A new venue for large spot FX trades has set out plans for its roll-out into the market, beginning with a pilot phase due to launch next month.
Named LoopFX the venue has high hopes of becoming the new liquidity venue for large spot FX trades using a “revolutionising” centralised peer-to-peer-to-bank model which matches peers with each other and with bank interest.
Using the platform, buy-side firms can identify matches of large trades in excess of $10 million with peer firms which simultaneously allows banks to “safely” show axes. The venue claims to minimise both risk and cost by forcing matches to execute at an independent market mid-rate. It is built as an open architecture technology in the hope that it can integrate current workflows on existing trading platforms with minimal legal hurdles.
The management team is led by Blair Hawthorne, formerly abrdn, and also boasts former individuals from across State Street, UBS, Molten Markets, American Express, 360T, and CME Group.
“After months of speaking to more than 30 large financial institutions, and gaining significant expressions of interest, we believe we have the right solution to the problem of identifying, in real-time, the optimum counterparty when executing large spot FX trades,” said Hawthorne in a statement. “LoopFX improves both execution outcomes and Best Execution processes, a material improvement for all market participants.”