The response in the FX market to the more upbeat tone from the Federal Reserve points to the sea-change that has seen fundamentals take over as the driving force behind moves in the dollar.

When you are the world’s biggest FX bank, running the most complex derivatives book in the market, a year such as 2011 presents the following challenge: offering constant liquidity in all products in all market conditions while avoiding all of the minefields in its path.

In 1990, Lloyds Bank was ranked seventh in the Euromoney FX poll, in what was essentially then a survey of corporates. The proceeding years haven’t been all that kind to Lloyds in FX, and by 2008 the bank had fallen outside the top 50.

Since 2008, Barclays Capital has narrowed the margin on the market leader Deutsche Bank in the Euromoney FX survey from 12.58% to 4.89%. On average, the gap has narrowed 2.56% each year. Can it beat the average this year and topple Deutsche?

Anil Prasad, Citi’s global head of FX and local markets, believes he is close to successfully executing his three-year plan: to take his FX division back to the top of the Euromoney FX league table.

Despite 2011 being a poor year for the hedge fund community, Morgan Stanley’s co-heads of FX Stephen Glynn and Senad Prusac are upbeat about their division’s performance during the past 12 months.

HSBC, Europe’s largest bank, said FX revenues rose above $3 billion for the first time since 2008, as client activity outside of Europe grew and the bank became more effective at managing FX risk. The bank said in its annual report that market volatility during 2011, caused by geopolitical tensions, eurozone concerns and interventions by central banks, resulted in an improved trading environment for foreign exchange compared with 2010.

Greece finally received a second bailout package on Tuesday, but for those concerned that Athens could still slide into a disorderly default, opportunities abound in the options market.

UniCredit is a misunderstood European banking powerhouse, says Bernd Bröker, the recently instated global head of G10 FX. He puts that down to its complex merger history that is sometimes difficult for outsiders to understand and piece together.

BNP Paribas thinks it has an image problem. But Adrian Boehler, less than two-months into his tenure as global head of institutional sales at the French bank, says he likes what he sees.

legislators last week, the FX industry needs to turn some of its attention away from the clearing of options and NDFs to the margining of non-cleared forwards and swaps.

While many in the market are busy revising their forecast for the AUD higher, HSBC is warning that the currency is vulnerable to the rising importance of CNH, the offshore renminbi.

Daily foreign exchange turnover averaged $1,972 billion in the UK during October 2011, 3% lower than in April 2011, though 17% higher than a year earlier, according to the Bank of England’s semi-annual turnover survey for the Foreign Exchange Joint Standing Committee.

The ongoing ebb and flow of the European sovereign debt crisis and its impact on the underlying stability of bank balance sheets has focussed the minds of buy-side clients when it comes to choosing their FX counterparties.

The migration from voice trading to electronic execution in the foreign exchange markets continues to build momentum. And the results of EuromoneyFXNews e-trading survey show that buy-side clients expect to increase the level of electronic execution even more in the future.

Traders on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange took their bets against the euro to fresh record levels as the single currency rallied last week.

Foreign exchange buy-side clients continue to move towards full adoption of electronic trading, according to a survey of buy side currency traders, conducted by EuromoneyFXNews, which has been published today.

Icap, the world’s largest inter-dealer broker, has tested its systems for the break-up of the single currency.

Lloyds Bank has hired the former European CEO of MF Global as head of trading for its wholesale banking and markets division, according to an internal memo seen by EuromoneyFXNews.

The Japanese government on Tuesday increased the amount it is allowed to borrow from the market to finance foreign exchange intervention, raising speculation that Tokyo could be planning to intervene to weaken the yen over the holiday period.

Average daily trading volumes on multi-dealer platform, FX Alliance, grew over 50% year-on-year in the third quarter but the firm's pre-IPO statement shows average transaction fees, its main source of revenue generation, continue to fall.

Increased FX volumes and volatility, due to the escalation of the eurozone debt crisis and fears over a global slowdown, led to much higher revenues at major FX banks in the third quarter, according to consultancy firm Coalition.

Emerging market currency indexes bounced back to positive returns in October after a turbulent September, although returns have lagged behind their equity counterparts, according to data from an independent index provider.

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Bank’s monopoly under threat after the launch of rival products by Citigroup and Morgan Stanley.

High-net-worth individuals are boosting their allocations to currency investments at a time when they are reducing their exposures to alternative investments overall, as they seek more liquid instruments and better returns than are available from traditional asset classes.

Sterling may be the most susceptible currency to a global economic slowdown because of the twin impact of severe fiscal austerity measures at home and reliance on European export markets that are likely to falter due to an expected deterioration in global growth, says Morgan Stanley in a report published September 1.

High-frequency trading firms and banks could improve their trading performance by up to 30% and increase reliability of their systems in co-location data facilities by using so-called ‘submersion cooled’ technology, according an interview with the co-founder of manufacturer Hardcore Computers by High-Frequency Trading Review (HFTR).

Some 94% of buy-side and sell-side firms now use liquidity aggregation in their FX trading systems, compared with 65% last year, according to a survey conducted by StreamBase Systems, a Lexington, Massachusetts-based technology firm that builds systems for real-time data streaming.

Citigroup has made 3 new redundancies in its FX division in London.