FX prime brokerage industry
FX prime brokerage industry

Summary/Abstract: The paper focuses on FX prime brokerage (FXPB) service, provided by brokers (mostly large banks) to their clients, which consists in enabling them to trade with other banks using their prescreened credit and in their name (e.g. by providing them with access to electronic platforms that are only available to a limited group of dealers). The aim of the paper is to indicate the role of prime brokers in the creation of forex turnovers. The methodology used in the paper is based on the analysis of specialist literature and data collected by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) from market-makers (the most active financial institutions making different foreign exchange transactions, often named ‘reporting dealers’). The results of the survey of the global forex market organized by the BIS are provided regularly once every three years, last time in April 2013. The results of the April 2016 research will be published in December 2016 or next year. As previous BIS analyses didn’t touch the problem of prime-brokered transactions in the global forex market (there is a lack of advanced statistics on prime-brokered transactions in the forex market), the paper focuses on data from April 2013 only. FX prime brokerage service has been contributing to the growth of the forex market from the very introduction of FXPB to the banking offer in the early 1990s. From many years there has been a tendency to make the foreign exchange market more open and to facilitate investors to access its services. FXPB enables smaller financial institutions (mainly hedge funds) to trade with large commercial and investment banks, which would remain out of their reach without the help of FX prime brokers. The growth of the foreign exchange market turnover is due to the growing activity of the customers of prime brokers.

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