ICAP's EBS to offer outright forwards

ICAP the worlds largest inter dealer broker is expanding its FX product range on the popular EBS interbank Trading Platform . EBS is a leading cross asset FX trading platform covering major currencies including EUR USD.

EBS currently offers spot and NDF's and is looking to diversify its offering away from the tradiional bid/offer mathcing service.

David Rutter, London-based chief executive of Icap's electronic broking division, says the firm plans to make further announcements in the middle of 2012 about the launch of the new service, which will focus on short tenors of below one month. Rutter did not give details about which currency pairs the outright forwards would be offered on.

He says the launch is a result of increasing fragmentation in the foreign exchange market, a phenomenon that has led Icap to increase investment in EBS's global infrastructure to provide additional services to its banking clients. The investment is significant: according to Icap's 2011 annual report the group spent 12% of its revenue on technology, equal to about £200 million ($316 million).

According to Rutter, Icap may expand its offering further: "We are developing EBS so that it would not only just function as a pure Forex exchange, but in addition offer streaming forex rates to specific clients of the banks... We want to offer additional services to banks so that they could pick and choose clients within our EBS framework," he says.

In additon to EBS, ICAP operates UK based spread betting firm - City Index.

Forexmagnates team covered institutional trade volumes in the latest quarterly report - Q4 2011.