A first wave of seven leading banks have joined with corporate currency trading portal FXall to develop a shared messaging hub for notification of prime brokerage deals.
The banks participating in the initiative are ABN Amro, Bank of America, Credit Agricole Indosuez, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, HSBC, Lehman Brothers and The Royal Bank of Scotland. The prime brokerage functionality will be made available through FXall Settlement Centre, which has 150 signed customers and already handles thousands of messages every day. The system will be available for use for all prime brokerage trades - regardless of whether they are executed on FXall or through other channels.
Umran Zia, managing director and global head of FX prime brokerage services at Bank of America, says FXall is the logical choice to build an industry solution for prime brokerage. "They have a robust network infrastructure in place, and the success of Settlement Centre demonstrates their ability to deliver industry standards for messaging."
Phil Weisberg, chief executive officer of FXall, says participants on the portal are increasingly looking beyond execution in favour of industry solutions that can solve complex issues of workflow. "This is exactly what FXall provides through Settlement Centre, and it helps explain the tremendous momentum behind our company."
FXall's daily trading volume recently reached the $16 billion mark. In July, it was announced that the multi-bank platform has achieved positive cash flow.