Singapore and Hong Kong continue to battle for FX
(17 September 2019 – Singapore) Singapore saw its lead over Hong Kong shrink to its smallest margin in the battle to be Asia’s biggest FX currency hub.
The latest BIS triennial FX survey reported average daily trading in Singapore up 22 percent to a record US$633 billion in April from the same period in 2016. Only just ahead of Hong Kon’s US$632 billion, as the city saw a 45 percent increase in transactions each day.
While Hong Kong is at the forefront of the yuan market, Singapore has enticed UBS, Citigroup, Standard Chartered and JPMorgan Chase to set up FX pricing and trading engines in the last year.
Singapore will need another three to five major players to build electronic trading platforms to achieve “critical mass” over the next year according to Benny Chey, assistant managing director of development and international at the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
“We have confidence that we’ll get those players as we’re already in discussions with them,” Mr Chey said in an interview with the South China Morning Post, without disclosing names. “Growth of trading in Asian and other emerging-market currencies will be an increasingly important market driver for Singapore.”
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