Keith Underwood has been hired by Lloyds Banking Group as head of FX trading for the Americas to be based in New York, EuromoneyFXNews can reveal.

Luis Aguilar, a senior commissioner at the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), is calling for a one-off alert to warn retail investors about the potential risks of trading off-exchange foreign-currency contracts, according to Compliance Reporter, a sister publication of EuromoneyFXNews, citing Reuters.

Oanda, the Canadian FX platform, has opened an office in London as a centre for its Oanda Europe subsidiary. The firm, which has a strong retail base, is hoping to attract more local institutional clients, managing director Anthony Broadbent tells EuromoneyFXNews.

Short-term players dumped the euro on Wednesday, closing out long positions after Greek prime minister George Papandreou won a parliamentary confidence vote, which raises hopes that a €79 billion ($113 billion) bailout package will go ahead.

Richard Elliott, Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s head of electronic foreign-exchange options trading, has left the bank.

Unified Global Solutions has launched a new FX algorithm platform that is intended to bring higher-frequency currency trading to the masses.

FX volumes executed by Japanese banks have shown a marked improvement in recent years. The biggest improvers in market share in Euromoney’s FX survey this year were Nomura and Mizuho Financial Group, registering increases of 97% and 68% respectively. That saw Nomura rise four places to 14th and Mizuho rise 11 places to 23rd. This rapid improvement is due to one dominant factor: doing more business with real money clients.

Euromoney surveyed the FX options market for the first time in 2011 as part of the annual FX survey. Deutsche Bank (with a 17.32% market share) showed itself to be a powerhouse in this market, as it has been in the spot and forward markets for the past seven years.

The euro has risen against the dollar amid expectations that interest rates in Europe are likely to rise faster than in the US, while the yen remained steady after Japan’s prime minister survived a vote of no confidence.

JPMorgan has appointed Andrés Choussy as global head of FX clearing, in a newly created position at the firm, sources tell EuromoneyFXNews. He was previously head of North America CDS clearing.

HSBC has made some key new hires and reshuffled some of its senior FX management team, EuromoneyFXNews can reveal.

Kevin Connors, the former co-head of global G10 foreign exchange sales at Goldman Sachs, has been hired by Bank of America Merrill Lynch as its new global head of FX sales, according to three people familiar with the matter.

SuperDerivatives, the derivatives pricing vendor, says that it intends to roll out its FX options trading platform by the end of 2011.

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s latest Commitments of Traders report has shown an aggressive pruning of short US dollar positions, based on International Money Market data.

With electronic trading more important than ever, Zar Amrolia, Deutsche Bank’s global head of foreign exchange, says that investment in people and technology will keep the bank in the driving seat with Autobahn. He discusses the relative merits of single-dealer and multi-dealer platforms as Euromoney’s 2011 FX survey goes live.

The key theme for FX pricing last year was normalisation, say fund managers. Gone are the days of sky-high spreads and vanishing market makers; stability is the new status quo. But has liquidity provision from the banks actually got better? The answer seems to depend very much on when and where you're trading.

It was all smiles in the foreign exchange markets last week after the US Treasury proposed exempting FX forwards and swaps from clearing and trading rules contained within the Dodd-Frank Act. But the smiles have turned to frowns this week after the industry’s success in arguing that default risk in FX markets was “relatively small” was shot down by Stanford University’s Darrell Duffie.

The dollar’s status as the world’s pre-eminent reserve currency is under threat as the country faces a growing budgetary crisis, says Jerome Booth, head of research at emerging markets asset manager, Ashmore Investments.