Today we are speaking with Ian McAfee, CEO of Shift Forex. Shift provides strategy consulting, marketing and a range of other services to brokers, banks and solutions providers and other companies in the foreign exchange industry from its offices in New York, London and Auckland.
Shift started the FXIC Global Event series as an outgrowth of business development activities in 2013. FXIC events are now among the most popular, heavily attended in the industry, partly because they bring together top banks and companies across the institutional, wholesale and retail market sectors.
LeapRate: Hi Ian, Thanks for joining us today. Can you tell us a little about the upcoming FXIC event?
Shift Forex: Yes, FXIC Shanghai takes place December 9th and 10th at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel on the Bund in Shanghai.
We’ve done some special things with this conference.
Firstly, we’ve partnered with FX Shell, a local market specialist located in Shanghai. They’ve been an invaluable source of local market insight as well as highly effective in attracting IB and broker attendees and speakers from leading FX companies in China to the event. We’ve also focused on bringing top Chinese securities firms to the conference, as many large Western brokers have found these companies to be important partners for larger scale expansion in China.
Secondly, we’ve concentrated the focus of this event to a bilateral exchange of ideas between non-Chinese companies seeking to learn about entering the onshore market and the growing network of resident brokers and IBs, desiring to find out more about industry best practices as well as leading solutions providers across technology, liquidity, credit and wholesale broker offerings.
As with all FXIC events, we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the sessions. A number of esteemed market experts have agreed to participate from CITIC Securities, PwC, Huatai Securities, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, and China UnionPay to name just a few.
LeapRate: How has the response been to the event?
Shift Forex: Fortunately, we got a number of leading companies to sign on early, including One Financial Markets, FXCM Asia, Alpari, and Advanced Markets. Other sponsors and exhibitors followed suit. Our event partner, FX Shell, has facilitated over 100 attendees from top Chinese brokers and IBs and more are registering daily.
Also, given the intense interest in the China market, we’ve attracted top-quality media partners including LeapRate. Thanks Gerald.
LeapRate: You’re welcome. Can you tell us what the FXIC global event series has planned for 2015?
Shift Forex: Sure. We’ll be hosting our second annual FXIC LatAm in Mexico City on February 10. Like FXIC Shanghai, the event will enable market participants from across Latin America to network with representatives from leading FX institutions and companies located outside of the region.
The event, which we’ve titled, “The Forex Landscape in Latin America,” will look across the institutional, wholesale and retail industry and provide a forum for both buy and sell-side FX market participants to network and swap information.
We’re also planning to host one or two smaller FXIC events covering esoteric aspects of trading and regulation as well as our flagship FXIC NYC event, which will be held in the spring.
LeapRate: That’s quite a pipeline. Any final thoughts?
Shift Forex: Thanks very much for the opportunity to discuss Shift and our FXIC global events. Anyone who would like more information, please visit the company web site or www.fxic.com.
See you in Shanghai.