History
EBS was created by a partnership of the world's largest foreign exchange (FX) market making banks in 1990 to challenge Reuters' threatened monopoly in interbank spot foreign exchange and provide effective competition. By 2007, approximately USD 164 billion in spot foreign exchange transaction, 0.3 million oz in gold and 1 million oz in silver as well as 200,000 ounces of Platinum and Palladium were traded every day over the EBS Spot Dealing System.
EBS's closest competitor is Reuters Dealing 3000 Spot Matching. The decision by an FX trader whether to use EBS or Thomson Reuters Matching is driven largely by currency pair. In practice, EBS is the primary trading venue for EUR/USD, USD/JPY, EUR/JPY, USD/CHF and EUR/CHF, and Thomson Reuters Matching is the primary trading venue for these and all other interbank currency pairs.
EBS was the first organisation to facilitate orderly black box or algorithmic trading in spot FX, through an application programming interface (API). By 2007 this accounted for 60% of all EBS flow.
EBS was acquired by ICAP, the world’s largest interdealer broker, in June 2006. ICAP said that the acquisition would combine EBS’ strengths in electronic spot foreign exchange with ICAP’s Electronic Broking business to create a single global multi-product business with further growth potential and significant economies of scale. It went on to say that would provide customers with more efficient electronic trade execution, reduced integration costs and give access to broad liquidity across a wide product range.
Read more about this topic: Electronic Broking Services
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“In the history of the United States, there is no continuity at all. You can cut through it anywhere and nothing on this side of the cut has anything to do with anything on the other side.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of the prophets. He saw with an open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)