ICor Brokerage Limited, the 50:50 joint venture between Reuters and ICor Brokerage, has launched its foreign exchange options online dealing system in Europe.
ICor Brokerage FX Options provides electronic broking of FX options to the foreign exchange market via the Reuters Dealing 3000 platform.
Fifteen European banks have gone live with the system and an additional nine banks are expected to begin trading within the next two months, reports the company. Trading is currently available in seven currency pairs: EUR/GBP, EUR/USD, EUR/JPY, GBP/USD, USD/CHF, AUD/USD, and USD/JPY.
The service has been extensively trialled in Asia Pacific since January 2002, where ICor currently has 21 banks trading and is in the process of installing at several other Asia Pacific institutions.
Ian Rochelle, head of vanilla options trading, Bank of America, comments: "The ICor system is one of the best electronic trading platforms currently on the market - easy to use, purely electronic and has good functionality."
Laurent Piedois, director FX options, WestLB, adds: "After using the ICor system in Asia I was impressed with its ease of use and liquidity. I am eager to be able to use it in Europe as well."
The European launch is the second phase in a global roll-out which will extend to North America in September 2002. The company also plans to extend its services to incorporate the interest rate derivative market, adding interest rate swap and interest rate options broking during the fourth quarter 2002.
The all-electronic Icor service faces competition from the hybrid voice and screen TFS-Icap/Volbroker combination, and rival platform GFInet.