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This column – indeed Euromoney as a whole – has always promoted FX as a key asset, but that doesn’t mean we shy away from the issues that portray the industry in a poor light.

It’s been so quiet – I reckon one quarter of the European FX market is down at its chalet in Verbier for the Tour de France and another quarter was doing L’Etape du Tour this week – it was good to see a bit of action in the English pound/Scottish pound market. Normally this inactive cross trades at 1.00/1.05 – Scottish notes are always discounted because they are hard to use south of the border – but the offer moved out after the University of Glasgow published an analysis of Scotland’s GDP. What a shocker it was.

I received details of a charity concert being performed at Leadenhall Market in the City of London next week. The show will be performed by a band called Client Number 9 – whose members all work in the Lloyd’s insurance market – in aid of the The Mark Evison Foundation and Welsh Guards Afghanistan Fund (see http://www.clientnumber9.co.uk/index.htm).

It’s been a mixed week for Saxo. It looked like the bank’s cycling team would not win this year’s Tour de France after one of its most popular riders, Jens Voight, had a horrific crash on Tuesday. On the plus side, Jens isn’t seriously injured and the team bounced back to rip apart Wednesday’s stage to Le Grand Bornand. Fränk Schleck took the stage victory and his younger brother Andy moved into second overall on the general classification, so he’s still in with a chance of victory.

Inter-dealer broker Icap says that activity is picking up in its non-deliverable forwards business on its EBS platform. “We have seen a steady increase in global counterparty participation, particularly over the last few months. Over 135 banks, evenly dispersed among our three major trading centres in Asia-Pacific, London and New York, are now live to trade NDFs on the platform,” says Chris Soriano, NDFs product manager at Icap electronic broking.

Jack Jeffery has left options specialist SuperDerivatives, where he was chief operating officer. Press reports have linked him with various jobs elsewhere – including bond platform MTS – although sources close to Jeffery say he has not decided anything yet. His departure is believed to have been extremely amicable and the same sources say that the company has asked him to retain a seat on its board.

As reported here back in March, Standard Chartered Bank has appointed Adrian Walkling as its global head of financial institutions sales. He will be based in Singapore and report to David Carr, global head of sales. Walkling joins StanChart from UBS, where he was co-head of fixed income, currencies and commodities for Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Trading platform provider Caplin Systems has appointed Mike Hill to the newly created role of director of marketing. Hill will report directly to Paul Caplin, the company’s chief executive.

It may well have lost loads of dosh for the past three quarters, but Morgan Stanley is still waving its cheque book around as it seeks to build up its trading businesses. First up is Jack DiMaio, who is joining the firm as its global head of interest rate, credit and currency trading. Further down the pecking order, the bank is believed to have lured Stuart Sopp from Citi Singapore to take up a senior spot-trading role in its Hong Kong office.

Morgan Stanley splashes the cash...

Conor Ogle, who joined ABN Amro in 1996, has joined HSBC as a business manager. He reports to Joe Norena, the bank’s new global head of FX business management and development (reported here first, People moves: HSBC hires FX ‘COO’ ).

Buzz in the market is that Bank of America/Merrill Lynch is continuing to hire for its FX option team. It is meant to have lured Chris Bae from Goldman Sachs in Asia, where he traded equity derivatives. Which hardly makes him a face in FX, but banks work in mysterious ways. There’s no comment from BofA/Merrill, possibly because it has yet to inform its existing team. I asked Goldman, but they said: “No comment”. But then I wasn’t likely to get a much of a response when there’s apparently been an outbreak of swine flu at the behemoth of Fleet Street.