Lloyds and Swedbank have become the latest shareholders of CLS, which brings the total number to 72 shareholders.

It’s that time of year. It’s important that business gets off to a steady start but there are also all those appraisals to write and remuneration to negotiate. It is never an easy process but, from what we are hearing, it could be more fraught this year.

Volumes for December naturally took a nosedive because of the Christmas period.

There are few factors by which retail platforms can differentiate themselves but the provision of education and research will be an important one as differences in pricing, commissions, and latency narrow.

With a sizeable percentage of FX market participants taking an extended break, volumes have, as expected, generally been on the light side this week. Coupled with diverse news flow this has led to whippy markets. One head of spot described the week as “periods of monotony punctuated by mayhem”.

Further confirmation of 2010 as a difficult year for the returns of global currency managers came from Parker FX Index data for November received this week.

Will South Africa join the growing club of interventionist central banks?

We consider whether yield curves will steepen and overnight rates be raised, and reach a conclusion as to the likely order for four major currencies.

There’s never a dull moment in FX – directly or indirectly. Perhaps the biggest event of the year was May’s flash crash. The CFTC and SEC joined forces afterwards to see if they could find out why it happened. And in the closing month of the year, we still really don’t know – perhaps it will have to remain one of those puzzles that will never be solved.

It is possible to find something to back any view on the markets you can think of in the 2011 FX outlooks seen by theweeklyFiX.

Our faith that the EUR will somehow by held together by the efforts of European leaders is reinforced by the expanding role of the Chinese in buying European sovereign debt.

Barely a year old, CitiFX Wire is expanding its coverage into Asia with a new hire.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch has announced the launch of electronic FX options trading capabilities for institutional and corporate clients. Part of BAML’s overall eFX offering, called MLFX, the new platform allows clients to get two-way dealable prices and execute trades live or with delta exchange. Clients are able to trade vanilla options and vanilla strategies on G10 currencies and crosses globally, 24 hours a day, six days a week.

Michael King of the Bank for International Settlements and Dagfinn Rime of Norges Bank have published a paper this week that has some extra data on BIS’s Triennial Survey, but doesn’t leave anyone much better informed.

FXall claims the release of version 4.0 of its trading platform brings together key benefits for all their clients: active traders, asset managers, banks and corporate treasurers. The release integrates functionality and liquidity with Citi’s former active platform (LavaFX) – which FXall purchased at the beginning of 2010 – within FXall’s aggregator. Liquidity has been replicated, along with access to new order types including time-weighted average price (Twap), pegging, one cancels the other (OCO), market and stop-loss orders.

City Index has announced the release of a new version of its iPhone spread-betting and CFD trading application, City Trading. The application was first launched in October 2009 and was claimed to be the first iPhone FX trading app to provide clients with full and secure access to their trading accounts on the go.

Gain Capital has added nine new currency pairs and six equity index contracts for difference to its platform Forex.com.

CLS has announced that Banco Santander has become a settlement member of CLS Bank, bringing the total number of members to 61.

Hotspot FX has released its volume figures for November – and they’re good. It was Hotspot’s second best month for both average daily volume and total client volume.

Hot on the heels of the FXCM IPO, Gain Capital’s initial public offering of stock started trading on Wednesday.

The last real trading day of the decade and, despite this morning’s downgrade of Ireland, the only piece of real data should ensure that the euro sees the Noughties out at least semi-positively: December’s IFO business climate has reported its highest level – 109.9 – since German re-unification.

Citi’s corporate solutions group has released analysis of a survey it had undertaken of the risk management used by corporations.

Trust in governments is declining, not least because to bail out banks on the backs of tax-payers is creating a political backlash. Yield curves are steepening.

It felt like being invited up to the cool kids’ party, but we still missed the coolest of them.

At a time when none of the G4 currencies look particularly attractive, a shortlist is emerging of the minor currencies to buy.

RBC Capital Markets has hired Patrick Bauné as head of corporate and institutional FX sales, Europe, and corporate FX sales, Asia.

FX dealing technology software provider Velsys has hired Rob Gray and Brian Kelly, both former colleagues at Saxo Bank.

CME has appointed Edemir Pinto, CEO of the Brazilian exchange Bmf&Bovespa, to the company's board of directors until 2012.

Alpari told us back in August that it was about to add another institutional offering. It seems the project is well it is under way with the recent hire of Mark Davison as global head of institutional sales.

Standard Chartered has hired Ramesh Swamy to the newly created role of head of financial institutions sales for south and southeast Asia. Based in Singapore, Swamy is responsible for sales across all financial institutions for FX, rates and commodities.