Deutsche retains top ranking in global foreign exchange market; Citi jumps to second place overall in benchmark Euromoney survey

Electronic trading has transformed foreign exchange into a $4 trillion a day flow monster, delivering record revenues to those with scale. But by focusing on building their own internal platforms, banks have left themselves open to attack from the high-frequency traders, who pick them off at will and force them to hold more risk. Now the banks are fighting back. Hamish Risk reports.

The Euromoney Foreign Exchange survey is the most comprehensive quantitative and qualitative annual study available on the FX markets. The FX market is an unregulated OTC market and there are no reliable, aggregated, global statistics made available against which to benchmark the survey outside the tri-annual BIS studies. The survey also excludes a number of categories of market participant, which means that the total volume reported by the poll is not and not intended to be an accurate reflection of total global foreign exchange activity. Euromoney aims to capture client price-taking activity only. However, given the geographical and participant-type spread represented by the poll, Euromoney believes that the survey provides an accurate proxy for trends in the major areas of activity polled and accurately discerns the relative performance of the banks ranked, particularly over periods of two or more years.

When Euromoney calls to book appointments with the heads of the top 10 FX banks before the results of this year’s poll appear, the typical response from their press officers is: “Can we get back to you, he is travelling in Asia right now.” This tells you all you need to know about growth in the foreign exchange markets, with Asia as its new frontier.

The dominance of the top-three FX banks is being challenged by the chasing pack of dealers. It isn’t just a case of luring clients onto their internal trading platforms. Clients want different things, and multi-dealer exchanges are beginning to prosper. Tom Osborn reports.

Competition heats up in the global foreign exchange industry.

It was no surprise to see them improve FX market share this year after emerging from the banking crisis relatively unscathed, writes Trevor Carr.

SEB, Danske and Handelsbanken rank in the most improved banks, writes Trevor Carr.

In 2007 Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays stood head to head, as they tussled for control of ABN Amro. In the end, RBS won that scrap but Barclays has been winning most battles ever since. In foreign exchange, the two banks have developed very similar global markets franchises; they shared a very similar footprint, spoke to a similar set of clients, and also established themselves as top-five players.