Electronic Broking Services

Electronic Broking Services (EBS) was created by a partnership of the world's largest foreign exchange (FX) market making banks. Approximately USD 145 billion in spot foreign exchange transaction, 700,000 oz in gold and 7 million oz in silver is traded every day over the EBS Spot Dealing System. It was created in 1990 to challenge Reuters' threatened monopoly in interbank spot foreign exchange and provide effective competition.

EBS's closest competitor is Reuters Dealing 3000 Spot Matching (aka D2), which was launched after EBS. The decision by an FX trader whether to use EBS or Reuters D2 is driven largely by currency pair. In practice, EBS is used mainly for EUR/USD, USD/JPY, EUR/JPY, USD/CHF and EUR/CHF, and Reuters D2 is used for 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).

EBS was acquired by ICAP, the world’s largest interdealer broker, in June 2006. The acquisition will 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.

This platform will provide customers with more efficient electronic trade execution, reduced integration costs and give access to broad liquidity across a wide product range. [ [http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000085&sid=aP0F29oTaQ0w&refer=europe ICAP Agrees to Buy Electronic Currency Broker EBS] , Hamish Risk and Andrew Reierson, Bloomberg, 2006-04-21]

The EBS solutions portfolio includes:

*EBS Spot (electronic FX spot broking)

*EBS Spot Ai (application program interface (API) between the customer’s trading system and the EBS Spot market)

*EBS Prime (access for the interbank and professional trading communities to the best EBS Spot prices from an EBS Prime bank)

*EBS Metals (electronic spot broking for the precious metals market)

*EBS Live (live streaming prices delivered with minimum latency direct from EBS to the customer's market data distribution platform)

*EBS Ticker (third-party system distribution of EBS Spot prices)

*EBS Rates (desktop view of EBS Spot prices, available exclusively through the BLOOMBERG PROFESSIONAL service)

*EBS Data Mine (unique and certified historical data from 1997 onwards)

References

External links

* [http://www.ebs.com/ Website]
* [http://www.londonfx.co.uk/autobrok.html List of supported currency pairs in EBS and Reuters D2]
* [http://www.aarontrade.com EBS Prime Provider]