It would be difficult to give this award to any other bank this year. From the six foreign exchange award categories available, UBS won three, and it was painfully close to winning a further two.
Different banks naturally have different areas of client focus, and that drives the areas where they offer the best services, both manually and electronically. Barclays Capital, for example, has given itself a real boost in electronic trading by building some of the fastest pricing and execution software.
Citigroup remains ahead of the pack with its user-friendly corporate and institutional risk management tools. As well as all the standard dealer-to-client trading interfaces and models, CitiFX Chief Dealer, its system for large corporates, and FXCross, its anonymous crossing network, are perfectly tailored for their designated client bases.
While its basic trading functionality may be slightly less sophisticated than that on offer from the biggest firms, Royal Bank of Scotland also stands out for its specialized small-ticket trading tool Micropay and for its crossing network, which is very similar to Citigroup’s.
JPMorgan has worked hard recently to integrate all of its pre-trade, trading and post-trade services in forex, and it can boast a good set of products across the board.