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While there were a few signs of the impact of the credit crunch – a couple of the normal players were absent and the standard of freebies was marginally lower than in 2008 – it was pretty much business as usual at the Euromoney Forex Forum.
I for one certainly learnt something at the panel I moderated on the changing nature of the market. The topic of counterparty credit was one of the issues debated and, much to my surprise, 83% of the audience said it was a major concern, seemingly completely destroying my recent argument that it wasn’t. However, as only 48% of the same respondents then said they would be prepared to pay to use a central counterparty to mitigate credit risk, I’ll cling to my view that the importance of the topic will diminish, unless of course the buy side can get the sell side to pay for them. Given the current revenue pressures, I don’t think there’s too much chance of that happening.
Walking around the Forum, one old face I bumped into was Gavin Wells, who used to head Citi’s FX e-commerce, but who now seems to be enjoying his life as a consultant.