Citi has hired Si Wang as a senior EM FX options trader concentrating on South Africa, Poland, Czech Republic and Israel.

Standard Bank claims it is the first bank in Africa to implement systematic FX liquidity management

Since Société Générale announced the launch of Alpha FX, its new single-dealer platform it has selected Option Computer’s DealHub as its eFX price distribution system for the platform.

Following a record-breaker of a day after Thanksgiving, CLS settled a daily average of 882,669 instructions in November, up 9.6% from October, when it reported 805,002.

In a clever piece of branding FXecosystem, the low latency infrastructure provider, has named its new service Cable 2.0.

It has continued to be a difficult year for currency funds, according to Parker FX index data for October.

Another week, another platform upgrade.

CLS set a new volume record day Friday 26 November, owing to the Thanksgiving public holiday on Thursday.

Saxo Bank has been cleared by Finanstilsynet (Danish FSA) of allegations of investor protection failures this week, following the results of an independent investigation by UK consulting firm, Oliver Wyman.

CLS and Traiana say that all eight founder members of their joint venture, CLS Aggregation Service (CLSAS), are now live with the system. The eight banks are Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse, Citi, Deutsche, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and Royal Bank of Scotland.

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State Street Global Markets has released the results of its State Street Investor Confidence Index for November.

UBS’s recruitment drive continues apace.

Citi has hired Franco Autizi and Francesca Rodeghiero for its FX corporate sales team in Milan. Both report to Holger Achnitz, head of European corporate FX sales, and will work with Linda Tommasini, the mainstay of Citi’s Italian sales for the last decade.

Thomson Reuters, CME Group report November average daily FX spot volumes.

CME has appointed Roger Rutherford as managing director, global head of FX products. Based in London, he will report to Derek Sammann, MD FX and interest swaps, and will be responsible for leading the company’s global FX business line.

ETF Securities has hired Kris Walesby as European head of capital markets. He will be responsible for managing the relationships with the market-maker community to improve the liquidity of ETFS products.

The first retail FX IPO since before the credit crisis looks to have gone well.

It wasn’t a boring week: Ireland’s bailout, WikiLeaks (now with a US bank in its sights), snow-bound Europe, CFTC data now net Euro short, Trichet...

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One of our contacts wanted to draw theweeklyFiX’s attention to a document he had seen from the CME that reads: ‘As per the normal review of market volatility to ensure adequate collateral coverage, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc., Clearing House Risk Management staff approved the performance bond requirements for the following products listed below.’

Another week, another four big figures lower for EUR/USD. The rally after the Irish bailout lasted less than a day because nothing has been agreed yet and negotiations are dragging on. Eurozone peripheral concerns still dominate the news and North Korea is adding to the risk-negative sentiment.

Citi now offers streaming non-deliverable forward (NDF) pricing on its trading platform, Velocity. NDFs in 14 currencies are available including BRL, CNY, INR, RUB and TWD. The move is said to have been well received by the bank’s customer base.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Research has announced that Athanasios Vamvakidis will be joining the group as head of European G10 foreign FX strategy, reporting to David Woo, head of global rates and currencies research. Vamvakidis will be based in London.

Integral has hired Bruce Wolf as a managing director of the sales team. He will be based in New York.

If you have sliding fingers, you’ll be pleased to hear that Gain Capital has launched an iPhone trading app for Forex.com worldwide at last, only slightly behind the other big retail brokers.

Barely a week goes by without a bank or ECN launching or upgrading a platform, so we weren’t cock-a-hoop when the news that Societe Generale had launched an FX single-dealer platform landed on our desks last week.

Despite the volume of the ‘currency war’ rhetoric, the G20 meeting in Seoul turned out to be of little consequence for markets. Less was heard of another strand to Seoul proceedings that will have some influence, on so-called Sifis, but the speed of progress is likely to match that of drying cement.