Hotspot FX – the multi-dealer platform owned by Knight Capital – said average daily FX volume rose 20% month-on-month in February, and was the only trading venue that publicly released data to report positive year-on-year growth.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch has hired Guillaume Huteau to head its CEEMEA emerging markets FX options trading desk, a source tells EuromoneyFXNews.

The Norges Bank is in an unenviable position as it grapples with the strength of its currency, but it is likely to have to put up with a strong krone as long as oil prices remain elevated.

Tullett Prebon, the interdealer broker, is to launch an electronic foreign exchange platform, according to media reports.

Louis Curran, co-head of FX hedge fund sales at Nomura, has left the bank as part of a series of cuts to its fixed income division as it seeks to save $1.2 billion in expenditure.

Westpac Banking Corp has hired Dean Heiden for its FX institutional sales team in London, a company spokesperson has confirmed.

Angus Greig, a Sterling trader on Deutsche Bank’s London spot desk, has left the bank after 16 years, according to two people familiar with the situation.

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.

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.

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.

Signs that China has been using its FX reserves to hoard crude could change the dynamics of the currency market.

Daily turnover in the FX markets might have peaked at $5 trillion per day in October, according to a quarterly report published by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), which estimates daily FX activity, at the end of 2011.

EBS, the electronic interdealer FX broker owned by ICAP, has appointed Gil Mandelzis as its new chief executive, to replace David Rutter, who has left the firm, ICAP confirmed in a statement on Monday.

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?

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.

The net short position in the Japanese yen has increased markedly as currency traders on the CME continue to abandon long positions.

Marex Spectron, the fixed-income and commodities broker controlled by a group of former Lehman Brothers executives, has commenced the global build out of its FX business, with a series of key hires in London, Singapore and Geneva.

The rally in asset markets that continued to the end of February was accompanied by an increase in reserve accumulation by global reserve managers that should benefit small currencies.

The biggest casualty in the currency market from the slowdown in China is likely be the euro as the country has less need to diversify its reserves away from the dollar.

Norfolk County Council Pension Fund has shortlisted four currency managers for a dynamic hedging mandate of its £850 million equity portfolio tendered in October, a council spokesperson has confirmed.

For all the talk that the recent liquidity injection by the European Central Bank (ECB) would spark a euro-funded carry trade, the Canadian dollar leads the funding currency rankings.

Saxo Bank failed to convert a 24% rise in monthly FX volumes in the second half into increased revenues as a result of the squeeze in margins across the FX industry, according to estimates from FX industry analysis site, LeapRate.

New leadership and a revamped single-dealer platform (SDP) have injected fresh impetus into UBS’s FX business during the past 12 months.

Rotation back to US-led global growth is likely to trigger a seismic shift in the way that currencies trade.

Goldman Sachs has laid off three people from its London FX sales desk, sources familiar with the matter inform EuromoneyFXNews.

Investors banking on stop-loss orders being filled anywhere close to their level if EURCHF trades down through the Swiss National Bank’s SFr1.20 floor should be prepared for disappointment.

The Swiss National Bank has found that the trading by members of its enlarged board of governors and their families did not breach its regulations, a result it will hope draws a line under the trading scandal that has engulfed the central bank.

Average daily spot FX volumes on interdealer broker platforms EBS and Thomson Reuters rose in February.

BNP Paribas has unveiled Cortex FX, its new single-dealer platform (SDP), which it believes will compete with the offerings of the largest players in the market.

The CME Group, the world’s largest regulated exchange for currency futures, saw record open interest in currency futures contracts on Monday, after it reported rising FX volumes in February – though overall FX volumes are down year-on-year.