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ICAP electronic broking volumes up 22% year on year

Monday 8th March 2010

By Mike Jones

Global interdealer broker ICAP has announced that average daily volumes on its electronic broking platforms BrokerTec and EBS again demonstrated strong growth, with February 2010 volumes of US 695.3billion single count, an increase of 22% on the previous year.

Total average daily volumes in fixed income products on the BrokerTec platform (US Treasury products, US repo and EU repo) were US 530.6billion, an increase of 28% on February 2009.

Average daily volumes in spot FX on the EBS platform were US 164.8billion single count in February 2010, the highest level since November 2008 (US 167.4billion). This represented an increase of 12% on the previous month and 7% on February 2009.

In February, EBS continued to see an increase in trading activity in Commonwealth and emerging markets currencies, particularly in Australian dollar, South African rand and Mexican peso.

Average daily electronic volumes in US Treasury products increased 37% year on year to US 123.9billion, the highest volumes since October 2009. US repo volumes were up 27% year on year to US 176.7billion, and European repo volumes also saw a strong increase to US 230billion, up 25% year on year.

"The continued volatility in the foreign exchange and fixed income markets is driving renewed growth on ICAP’s interbank electronic broking platforms, particularly on EBS, the primary source of global liquidity for bank and non bank spot FX traders," said David Rutter, Deputy CEO, ICAP Electronic Broking.

"We are also seeing increasingly active trading across a very diverse group of currencies."

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