There is nothing like a poignant geopolitical circumstance in order to generate unusual market conditions, and tomorrow’s poll which could signal the end of the United Kingdom in its current form is fast approaching.
Today, as Scotland’s populace prepares to cast its vote to remain part of the United Kingdom or to go it alone, British multi-currency FX settlement firm CLS has settled over $10 trillion instructions in one day.
This represents a record milestone for the company, with precisely 2,000,206 instructions having been set on Wednesday 17 September, exactly a week after the company’s thirteenth anniversary, surpassing the previous record of 1,993,544 instructions on 18 September 2013.
Around 99% of the instructions were settled in just 45 minutes, between 07:15 and 08:00, a testament to the company’s recent technology upgrades. Whether this represents a rush on London’s currency markets in anticipation of an unknown financial landscape should Scotland go independent is indeed a notion which will no doubt become clearer within the next few days.
As well as the number of instructions having set a new precedent, transaction values were also exceptionally high at USD10.08 trillion, not far below the current record, which remains at $10.34 trillion, recorded on 19 March 2008, just months before the global financial crisis took place, seeing many of London’s large banks bailed out by the International Monetary Fund, and subsequently nationalized.