BNP Paribas eyes top-five FX spot

Source : E Financial : http://www.efinancialnews.com/tradingandtechnology/trading/content/1056533598/

Luke Jeffs
10 Feb 2010

 

BNP Paribas has accelerated its bid to establish itself as one of the top five dealers in the resilient global foreign exchange market by recruiting a number of electronic trading specialists from rivals.

The French bank said today that it has expanded its international team of electronic trading experts with the appointments of global and Asian heads, as well as making further hires in New York and London.

BNP Paribas has taken on Thomas Soede, previously at Lehman Brothers in Europe where he built out the US bank’s global FX distribution and most recently of hedge fund Blacktree Investment Partners, as its global head of eCommerce for FX.

Soede, who is based in London and charged with “developing the bank’s eCommerce proposition”, reports to Eric Auld, BNP Paribas’ global head of FX trading.

The bank has also hired Luke Waddington, formerly the head of Asian prime brokerage at RBS, as its head of eCommerce for Asia and Japan, based in Tokyo. Waddington, who spent seven years with HSBC before joining RBS, reports to Soede.

Also joining BNP Paribas, at its US unit, is Dan Osborne, formerly of Citigroup, trading system FXall and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The company has also made “a number of additional hires to the London eCommerce team”.

The bank is planning further appointments in Asia and the US, in line with its pledge to establish itself as one of the top global FX dealers.

Auld said: “With Thomas and his team in place, I am confident that we have a compelling electronic trading offering that will help us to realise our ambitions to become a top-five player in FX”.

The global FX market, which is dominated by a handful of the largest international banks, that includes Deutsche and Citigroup, has been one of the few financial markets that has grown throughout the financial crisis.

Trading statistics in the opaque, over-the-counter FX market are not readily available, but the main multi-dealer platform FXall said last year that its volumes rose 11% in 2008, despite the turmoil caused by the banking crisis that year.