Lobby group GFMA has been actively fighting a Europe-wide financial transaction tax.

The Global FX Division of financial sector lobby group Global Financial Markets Association (or GFMA) has hired Andrew Harvey as Managing Director, Europe. This represents a very senior hire for GFMA — Harvey joins from Morgan Stanley where he was COO of Derivatives Operations. He previously worked in the FX operations of Goldman Sachs.

The GFMA has been picking up its fight recently against the different versions of the financial transaction tax floating around Europe. Like many other things in EU finance, tax and regulations, not much has been agreed upon as far as FTT goes. In France, for example, it has already been introduced but is not applied to forex or CFD trades — which as we reported earlier provided a bump last year for France CFD trading. In other countries, however, it might apply to other areas including FX — and given FX trading volumes it could significantly slow the market.

In the GFMA’s words, it “seeks to ensure that… the FX market continues to be efficient, liquid and accessible to all participants.”

For the complete GFMA press release on Andrew Harvey’s hiring click here.

For more on the global Forex industry see the LeapRate-Dow Jones Forex Industry Report.