Source: Reuters
EBS and Reuters today announce the launch of a new benchmark page for spot FX price fixings to provide reference rates twice a day.
Reuters EBS Spot Fixing shows spot FX price fixings for 11 currency pairs, and will publish daily at 11:00 and 16:00 London time.
The Bank of England currently publishes the page . This displays spot market fixings, used as the reference rates in International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) agreements for the swaps market, and by FX dealers for customer compliance and transactions. This fixing will no longer be priced from 18 December 2006.
EBS and Reuters were asked by the Bank of England's FX Joint Standing Committee to provide 'Reuters EBS Spot Fixing' as a substitute page that accurately reflects the spot market prices at the time of the fixing.
Several banks have been involved in testing the new page and Reuters and EBS are confident it meets the market's needs.
Nasir Zubairi, Product Manager, EBS, said: "EBS and Reuters have been happy to cooperate on this initiative to provide a value added service to the FX and Swaps markets.
"These fixings are derived from EBS and Reuters market prices, deal and quote volume at, and leading up to the FIX, and are a strong indication of the true market rate based on real market activity'"
Paul Fisher, Chair, FX Joint Standing Committee and Head, Foreign Exchange Division, Bank of England said: "EBS, Reuters and many market participants have worked together to deliver this new page, which provides a major improvement to the quality of pricing information available to the whole market. This is a very satisfactory outcome to this market-led initiative."
"The EBS benchmarked algorithms have proven to be the most reliable and accurate in the market since we jointly developed them back in 2003.
"By creating a consisted but tailored methodology to the Reuters full data set, we have created a very special set of fixings that can be relied upon by both clients and banks in the growing market for benchmarked FX trading".