Lead Stories

Deutsche Bank Wins Euromoney FX Poll For Ninth Consecutive Year
Dow Jones
Deutsche Bank AG has fended off stiff competition from emerging-markets giant Citigroup Inc to snag the title of the world’s biggest currency-dealing bank for the ninth straight year, according to a closely watched survey released Wednesday.
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Citigroup sues Barclays over Lehman currency trade clearing
Dow Jones Newswires
Citigroup is claiming that Barclays refuses to cover losses of more than $141m it sustained from clearing Lehman Brothers currency trades just before the investment bank collapsed.
jlne.ws/10uAcym

Rates Reining in Aussie Seen Beating Kiwi Peashooter: Currencies
Bloomberg
Australia’s interest-rate cuts will prove more successful than New Zealand’s intervention in foreign-exchange markets at curbing gains that made their currencies the world’s best performers since 2008.
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Lead Stories

New Zealand’s central bank intervenes in currency
AP
New Zealand’s central bank has intervened in the currency market for the first time in five years to try to curb the local dollar’s rise.
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Argentina offers tax amnesty for undeclared cash
Associated Press via Yahoo! News
Argentina’s government announced new measures on Tuesday intended to suck up undeclared dollars in response to growing pressure to abruptly devalue the nation’s currency.
jlne.ws/YEWb5N

ECB’s Parking Fees Show Its Weakness
Bloomberg
European Central Bank President Mario Draghi surprised markets and analysts last week by saying the central bank is open to an unconventional stimulus tactic: pressuring banks to lend by charging them a fee for parking cash at the ECB.
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Lead Stories

FX prime brokers welcome CFTC relief
Risk.net
Prime brokers are breathing a sigh of relief after a last-minute no-action letter from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has exempted them from certain external business conduct rules under the Dodd-Frank Act.
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CFTC’s Division of Swap Dealer and Intermediary Oversight Issues Time-Limited No-Action Letter Providing Relief Surrounding Certain Foreign Exchange Transactions with a Settlement Cycle of No More than Seven Local Business Days
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) Division of Swap Dealer and Intermediary Oversight (DSIO) today issued a time-limited no-action letter that provides swap dealers and major swap participants with relief from compliance with External Business Conduct Standards rules in connection with certain foreign exchange transactions that have a settlement cycle of no more than seven local business days.
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***JM: For detailed information about this issue, visit MarketsReformWiki at jlne.ws/xYRcKL

Study finds foreign exchange trades give information edge to banks
Alice Ross, Currencies Correspondent – FT.com
A study has shown that investment banks can make windfall profits by copying customers’ foreign exchange trades, raising fresh concerns about the lack of transparency in the world’s largest financial market.
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Offshore Yuan Drops Most Since 2011 as Forex Scrutiny Stepped Up
Bloomberg
The yuan traded in Hong Kong fell the most in almost 19 months on speculation China will slow currency gains after regulators said they would step up scrutiny of the foreign-exchange positions of banks and companies.
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Lead Stories

China Magazine Floats Idea of Selling Parts of Currency Reserves
Bloomberg
China has the option of selling to the public some assets from its $3.44 trillion foreign-exchange reserves, according to an opinion piece in Caixin Century Weekly, a Chinese magazine.
jlne.ws/134NiSm

Denmark’s Krone Defense Drives Benchmark Lending Rate Lower
Bloomberg
Denmark’s central bank lowered its benchmark lending rate following a cut from the European Central Bank as policy makers in Copenhagen defend the krone’s peg to the euro.
jlne.ws/134Ni4Q

Euro Advances as Nowotny Says ECB Negative Rate Signs Over-Read
Bloomberg
The euro gained versus the dollar and yen after European Central Bank Governing Council member Ewald Nowotny said markets over-interpreted a signal yesterday that the ECB would consider a deposit rate below zero.
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Lead Stories

Thai Government Seeks Rate Cut Big Enough to Halt Baht Gains
Bloomberg
Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s administration is pushing the central bank to cut its key interest rate to slow foreign inflows that drove the baht to its strongest level in 16 years last month.
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Bank Of Japan Minutes Show Agreement To Go Bold
MarketWatch
Minutes from the Bank of Japan’s milestone policy meeting on April 3-4, released Thursday, showed the central bank’s board members agreed that the public saw its actions as “insufficient” up to that point.
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For Germans There Is No Alternative to the Euro
Bloomberg
Nobody asked the German people if they wanted the euro. Now, almost 15 years after Europe introduced its common currency, a new political party has emerged to campaign for a return to the deutschmark.
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Lead Stories

Special Report: Kuroda’s calculus – How the Bank of Japan staged its big bang
Reuters via Yahoo! News
By Leika Kihara TOKYO – From the moment he assumed the job in March, Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda had a number in mind: 9. The number had nothing to do with the scale of the bank’s stimulus plan, which the market had been buzzing about. It was a vote target.
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What the ECB can and cannot do to heal the eurozone
Gavyn Davies – FT.com
The recent rise in eurozone equities, along with a sharp further decline in peripheral bond spreads, has occurred in the face of continuing disappointing data on economic activity. Real GDP in the eurozone seems to be declining at a 2 per cent annualised rate in the current quarter, and the pivotal German economy is showing worrying signs of being dragged into the mire with the troubled south (see this earlier blog).
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Why the Baltic states are no model
Martin Wolf – FT.com
The idea that suffering is good for both the soul and the economy is widely held. To “austerians”, a financial crisis is a mark of moral turpitude, to be redeemed only by suffering. But an economy exists on earth, not in the afterlife. Those who advocate the path of austerity need to show that it is not just moral, but effective. How is this to be done? By pointing to successful examples. In Europe, that example is often the Baltics and, above all, Latvia, a crisis-hit country that was rescued and is now – we are told – blooming. Is it? And, if it is, does this bring lessons for others? The answer to both questions is: only up to a point.
jlne.ws/Ym103P

Lead Stories

High-Frequency Traders Face Speed Limits
Financial Times via CNBC
High-frequency traders are facing “speed limits” for the first time on a major trading platform, under a proposal that is being touted as a template for a regulatory clampdown on computer-driven activity. EBS, one of the two dominant trading platforms in the foreign exchange market, is suggesting scrapping the principle of “first in, first out” trading, which it says gives an unfair advantage to the fastest computers and has led to an arms race of spending on technology.
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Hong Kong Peg to Yuan Is Still ‘Many Years’ Off, Greenwood Says
Bloomberg
Hong Kong’s dollar peg shields the local economy from external shocks and it will be “many years” before a switch to a yuan link can be considered, according to John Greenwood, architect of the city’s exchange-rate system.
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The FX Market Of The Moscow Exchange Sets New Records
On April 25, 2013 a new trading record was set on the Moscow Exchange’s FX market. By the end of the trading day, the FX market turnover reached USD29.66 billion (RUB936.88 billion), out of which RUB393.24 billion and RUB543.64 billion were made due to spot and swap trades respectively.
jlne.ws/ZKzInA

Lead Stories

Gain Capital Rebuffs FXCM Takeover, Buys Global Futures & Forex
Bloomberg
Gain Capital Holdings Inc. , a provider of online foreign-exchange trading services, rejected a proposed acquisition by FXCM Inc. and instead agreed to purchase Global Futures & Forex Ltd.
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Currency Trading Getting Equitized
Gregg Wirth – Traders Magazine
Foreign exchange and equities are two distinct asset classes, each with their own set of trading procedures, customer demands and levels of execution. But that is not stopping trading desks at the nation’s largest asset management firms from nudging the two closer together. Often at the behest of clients, asset managers are coming to the realization that trading in these seemingly disparate types of financial instruments needs to be at least synchronized, if not also overseen by the same trading desk.
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Hong Kong to launch interbank rate for offshore renminbi
Josh Noble in Hong Kong – FT.com
An interbank rate for offshore renminbi is to be launched in Hong Kong, a move that will help investors and goods traders hedge their exposure to the Chinese currency.
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