Automated Quality Assurance Provides Five Opportunities For Execution Venues

February 26, 2016

By Michel Balter, SVP Group Business Development, Itiviti
Execution Venues are mandated to ensure their technology is stable and performing as intended. However, often the need to launch new services to members or meet regulatory requirements, in a very short period of time, puts incredible pressure on assuring quality of the systems. Venues are forced to assume risks to meet time requirements. Adopting modern automated quality assurance practices and systems can create opportunities for a venue while removing risk.
Venues originated as opportunistic locations where people meet to trade, be it the Button Wood tree or the confluence of rivers, railroads, and the Great Lakes in Chicago. Now venues are locations where computers meet to trade. These computers talk over message based interfaces such as FIX. These message based interfaces provide an ideal entry point to drive automated end-to-end testing.
The optimal enterprise QA solution automates testing of execution venue trading systems using existing production data, taking into account changes in trading system environments over time.
This ideal QA solution can operate continuously in real time providing detailed analysis and reporting of test results. What opportunities are presented by this ideal solution for quality assurance?
Speeding time to market for improved competitiveness
In this fiercely competitive landscape, execution venues need to be highly responsive to evolving market and member demands. In large part, this means being able to deliver innovative offerings in a reasonable timeframe. But often the process of delivering new features, functionality or major upgrades is involved and lengthy, both with extensive development requirements and thorough QA.
Automation is a viable way for venues to improve time to market and keep system standards high by speeding up regression testing. Using automated testing, venues can deliver quickly while preventing major defects that could have a negative impact on Member relationships. BATS Global Markets, is one US execution venue using automated testing for this purpose. They utilise automated regression testing to not only speed up the overall process, but also add more sophisticated test cases. For them introducing greater QA has helped reduce the regression testing cycle from months down to just 33 hours. All-in-all delivering a process that is exponentially faster now, and far more thorough.
Improved efficiency is a prime area where automated testing shows its value. It’s not uncommon for venues to see a 40 percent reduction in time spent on the end-to-end testing process. This means they can perform platform migrations faster, giving Members an uninterrupted user experience.
Improved on-boarding certification for quality assurance
On-boarding solutions can offer the simplest and most powerful automated certification platform. With a web-based automated trading environment, execution venues can simultaneously certify multiple Members, 24 hours a day. Because no programming or manual interaction is required, in-house support resources are able to focus more on core responsibilities.
The ideal certification platform offers these features and functionality at the ready:

Flexible, optimised architecture for quick testing and program execution
Error reduction and improved time-to-trading with automated certification
Ability to integrate multiple destinations and events in the scenario testing environment
Simulated testing environments or plugs into the live member environment
Storage for historical data for compliance records
Manage the progress of on-boarding pipeline in a real time GUI allowing you to identify problems with member certification proactively instead of reactively.

Improving testing accuracy for better stability
Venues that use automated testing systems stand to dramatically enhance quality assurance. If they’re designed well, automated processes can be far more accurate, reliable and consistent than manual processes. Furthermore, sophisticated testing tools can introduce consistent, repeatable processes into a testing environment that can improve system’s stability. Using advanced automated testing such as model based testing and service virtualisation can greatly expand the quality of testing.
With automation, some venues have reported a 75% reduction in production defects when compared to manual methods. Minimising such defects can save venues a significant amount of money; both in terms of resources needed to fix errors and cost-efficiencies.
Tests are meaningless if the results cannot be accurately interpreted. Testing software helps interpret results by clearly presenting them, helping you trace errors across hubs and servers, and zeroing in on the likely culprits.
Achieving a more nimble response to regulatory pressures
Today’s regulatory landscape is in a state of flux, forcing venues to repeatedly modify their systems to meet evolving compliance requirements, often with short deadlines. Every change introduces new system integrity risks. In addition, regulators are putting added pressure to establish thorough testing practices and to ensure the operational integrity of trading systems, such as RegSCI.
Compliance is further complicated by the principles-based rather than prescriptive regulations. While regulating bodies do set forth some guidelines for compliance, they often have not supplied precise rules. This leaves room for interpretation on the part of venue that is striving to comply with the latest standards. To this end, a model execution venue is trying to create repeatable, sustainable, adaptable, demonstrable processes that help simplify the compliance burden.
Automated testing is an essential ingredient that can help venues stay on top of regulatory pressures. Automation can help tackle the compliance challenge in a few different ways. It fosters the creation of best practices in testing and auditable automation can make testing more comprehensive, while simultaneously making the process less manually intensive and time-consuming. Therefore, more testing gets done, and the tests are less prone to error.
Lowering total cost of ownership to free-up budget
Some venues are sceptical about implementing automated testing technology, considering the initial upfront investment involved. They think it’s more affordable to simply hire a team of testers to handle the job. The overhead involved in sustaining a manual approach over time is significantly higher when stacked up against automation, especially when overall test coverage and test quality are taken into consideration.
Likewise, building testing tools in-house can present considerable long-term expenses. Technical staff must devote significant time to not only building, but also keeping these systems up-to-date as regulations and other requirements change. That can become quite arduous. These bespoke testing systems become an entity in themselves distracting from the primary objective of testing the venue systems. Add to this, if building testing software is not an area of expertise, then the overall quality of testing will suffer.
The average venue will potentially see 150% return on investment (ROI) after the first year using the appropriate third party quality assurance tools, and a 320% ROI by the end of year three. The total cost of ownership (TCO) attached to automation is not only lower because it demands fewer staffing resources, but it also minimises the possibility of costly mistakes related to lack of domain knowledge or human error. Reduced TCO can also free-up budget, allowing venues to redirect money to other value-added areas of the business.
Venues will see improved productivity rates and efficiencies with testing. Prior to automation, all testing could only be completed during business hours, but post-automation it can be carried out 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. The net result is the delivery of new releases to members in weeks, not months.
Meeting today’s demands
In this unpredictable trading landscape characterised by constant change and unrelenting competition, execution venues need to find new ways of attracting and retaining members. One way of doing this is through introducing automation into the quality assurance process, which can help enhance performance and stability, while meeting the pressures for offering improved functionality and a reliable, faster service.
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Roll Up, Roll Up: Get Your Data Here

GlobalTrading

February 26, 2016

By Kuhan Tharmananthar, Etrading Software
Data, data everywhere… and not a standardised byte in sight! Financial markets have been caught in a double helix of technological advancement and financial innovation for the last 40 years. Every time technology changes, financial products, markets or processes alter to maximise the value from the technology and, of course, the reverse is also true. Whilst there have been huge benefits from this: speed of execution; automated settlement; new financial products; international access; reduced explicit transaction costs and improved price discovery, the distribution of these benefits has been uneven across market participants leading to a much higher cost base across the market.
Some of this imbalance is caused by the fragmentation and misinterpretation of data. As markets have dematerialised, the importance of data has increased. It is data that defines the instrument being traded; it is data that contains the potential prices from different traders; it is data that tells market participants what the actual trade prices are and where the market has closed.
Unsurprisingly, this data is now valuable and expensive. What’s worse is that much of it is essential – without it, it isn’t possible to be obtain a good price… let alone ‘best’. As a result, there is now an entire ecosystem surrounding the generation, maintenance and distribution of data.
In OTC markets, financial securities and the data surrounding them is often originated by banks and their corporate clients creating a cash security, whether it be equity or debt. Various data vendors then digitise, clean and enhance this data before selling it to any and all market participants including those who generated it. The data is now covered by strong licensing restrictions and presented and stored in proprietary formats. Market participants embed these proprietary formats into their own systems, building complex mapping and verification/scrubbing tools of their own to validate and clean data from different sources so they can build a single picture of the markets they’re interested in following.
So far, so bad. Subject to proprietary structures and changes by those who own those structures along with charges based on value rather than cost, participants have become increasingly subject to non-trade-specific high costs just to stay in the market. These charges around data are now generating the majority of the revenue for some exchanges and is evidence of how vital they’ve become to a functioning marketplace. Whether by accident or design, regulators are about to have an impact on this business model through MiFID II – it requires market participants of all stripes to engage in publishing reference data, pre-trade and post-trade data, transaction reporting amongst others. Some of this data is currently subject to ownership and distribution restrictions due to the terms of their data licenses. It is not clear how the conflict with these licenses will be resolved once it is made public by a regulator or due to regulatory rules.
Examining pre-trade transparency
Taking pre-trade transparency as an example: previously, in the credit market, the closest parallel to this was the pre-trade indications sent via spreadsheets, instant messaging and sometime direct transfer into a client’s systems. However, this was proprietary, uncontrolled and did not necessarily reflect the inventory or intent of the sell-side distributing the pre-trade data. In addition, the idea of meeting a regulatory requirement to ‘publish’ pre-trade data would’ve been incredibly expensive. The Neptune utility has taken some steps to addressing this issue.
In the first instance, the network uses the FIX open standard as the protocol with which the structured pre-trade indications are distributed. By implementing the basic network or ‘pipes’, Neptune is deliberately not focused on any ‘value-add’ services. All it is trying to do is provide the commoditised technology layer upon which other companies offer richer, more enhanced services. By providing this base layer, Neptune is helping to reduce the cost for the whole market. This model has the potential for expansion or duplication to fit the specific requirements for regulators around pre-trade transparency data. The expectation is that new rules surrounding data will continue to be issued as regulators take steps to ‘improve’ market data. Neptune is a powerful example of how an open standard utility model can provide the basis on which market participants can efficiently meet these new requirements as they arrive.
In our next article, we further focus this discussion to the role that standards can play in this changing environment and how they can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of capital markets.
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Mathematically Verifying Algorithms

GlobalTrading

February 20, 2016

With Denis Ignatovich and Grant Passmore, Co-Founders of Aesthetic Integration

We were college roommates at UT Austin and both ended up in the UK around the time of the Knight Capital and BATS IPO incidents. At that time, Grant was doing research in the field of formal verification related to safety of autopilot algorithms at the University of Cambridge and Denis was running a trading desk at DB London. It was then we realised a deep connection between the issues of complex algorithms plaguing finance and those faced by other safety-critical industries like avionics.
The field of formal verification (FV), an intersection of mathematics, computer science and artificial intelligence, is dedicated to analysing the behaviour of complex algorithms to make sure they are designed and implemented correctly. FV is already relied upon to manage and regulate complex algorithms in safety-critical industries like avionics and hardware design. It’s difficult to image modern life without FV. FV is fundamentally different from the simulation of algorithms. With simulation, one only ever executes an algorithm within a finite number of scenarios. But typical safety-critical systems (e.g., the autopilot algorithm of a commercial jet) can be in an infinite (or virtually infinite) number of scenarios. With FV, we can analyse every possible behaviour of an algorithm to help understand what can possibly go wrong before the algorithm is deployed.
FV is now within financial markets for the first time. We have been working with one of our clients, a tier one investment bank, to create a formal model of their European dark pool, and use our work to verify fairness properties of the matching engine (such as those at the centre of recent regulatory fines in the US). After mathematically verifying those properties of the design, we can deconstruct the infinite state space of the venue model to generate high-coverage test suites to help ensure the system is thoroughly tested prior to deployment. This approach brings unprecedented levels of rigour and governance to the design and compliance of the dark pool. The proofs of properties of the design and test suite coverage metrics that we generate can be used as evidence to regulators, in a similar way to how systems are regulated in avionics.
FV will change the way we communicate specifications of our systems with each other. By way of example, consider the current method of disclosing the numerous rules by which a typical exchange operates with those trading on it. Of course, there are standardised protocols like FIX, but these standards only cover the messaging formats, completely ignoring the logic of the systems ‘behind’ them. So exchanges’ clients are stuck with hundreds of pages of rules and disclosures written in lawyerly prose. They have to hire people to understand those essays and figure out how to make sure their systems are consistent and compliant with exchanges’ rules and disclosures. But, with FV, that information can be specified in a mathematically precise format, which will allow clients to leverage modern scientific tools to ensure their systems fully appreciate all of the intricacies of trading on those venues and are compliant.
The exchange community is missing out on a great revenue opportunity: a considerable portion of budgets banks and hedges funds spend on connecting to exchanges (everything from figuring out how they work to producing regulator audits) may be captured by the exchange operators. By providing clients with precise specs allowing them to leverage FV, exchanges can monetise part of the cost savings. Not to mention that precise specs will allow clients to connect faster and send more orders to those exchanges… This is a win/win for everyone.
Both the CFTC and SEC have proposals for new regulations around disclosure and testing of algorithms in financial markets. The SEC is looking to add more transparency to dark pools and the CFTC wants to analyse the behaviour of trading algorithms. In the same way that a breathalyser transforms the qualitative problem of arguing someone is intoxicated into the scientific domain of chemistry, FV will transform regulatory compliance around financial algorithms into the domain of mathematics. After all, algorithms are mathematical objects, so mathematics should be used to describe and analyse them.
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Should I stay or should I go? : Lynn Strongin Dodds

Lynn Strongin Dodds

February 18, 2016

SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?

The City of London may have expelled a great sigh of relief that HSBC is staying on UK shores in case of Brexit but London’s status as a financial services capital is far from assured. In fact, the bank warned that it could move 1,000 investment banking jobs to Paris if the country votes to leave the European Union.

Also, not everyone was as rapturous as the government about the decision. Investors were seemingly lukewarm with shares only rising 1% after the announcements while some analysts also had their doubts. For example, Ian Gordon, banking analyst at Investec, expressed his disappointment in a note entitled “HSBC Holdings: Bottle job?” He lamented that the bank passed up an opportunity to move to a country with lower tax and looser regulation plus pointing out “the considerable financial benefits which may have accrued to HSBC’s shareholders had it decided to ‘escape’”.

The decision had not been taken lightly. Since last April, the bank has spent considerable hours as well as money – a reported £30m to £40m on advisors – mulling over its options. Although it did not threaten to leave over it, one swing factor was the turnaround shown by George Osborne over the onerous £3bn bank levy, which would have hit HSBC the hardest.

The industry as a whole had lobbied the government to reduce the burden and their efforts were rewarded in the summer budget when it was announced that the tax would be gradually cut over the next six years and would stop being applied to worldwide assets from 2021. For HSBC this meant that they would only have to pay the exchequer £300m, down from £1bn under the previous system.

Another motivating driver though was that its natural base – Hong Kong – is losing its lustre as China’s government becomes more interventionist. The recent detention of three Hong Kong booksellers in particular has stirred fears among Western bankers that the country is undermining the territory’s legal independence. Although the volatility of the Chinese stock market and its sluggish economic outlook has unnerved investors, it played no part in the review process, according to both CEO Stuart Gulliver and chairman Douglas Flint.

It is of course too difficult to predict the future and whether other banks will follow suit or exit if the UK leaves the EU. There is no doubt though that many industry participants are worried and the uncertainty is casting a pall. Several Wall Street banks such as Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan have already thrown their weight behind the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign while others are warning that London could be dropped as a leading listing centre. In addition, companies could lose confidence in the capital and take their M&A activity elsewhere. After all, as HSBC itself said, they will always have Paris or for others Frankfurt, New York…

Lynn Strongin Dodds

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FX profile : Robbie Boukhoufane : Schroders

Ian Rycott

February 16, 2016

THE FX CHALLENGE.

Robbie Boukhoufane, global head of FX trading, Schroders discusses with Best Execution editor, Lynn Strongin Dodds the vagaries of the market and how the fund manager is responding.

What were the major trends in FX in 2015?

I would start by saying the re-pricing of liquidity, increase in volatility and navigating the cost of trading as a consequence have been major factors. The asset management community remains dependant on bank liquidity but there is the on-going re-allocation and shrinking of the bank’s balance sheets due to regulation. Broader risk taking teams continue to be withdrawn from the banking sector and there has been more focus on how banks treat client orders, which has prohibited some of their ability to warehouse risk. We should remember much of the regulation imposed has been completely necessary but the unintended consequence has been the adverse impact on liquidity and fragmentation. The interbank marketplace continues to become more fragmented due to the increase in non-bank market makers. The other point I would mention is that there has been a noticeable shift in the depth of liquidity and price discovery can be more of an issue for those currencies that are traded by voice, such as some emerging market currencies and non-deliverable forwards (NDFs), than those traded electronically.

Despite all the focus on regulation let’s not forget that there have been significant macro themes that have contributed to higher volatility in the past year. Divergent monetary policy between a tightening US and a loosening Europe, falling energy and commodity prices and the renewed focus on the Chinese economy, including the sharp sell-off in Chinese stock markets and devaluation of the renminbi. The consequence of these themes has seen significant USD strength but also weakness across the majority of emerging market currencies, where at times market moves are exacerbated by gaps in liquidity. A lack of harmonisation between global jurisdictions has also had an impact here. We of course can’t reflect on 2015 without mentioning the SNB removing the floor and the lasting impact this had on liquidity. When you look back, the fact is that whatever the event or theme that is causing volatility, banks used to have the ability to be there in times of stress but in the new era they have pulled away from the market and this has created more frequent gaps in liquidity which we need to adapt to and manage.

Against the backdrop of regulation how have the dynamics between buy- and sellside changed?

Well Lynn, I guess the main thing to mention here is that the banking industry continues to contract whilst the asset management industry continues to grow which means our traders need to continuously assess and monitor what areas of the business liquidity providers are committed to, and are willing to invest in, which impacts how and where our business is executed. Following on from this point you have a rise of the agency model or riskless principal, as some define it, for certain workflows which I believe more smaller to medium size banks will continue to migrate to as they simply do not have the franchise of the larger players.

What further impact is regulation having on FX markets?

In addition to the general deterioration in liquidity one aspect that should be mentioned here is the consequence of regulation and restrictions on banks balance sheets which, at times, had a significant impact for funding and forward markets last year. Traditionally the rolling of forward hedges was purely operational but investors have had to become much smarter in timing the rolling of forward hedges.

One of the requirements of MiFID II is the collateralisation of forward FX. This will partially offset the competitive forward pricing issue but will be a significant change because what you tend to find is that the larger asset managers have bi-lateral agreements in place with banks and they have not had to collateralise FX for their full range of funds. The legal burden here is huge and the implementation of the systems takes resources, time and money. I should imagine many buyside firms are reviewing existing operating models

What about the impact on best execution?

Reviewing best execution has been a significant theme across both the asset management and banking industries. On the banking side, reviewing conduct and offering more transparency has been key. From my perspective I see it as my duty to fully understand how our liquidity providers handle our orders and the practices involved to re-assure me of their intention for best execution.

In terms of our approach I view best execution as getting the best possible deal for our clients based on a range of variables. Schroders is an extremely diversified fund management company and has segregated workflows and approaches depending on the type of transaction. We have also added new categories to our analysis such as venue and more in depth liquidity analysis. It is my responsibility to demonstrate that we continuously monitor and assess that our existing execution methods are efficient across workflows, whilst adapting to change and enhancing our processes where new opportunities present themselves.

Can you provide a bit more detail about your analysis?

The migration to electronic trading continues but the optimal size to transact electronically can differ across region and size. The best way to trade a large order will vary from day to day depending on what is going on in the market and we need to monitor the volumes, volatility and cost of trading. Gaps in liquidity have happened more frequently this year and volatility has increased due to several themes that we discussed earlier. Although volatility provides opportunities from a trading perspective, it also means you have to be smarter and introduce new techniques and analysis to help you understand and prepare for how markets are changing. For me liquidity analysis has been key in understanding the dynamics between primary and secondary ECN’s, depth of liquidity and fill ratios and this has been at the forefront of our analysis. This has given us a greater understanding of the underlying drivers and the way markets are working orders which puts us in a better position to mitigate the costs.

How has TCA evolved and what are the advantages?

The challenge remains that FX is an over the counter product and no official mid-market reference point currently exists. There are also several companies who are competing in this space who will have access to different data sources, which is not ideal. Having said that I believe the access to data will continue to evolve and FX TCA will continue to become more effective. We use both an external TCA provider and implemented in-house solutions to analyse data. We monitor the data in the post-trade space to analyse and assess the cost of trading across a range of timestamps. We do this on a regular basis so we can become more efficient and improve performance.

I think the most exciting development within the TCA space has been pre-trade and real time analysis, which I believe will remain a growth area. This enables buyside traders to better assess liquidity conditions and adapt trading processes accordingly.

How do you see the FX market continuing to develop?

With regard to the gaps in market liquidity for us it will very much be work and assess as we enter 2016. We will be ready to adapt and enhance the way we execute as the markets evolve and we will continue to carry out the necessary analysis to determine the most appropriate way to transact so we get our investors the best deal. With regard to accessing liquidity we will monitor how the emergence of non-bank liquidity providers evolves and will look to access all available liquidity to mitigate our costs.

In terms of how electronic trading will develop, one thing to consider is that according to research from Greenwich Associates, roughly 75% of the major currencies are traded on electronic platforms. This figure is about 60% for deliverable emerging market currencies and only 35% for NDFs, which means there is an obvious gap with the migration of emerging markets to electronic trading. I expect the NDF and EMFX markets that are lagging this trend to play some catch up and close the gap with major currencies. There are some new initiatives being implemented by certain companies on the market-making side that I expect to evolve in 2016, so watch this space.

We are also seeing an increase in the use of algos although there are mixed views across buyside firms as to how effective they are, and more importantly concerns about a lack of transparency for how orders are handled behind the scenes. My view is that there needs to be greater transparency over how the child orders are treated and some regulatory pressure on how ECNs monitor the use of the ‘Last Look’ practice (see p.34 ‘Taming the wild west of trading’). As a firm we have carried out extensive algo due diligence across some of our liquidity providers and will only use those that provide full transparency and meet all of our requirements. More generally I see an increase in the use of algorithms once more transparency has been provided to the asset management industry.

Robbie Boukhoufane is global head of FX trading at Schroders Investment Management and has 18 years investment experience across the asset management and banking industry. He spent five years on the banking side at SEB and CIBC where he focused on fixed income & FX distribution to institutional clients. On the asset management side Robbie has traded multi-asset products for 13 years, with the majority of time dedicated to executing foreign exchange.

After finishing school and studying Business & Finance at the Havering Colleague of Further and Higher education Boukhoufane began his career in the operations department of Gartmore Investment Management.

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FX trading focus : Marc Tuehl : HSBC

Ian Rycott

February 16, 2016

TO OUTSOURCE OR NOT TO OUTSOURCE CURRENCY RISK MANAGEMENT?

Marc Tuehl, global head of FX Overlay, HSBC answers the question.

What are the key currency risks that asset managers should be aware of?

In general, people do not appreciate how much risk currency can contribute to a portfolio. The most obvious risk is the price, or the depreciation/appreciation of a particular currency. This can have a significant impact on portfolios that invest in assets across geographies. The second risk is related to volatility, which significantly increased in 2015 with the US dollar strengthening against emerging market currencies and the euro. The other aspect is the potential slippage in execution price. This is a hot topic because asset managers have a fiduciary responsibility to transact on a fair and reasonable basis. Finally, there are also counterparty and/or settlement risks.

Have these risks increased due to regulation and if so, which rules have had the most impact?

There have been both positive and negative consequences of the regulation. On the one hand, the Dodd Frank regime has strengthened the market by mitigating settlement and counterparty risks. The rules have also created a more transparent market when executing trades. However, these changes take time and resources to implement. We also see a lack of harmonisation across regulatory regimes.

There has been a lot of discussion about volatility this year, what are some of the drivers?

The largest driver of FX spot volatility has been the divergent central bank monetary policies. The US is raising rates while the rest of the world is in a lower rate environment and the European Central Bank is pushing rates lower. The second biggest driver has been falling commodity prices. The result is that we saw the US dollar surge against almost all other currencies in 2015, while emerging markets currencies and the euro have weakened.

In your paper – To outsource or not to outsource currency risk management (www.gbm.hsbc.com) – you discuss passive and dynamic strategies. When should asset managers consider either?

The strategies they adopt will depend on their asset liability profile and asset allocation priorities. Each produces different results in terms of volatility, return, cash-flow etc. This is why it is important to understand the objectives and risk appetites prior to choosing a strategy.

Traditionally a passive hedging strategy is used to mitigate the risks of currency movements. For example, if you are a UK fund manager invested in USD denominated US equities, then it is sensible to hedge your currency risk by buying sterling pounds forwards (selling the US dollar). That way, if the value of the dollar falls against the pound, then your FX losses on assets is effectively balanced out by the gains on the hedges.

Passive is a reliable, cost effective way to hedge and works best if the underlying asset’s foreign currency falls. However, it does not adjust to market conditions and you may lose out on participating in currency appreciation.

This is not the case with dynamic strategies which can adapt to changes in the local currency, by taking into consideration factors such as volatility and/or momentum. These strategies can participate in positive movements while mitigating risks when the markets move against the underlying position. We are not only referring to market risk, as cash flow is an area of concern for our clients. We are seeing a lot of interest in these strategies because they can be a source of additional alpha.

With currency management, the starting point is to know the currency exposures on a particular date, the kind of strategy that should be applied, the different ways to execute and how governance and regulatory obligations can be fulfilled.

What happens if currency risk is left unmanaged and what can they do to mitigate these risks?

Currency has often been regarded as part of a portfolio’s natural exposure. If unmanaged though, currency can often be a source of uncompensated volatility. However, if managed effectively, FX may be a source of additional performance. Within risk management, there are three main factors to look at – the overall risk appetite, as well as specifically FX risk appetite, their return expectations and finally, their ability to raise cash for a hedging strategy, especially with illiquid asset classes.

From an operational perspective, asset managers need to implement robust systems. These must be capable of not only processing exposure data from different sources, but also executing FX efficiently. They need to know their risk and can work with custodians and fund administrators to control, assess and manage their exposures.

What are the drivers behind outsourcing and when should it be considered?

In the current climate of regulatory scrutiny and increased volatility, we are seeing asset managers, increasingly looking at their currency management processes. One question to ask is, does the application of resources to the administrative process provide value? If there is no value then they should consider outsourcing, allowing them to focus on their core competencies. This often makes sense for smaller asset management firms who do not have the internal capabilities.

In terms of general benefits, a major factor is the reduction in operational cost. These systems need ongoing investments in technology and infrastructure in the front and back end. Also, operational risk is transferred to a third party provider.

How do you choose a provider when there are many in the market?

Providers range from banks and custodians to niche players. There are a few key considerations to look at in terms of the financial stability and robustness of their platforms. They also must be able to provide liquidity when needed. It is beneficial when looking at dynamic strategies to choose a provider that has expertise in FX as well as a strong franchise. They need to offer detailed reporting of their activities and the impact a dynamic hedging strategy has on performance and risk metrics. For passive strategies, the most important thing is to choose a provider that has large FX capabilities.

In general, how has FX developed as an asset class over the past couple of years?

FX has developed significantly over the past two years particularly in the EMEA region and Asia due to the low yielding environment. There are different styles such as value and momentum but the classic carry trade of selling a relatively low interest rate and going long on a higher interest yielding one, remains the most popular.

Marc Tuehl started his career in 1996 with Deutsche Bank Düsseldorf in a sales role covering foreign exchange and rates products. He moved to HSBC Trinkaus & Burkhardt, Düsseldorf in 2000 working in foreign exchange sales with a focus on structured products. Two years later Tuehl became head of the German desk at LCF Rothschild in Geneva. In this position he was responsible for the advisory of German and pan-European clients within structured rates, FX and quantitative asset management. He became head of currency overlay management at HSBC Trinkaus in 2004 before moving to London in 2013 as global head of FX Overlay.

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FX trading focus : Codes of conduct : Dan Barnes

Ian Rycott

February 16, 2016

FX: TAMING THE WILD WEST OF TRADING.

Dan Barnes reports on a tumultuous year for foreign exchange, that saw trust in established practice eroded as events unfolded, shaking confidence in market stability.

Given the uncapping of the Swiss Franc on 15 January, 2015; the to-ing and fro-ing of Europe’s economic pulse; the Federal Reserve’s will-they won’t-they decision on an interest rate hike; and the devaluation of the yuan, one might think all of the excitement in 2015’s foreign exchange markets had been at a macro level. However for traders, the bigger events have been closer to home.

Lee Sanders, head of FX and FI dealing at AXA Investment Managers says, “There has been a focus on the relationship with the street around a better code for the FX market. From a day-to-day perspective there are the ongoing issues stemming from trading at the WMR benchmark¹.”

On 25 July, 2015 the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) announced it had established its Foreign Exchange Working Group (FXWG), which is intended to set up a single global code of conduct for all parts of the global wholesale FX market, with attendant standards and principles. In addition the FXWG will be promoting greater adherence to these standards and principles.

The BIS was acting in direct response to a series of cases (and resultant fines) brought against banks for misconduct in the FX market. Within the fixed income, currency and commodities (FICC) business, G10 FX revenue grew 60% year-on-year from Q3 2014 to Q3 2015 for dealers, while revenue in every other business line fell, according to analyst firm Coalition. Therefore jeopardising relationships in the currencies markets, which trades US$5.3 trillion-a-day, is risky.

Why the long face?

Demand for a code of conduct has been firmly established by the FX-rate rigging scandal that saw six banks fined US$5.6 billion in May 2015, and a more recent court case brought by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYSDFS) against Barclays.

This case saw NYSDFS ordering that the bank “terminate” its global head of Electronic Fixed Income, Currencies, and Commodities and Automated Flow Trading. Tim Cartledge, global head of fixed income, currencies and commodities (FICC) electronic trading at Barclays, left the bank in May, to join ICAP’s EBS Brokertec on 16 November.

Barclays was fined US$150 million by NYSDFS on 17 November 2015. The case demonstrated that despite the promise for transparency that electronic trading offers, the ‘last look’² practice, ostensibly a safety precaution to prevent banks being ripped off by high-frequency trading firms, could be used to cherry-pick profitable trades and reject others.

In its documents supporting the case, NYSDFS claimed Barclays employed the practice of holding client orders that used electronic FIX protocol messaging, or were placed via application programming interface (API), and subsequently rejecting them where the price “moved against Barclays (and in favour of the client) beyond the threshold set by Barclays in the tens and hundreds of milliseconds following the order.”

What the case has demonstrated is that electronic trading, while encouraged to avoid any cartel behaviour amongst FX traders such as rigging prices over the phone and in chatrooms, is not a panacea; without regulatory oversight of some sort, electronic abuse of the sort found in the equity market is just as plausible in the FX markets. To mitigate this, market practice and oversight will have to change.

Reform in the markets

The practice of last look had already been a subject of concern. In its submission to the Bank of England’s Fair and Effective Markets Review (FEMR) consultation which closed in January 2015, buyside trade body the Investment Association (IA) warned, “Last look can allow a bank to hold an asset manager’s trade for a duration of time giving the bank an opportunity to front-run the trade.”

That the problem identified in the Barclays case was a different one to that identified by the IA highlights the breadth of the challenge, an issue touched upon by the FEMR consultation, which published its report in July 2015. It noted there is a lack of clarity over trading relationships; between legitimate trading activity and illegal ‘front-running’; between legitimate trading activity and market manipulation as well as standards for communication and client suitability.

The FEMR report leant support to the BIS code of conduct advocating a single global FX code, providing a comprehensive set of principles to govern trading practices around market integrity, information handling, treatment of counterparties and standards for venues. It identified that examples, guidelines and tools should be established to make firms adhere to the code.

Sanders says, “The work that has come out of the FEMR in the code of conduct for FX ethics – via the Market Participants Group – around the way firms engage with orders and market information is very positive, but this needs to be a continual focus, with the buyside actively involved to ensure that the market has the right process going forward.”

Pamela Gachara, manager for markets at the Investment Association says that greater transparency would at least provide buyside traders with a perspective on the “When you are sent your reject rates you want to know how many of those were rejected based on last look and that then allows the investment firm to make an informed decision about that counterparty.”

It also recommended that the principles should be drawn upon to shape a new statutory market abuse regime for spot FX with “particular attention… given to improving the controls and transparency around FX market practices where there may be scope for misconduct, including ‘last look’ and time stamping.”

“We are really welcoming of FX spot trading being brought under the market abuse regime in the UK, which will allow traders to approach the regulator if they think activity isn’t kosher,” says Gachara.

Phil Weisberg, global head of FX at Thomson Reuters, says that uncertainty about the standards to which firms will be held is making them reticent as they engage the market.

“There has been a dramatic shift from some of the larger intermediaries, particularly banks who are now more fully costing their activities, moving from a market-share-driven strategy to a profitability-driven strategy,” he says. “When you combine that with conduct standards on principle trading, an area the market is still trying to define, [it is] an area where you are judged in the future on your behaviour in the past, based on future standards rather than the standards of the time, and that puts people on the other side of conservative in terms of how they are conducting their activities.”

Operational change

Market participants are not standing still in the midst of this upheaval. The two major market operators, Thomson Reuters, which runs FXAll, and BATS Trading, which operates Hotspot, revised their policies over the summer, the latter cutting the period of review for last look from 300 milliseconds down to 200 milliseconds and FXAll required that firms provide a maximum response time of 250 milliseconds on all trade requests, with 98% of trade requests during a calendar month not exceeding 125 milliseconds response time.

Trading firms have been responding too. Russell Dinnage, senior consultant with GreySpark says that from the end of 2014 and into 2015, traditional asset managers have been developing and implementing the technology needed to aggregate FX liquidity.

“The fact that those types of buyside firms are now doing that is a sign that the structure of trading in the spot FX market overall is heading towards an all-to-all reality,” he said. “It certainly is for the banks.”

While the removal of the Swiss franc cap put the market “back on the phone” for a short period, Sanders says that most metrics would show an increasing bias to electronic trading amongst the buyside. “Things that might hold that [progression] up are the need to review last look technology and/or the use of algos,” he says. “But the genie is out of the bottle as far as electronic FX trading goes and you can see why banks are putting more budget into electronic FX trading.”

Footnotes:

1. The WMR (WM/Reuters) benchmark rates are determined over a one-minute fix period, from 30 seconds before to 30 seconds after the time of the fix, which is generally 4 pm in London. During this one-minute window, bid and offer rates from the order matching system and actual trades executed are captured. Since trades occur in milliseconds, only a sample is captured, rather than every trade. The median bid and offer are calculated using valid rates over the fix period, and the mid-rate is then calculated from them.

2. ‘Last Look’ refers to the opportunity that liquidity providers have to reject an order within a given time, even if the order matches the liquidity provider’s quoted price. Essentially, the liquidity provider gets one last chance or ‘look’ to decide whether they want to take the other side of an order.

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Profile : Matt Chamberlain & Paul Macgregor : LME

Ian Rycott

February 16, 2016

LME RINGS IN A NEW ERA.

Matt Chamberlain (left), head of business development, and Paul MacGregor (right), head of sales at LME discuss how the exchange is putting a new shine on the business.

Before we discuss the changes you have made, can you explain the drivers behind the £1.39 bn merger with Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEx) at the end of 2012?

Chamberlain: It is easy to see how the LME might have been portrayed at the time as a sleepy and backwards, mutually owned exchange that was founded in 1877. It would, though, have been lazy to characterise it that way, because it was a vibrant and energetic exchange. However, as it was owned by its members, it did not reach out to the broader market and its ability to drive the franchise forward was limited. There was an auction process when it came on the block, and HKEx emerged as the successful bidder.

The rationale at the time was that HKEx wanted to leverage its unparalleled position in connecting China to the global markets, specifically by moving into other assets such as commodities, where China is a major player, as well as expanding the Group’s international reach. The LME was in the right time zone and had strong distribution and volumes.

What were the challenges in integrating the two exchanges?

Chamberlain: Building out the infrastructure always takes time, and we needed to re-tool the business and deliver an exchange that was fit-for-purpose in the new regulatory and commercial world. One clear example was with our warehousing network. The issues here have been well documented – after the financial crisis, people stopped using as much metal, and our warehouses built up huge stocks, particularly of aluminium. However, when conditions started to improve, there were long queues to take delivery from LME warehouses, and a disconnect between the LME price and the final cost of obtaining physical metal. We took policy action to address this, which resulted in waiting times falling, as well as enhancing market transparency (for example, by publishing data on warehouse queues).

What measures have you taken to modernise the business particularly at a difficult time for commodities?

MacGregor: The LME operates the world’s largest market for futures and options on metals, but we also have the last open-outcry trading venue – The Ring – in Europe. Historically, the exchange was for physical producers and consumers of industrial metals that wanted to hedge on specific dates to match company risks. While a significant portion of trading is still done over the phone and in the Ring, we have been broadening access to our electronic trading platform – LMEselect – through what we have called the Liquidity Roadmap.

This has included several initiatives such as increasing LMEselect tick sizes to match the Ring plus lifting the LMEselect 50-1 order-to-trade ratio restriction on outright 3rd Wednesdays on our most liquid contracts of aluminium, copper and zinc out to six months. We also introduced volume-based rebate programmes on the three-month contracts and the 3rd Wednesday monthly contracts for prop groups and individuals. The result is that we now have 76 new individual traders across six brokers.

The aim is to offer traders unrestricted order entry and more liquidity for near-by monthly contracts and we have seen several liquidity-adding algo funds hook up to the exchange. We are also hiring sales people who can focus both on physical hedging as well as electronic trading.

How else do you hope to increase liquidity?

MacGregor: We are working towards maximising liquidity and participation on the exchange by opening access to LMEselect. We had several categories of membership that could only access LMEselect through Ring dealing, associate broker clearing or associate broker members. In September, we opened the electronic platform to Category 3 members (firms that trade and clear their own business but can’t issue client contracts or trade in the Ring) and Category 4 (brokers who may issue LME contracts but are not members of the clearing house). Membership criteria has also been more flexible and we now consider applications from prospective members authorised by regulators outside the UK

What contracts have you launched?

MacGregor: In December 2014, there were mini copper, zinc and aluminium contracts on HKEx and this year we introduced steel scrap and rebar cash-settled futures. They are traded on LMEselect, cash-settled against physical Turkish scrap and rebar price indexes. These commodities are bulky and difficult to store because steel rusts, which is why we have opted for cash settlement of the contracts. The contracts allow industry participants to reduce their risk exposure by hedging more steps in the steel production process.

Alongside this we have introduced a new market-making programme to support these new products as well as enhance liquidity on existing contracts. We have noticed that this has improved liquidity on the electronic platform and we plan to extend it to other markets such as nickel, lead and tin.

Can you provide more detail about the clearing house?

Chamberlain: The first thing we did after the merger was to in-source the clearing function and launch our own commodities clearing house – LME Clear – in September 2014. It is fully EMIR (European Market Infrastructure Regulation) compliant and will also be ready for MiFID II. One of our differentiators is that we now offer real-time clearing, which we believe has improved the way our members control and manage their risk. Other key developments have been the acceptance of offshore renminbi, a new trade compression service and the ability to post metals warrants as collateral.

The past three years has certainly been a busy time, what are your plans for 2016?

MacGregor: The first thing we plan to do is move into our new offices in Finsbury Square which will be a completely modernised building. At the moment we are in three separate buildings in the city and we will soon all be in one place.

As for the business, we will continue to work closely with brokers to attract new traders to our electronic platform through efficient on-boarding services, new pre-trade risk management tools and increased liquidity. This also includes continuing to innovate and invest in technology upgrades for our LMEselect platform to improve the service for our members as well as to comply with regulation. Although MIFID II may be delayed, we are cracking on and expect it to eat up a large proportion of our IT resources in 2016.

Matthew Chamberlain is head of business development at the London Metal Exchange. He is responsible for all business development and strategic initiatives, including the Exchange’s warehouse reform consultation process. He joined the LME in November 2012, having advised HKEx on the acquisition of the LME while heading European financial technology coverage at UBS. Previously, he was a founding member of the financial institutions coverage team at Perella Weinberg Partners. He started his career at Citibank.

Paul MacGregor is head of sales at the London Metal Exchange. He is responsible for engaging with current and prospective customers of the LME’s market, and ensuring that new product initiatives are made available to the widest possible audience. He joined the LME in September 2014 but was previously head of European agency sales at ION Trading. Earlier, MacGregor was managing director, product strategy (Europe) at FFastFill, which was acquired by ION Trading in 2013. Before that he was executive director, head of fixed income derivatives at NYSE Euronext, from 2008 to 2012.

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Fintech : Blockchain : Lynn Strongin Dodds

Ian Rycott

February 16, 2016

CUTTING THROUGH THE NOISE.

Lynn Strongin Dodds explains how Blockchain is emerging from the Bitcoin shadow and forging its own disruptive path.

There had been murmurings in the background but 2015 was the year that blockchain came into its own. The prospect of the technology became a firm fixture on the conference circuit as well as a hot topic for columnists, bloggers, journalists and consultants. However, as with any new innovation, there is always the need to distinguish between the revolutionary and the reality.

The first step though is to get a better understanding of the origins. The modern day version is that it was originally designed as a computer protocol by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious creator of bitcoin. A closer look though reveals that its roots can be traced back twenty years ago to consultancy Z/Yen which developed a decentralised electronic ledger for a client who wanted a shared database to provide an indelible and secure record of conversations and dates.

Professor Michael Mainelli, co-founder of Z/Yen, which has built over 40 blockchains for a variety of organisations over nearly two decades, notes there is a great deal of confusion between bitcoin and blockchain. “Often when people talk about blockchain technology, they come at it from a bitcoin perspective. However, to us, blockchain technology is merely one form of mutual distributed ledger, a tamper-proof, replicated, authoritative, immutable ledger whereby groups of people can log onto and validate, record, and track transactions across a network of decentralised computer systems.”

One of the main attractions is the cost savings. A recent report by Santander InnoVentures in conjunction with co-authors Oliver Wyman and Anthemis, estimates the technology has the potential to reduce banks’ infrastructure spend attributable to cross-border payments, securities trading and regulatory compliance by between $15-20bn per annum by 2022. It not only can help lift the legislative burden by automating back office functions but it also has the capability to speed settlements, enhance clearing processes as well as streamline stock exchanges.

Add all this together and it is no wonder that Goldman Sachs sung its praises in its latest Emerging Theme Radar report. The US-based investment bank noted that “while the bitcoin hype cycle has gone quiet, Silicon Valley and Wall Street are betting that the underlying technology behind it, the blockchain, can change… well everything.” There is the promise to usher in a new set of tools to reduce costs and make centralised institutions obsolete by cutting the “trusted middleman” who sits in between parties in a transaction, such as a bank or clearinghouse.

One of the blockchain tools creating the most buzz is smart contracts which are not exactly binding agreements but scripts – pieces of computer code that can be assembled to make very complex systems of rules to govern how a group of users interact with a blockchain database. They can perform similar complex jobs, typically associated with internet-based applications, but in this case it is the ordinary computers rather than a huge central server doing the work.

Be31_M.Belinky To date, the blockchain has mainly been used in the payments space, especially cross border, but Mariano Belinky, managing partner of Santander InnoVentures, expects its reach to extend wider next year into the realm of securities, syndicated lending, trade finance, swaps, derivatives, real time settlement or post-trade reconciliation processes. If you take the latter, “it is a time consuming and manual process and a mutually distributed ledger creates a goldensource or one point where everyone has the same information,” he says. “This is a much more efficient process from a back office perspective.”

Jockeying for position

Not surprisingly, there are a plethora of initiatives exploring the various avenues both on an individual firm basis as well as through consortiums. According to consultancy firm Aite, capital-market spending on blockchain research and development could reach $400m by 2019, from $30m last year. One recent example is Deutsche Bank’s successful testing of a corporate bond platform using blockchain to issue and redeem bonds, which are programmed to pay out coupons automatically, through smart contracts technology. This follows on from a similar smart bond platform from UBS that was built on a type of blockchain called Ethereum where bonds would be programmed to issue interest and principal automatically. Neither though have any plans to bring the platform to market anytime soon.

This is not the case with SETL, which recently hired Sir David Walker, former Barclays chairman to take on the same role at the new venture. Launched in July 2015, the London-based group founded by a group of hedge fund investors and trading executives, has created a blockchain engine and simulated real-world payments based on data from the UK payment system, including networks such as Link, CHAPS, BACS and CLS, which settles foreign exchange deals.

“We were the first to demonstrate how the technology could handle the volumes required by the financial services industry,” says Peter Randall, chief operating officer. “We have a demo and can show real world volumes working in real time. The other difference is that it settles payments in central bank money and not a cryptocurrency.”

Randall believes though that the most critical piece is not the technology but the combination of “regulatory approval and adoption.” However, as founder of European trading venue Chi-X, he can leverage his experience navigating the legislative landscape. He adds, “I am optimistic that the regulators will be more inclined to engage once they understand the significant benefits a distributed ledger can bring to the operations of a large financial services firm or bank.”

Meanwhile, on the group front, around 24 of the world’s largest banks, including JP Morgan, UBS and Barclays, have thrown their weight behind R3 CEV, a start-up venture which aims to set up a private blockchain open only to invited participants who between them maintain and run the network. It forms part of an effort to build an industry-wide platform to standardise use of the technology. Separately, chief executives from CME, ICE and Eurex are exploring the possibilities of applying the technology in the derivatives world.

Cracks in the road

Looking ahead, the blockchain arena is likely to become even more crowded, although as Camron Miraftab, an analyst and co-author of a report on the subject at consultancy GreySpark puts it, “there will inevitably be winners and losers among the fintech companies competing with each other to develop an optimal capital markets digital ledger technology infrastructure or protocol.”

Ron Quaranta, chairman of Wall Street Blockchain Alliance and CEO of Digital Currency Labs predicts that next year “we will see companies more than just dipping their toes in the water. They will be leveraging the technology in both private and public blockchain, starting with leveraged loans and trade finance as well as clearing and settlement. The biggest challenge will be on the education curve and helping people gain a better understanding of how to create a framework and apply the technology in the broader market.”

Another hurdle is scaleability, according to Terry Roche, Principal, Head of FinTech at TABB Group and co-author of the report Blockchain Technology: Pushing the Envelope in FinTech with Shagun Bali, “At the moment, blockchain does not have the capacity to handle the volume of messaging needed for financial services. It is not a structural inhibitor as this issue has been addressed in other places but it will take time.”

In his report, Roche notes that DTCC currently handles about 10,000 transactions per second whereas the blockchain technology can process only a small percentage of this amount. In terms of cost, the clearinghouse charges 1/10 of a penny for trades and it will be a long while until blockchain reaches that level of cost efficiency. He also believes syndicated loans will be first in line – as early as the second quarter 2016 – while derivatives may take at least two to five years and equity cash settlement could be a decade away.

Diana Chan, chief executive of EuroCCP, the largest cash equities clearer in Europe, argues that some of the advantages offered by the blockchain – IT redundancy and a robust audit trail – already exist in the current structure: “The question that should be asked is what are the real added benefits compared to the costs? For example, with today’s central securities depositories (CSDs), you can be sure the records are authentic, transactions are recorded properly for settlement and there is a single source of information that can easily be accessed by different parties if needed.”

As for helping achieve T0, Chan notes, “it sounds attractive and valuable, but the question here is how much would the market have to invest and would it be worth the cost?”

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Automated Quality Assurance Provides Five Opportunities For Execution Venues

Roll Up, Roll Up: Get Your Data Here

Mathematically Verifying Algorithms

Should I stay or should I go? : Lynn Strongin Dodds

SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?

Analysis : European equities : Market fragmentation

FRAGMENTATION IN EUROPE.

LiquidMetrix analyses consolidated performance figures for stocks on major European indices and the changes from the previous quarter.

FX profile : Robbie Boukhoufane : Schroders

THE FX CHALLENGE.

Robbie Boukhoufane, global head of FX trading, Schroders discusses with Best Execution editor, Lynn Strongin Dodds the vagaries of the market and how the fund manager is responding.

FX trading focus : Marc Tuehl : HSBC

TO OUTSOURCE OR NOT TO OUTSOURCE CURRENCY RISK MANAGEMENT?

Marc Tuehl, global head of FX Overlay, HSBC answers the question.

FX trading focus : Codes of conduct : Dan Barnes

FX: TAMING THE WILD WEST OF TRADING.

Dan Barnes reports on a tumultuous year for foreign exchange, that saw trust in established practice eroded as events unfolded, shaking confidence in market stability.

Profile : Matt Chamberlain & Paul Macgregor : LME

LME RINGS IN A NEW ERA.

Matt Chamberlain (left), head of business development, and Paul MacGregor (right), head of sales at LME discuss how the exchange is putting a new shine on the business.

Fintech : Blockchain : Lynn Strongin Dodds

CUTTING THROUGH THE NOISE.

Lynn Strongin Dodds explains how Blockchain is emerging from the Bitcoin shadow and forging its own disruptive path.

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SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?

FRAGMENTATION IN EUROPE.

LiquidMetrix analyses consolidated performance figures for stocks on major European indices and the changes from the previous quarter.

THE FX CHALLENGE.

Robbie Boukhoufane, global head of FX trading, Schroders discusses with Best Execution editor, Lynn Strongin Dodds the vagaries of the market and how the fund manager is responding.

TO OUTSOURCE OR NOT TO OUTSOURCE CURRENCY RISK MANAGEMENT?

Marc Tuehl, global head of FX Overlay, HSBC answers the question.

FX: TAMING THE WILD WEST OF TRADING.

Dan Barnes reports on a tumultuous year for foreign exchange, that saw trust in established practice eroded as events unfolded, shaking confidence in market stability.

LME RINGS IN A NEW ERA.

Matt Chamberlain (left), head of business development, and Paul MacGregor (right), head of sales at LME discuss how the exchange is putting a new shine on the business.

CUTTING THROUGH THE NOISE.

Lynn Strongin Dodds explains how Blockchain is emerging from the Bitcoin shadow and forging its own disruptive path.

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