ICAP’s EBS taking drastic steps to bring back clients.
ICAP’s Forex ECN unit, EBS, may be losing market share to competitors such as Thomson Reuters and FXall (which recently passed EBS to take the #2 slot in the market), but EBS management is not taking it lying down. After last week announcing that it was launching a disclosed-liquidity service, EBS Direct, which would directly compete with FXall’s Relationship Trading unit, today EBS announced that it is acquiring ClientKnowledge, a London-based liquidity optimisation firm specialising in FX.
ClientKnowledge’s services are targeted mainly at large banks and financial institutions active in the FX markets. ClientKnowledge uses quantitative analysis and research to help firms such as these analyze their liquidity needs and strategy, and optimising their approach to liquidity and trading.
EBS’s moves seem to be aimed at repairing and improving relationships with key global liquidity banks in the FX market, which had become unhappy with what they saw as a preference for high frequency traders on the EBS platform.
For the full EBS press release .
For more on the global Forex industry see the LeapRate-Dow Jones Forex Industry Report.