Wall Street Journal
Thomson Reuters’ acquisition of currencies trading platform FX Alliance for $616 million will arguably create the biggest electronic trading pool in foreign exchange. Eva Szalay assesses how this will affect the wider currencies trading landscape and what this means for key competitors in the market.
Joining the systems together and potentially pooling both the banks and clients onto a common platform won’t be easy, the article reveals. However, the large impact the announcement will have on the FX trading industry is a worry for the key competing platforms.
Given that ICAP’s EBS platform has held a duopoly with Reuters in bank-to-bank trading, all eyes will be on EBS’ next move. EBS is allegedly set to announce changes to its rules that would even out the playing field for bank clients by reducing the trading advantages to traders who benefit from superior technology and faster trading speed.
Looking at other outcomes of this merger, GreySpark questions whether this will trigger a wave of further acquisitions and concentration of offerings, or if it could spook the broker-dealers who may view the opening of inter-dealer platforms with suspicion.
