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Barclays Capital (BarCap) and Integral Development Corp. have entered into an agreement to develop a white-labeled, foreign exchange (FX) offering that targets regional banks and brokers, say officials at both companies. The offering will enable BarCap clients to offer Barclays liquidity via their own branding. The system will include liquidity controls and features of Barx, BarCap’s electronic platform. BarCap officials are writing the specifications for the service, which Integral is developing and hosting, says Harpal Sandhu, president and CEO of Integral, based in Mountain View, Calif. "The first version will be available next month," Sandhu says. "Rollouts will continue throughout next year." For technical problems, end users will turn to Integral and for business issues they will seek out BarCap officials, he says. The BarCap agreement follows a similar deal with Citigroup (Trading Technology Week, Nov. 4, 2002) and the development of an online FX platform at Calyon (DWT, May 22).

GL Trade, a Paris-based provider of trading software, services and order management systems (OMSes) is restructuring its executive management teams in Paris and London, and among newly formed business lines. Yassine Brahim, previously CEO of Ubitrade, is GL Trade’s new chief operating officer (COO). Brahim will be responsible for all company business units, and will be based in London. GL Trade acquired derivatives processing specialist Ubitrade in 2004 (DWT, Dec. 6, 2004). Joining Brahim are: Jean-Pierre Baron, formerly the managing director of GL Trade Asia, and is now managing director of the Trading Solutions business line; and Phillippe Rapp, development and strategy director. Pierre Gatignol, CEO of GL Trade, will remain in Paris along with Laurence Saunier, chief financial officer (CFO), and Vincent Burzynski, managing director of front-to-back office solutions, formerly director of products.

The New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) and its sister division the Commodity Exchange (Comex) have agreed to allow Comex and new metal contracts to be electronically traded for overnight and side-by-side transactions via Nymex, say Comex and Nymex officials. The agreement will require Nymex and Comex to terminate a merger agreement that the two companies entered into in 1994. The deal also specifies that Comex members will get 8,400 shares of Nymex common stock for each Comex seat they own. Comex members will also receive trading rights protections and a payment of $10 million total from the proceeds of an initial public offering (IPO) of Nymex. In July, Nymex filed to sell up to $250 million in stock in an IPO (DWT, July 24). The new deal between Nymex and Comex is subject to approval by Comex members, Nymex shareholders and regulatory agencies. After the deal is approved, the new arrangement may allow metals contracts to be listed for clearing via the Nymex ClearPort platform, and may give Nymex the right to offer electronic trading privileges to third parties.

Quote management and transaction software vendor Lava Trading has expanded its foreign exchange (FX) product suite, LavaFX, with the launch of Timeslice, an algorithmic trading tool, say company officials. Timeslice will allow FX traders to send orders over a period of time with minimal market notice or impact. Timeslice works by sending pieces of an order at specified intervals, and can work in conjunction with the LavaFX Staging Area for preloaded orders. The company also announced the pending release of an FX trading platform later this year, which will allow banks to shift large positions quickly, and among each other in a "blind" system, say Lava officials.

The FIX Protocol Ltd. (FPL) and the South African Securities Lending Association (Sasla) inked a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to develop better models for straight through processing (STP), say officials from FPL and Sasla. Both organizations will jointly form the Securities Lending and Borrowing Working Group to share information and collaborate on the STP project, which is slated to be completed in two phases. The first phase will produce guidelines and will document industry practices, and the second phase will yield an in-depth review of product coverage and securities lending and borrowing practices, say officials for both organizations.