and buy-side users have the ability to share all their FX account data and documents with their respective liquidity providers and FXall using the Saphyre technology.
Elsewhere, LSEG’s Refinitiv FXall collaborated with Tradeweb in August to launch a new FX swap workflow solution for local currency emerging markets. The solution links trading workflows in local currency EM bonds and FX swaps through a single user interface (UI). Mutual clients are able to buy or sell an emerging markets bond via Tradeweb’s request for quote (RFQ) or request for market (RFM) protocols. Users can then hedge the local currency risk by executing an FX swap trade via direct connectivity to FXall.