As part of the move, Mizuho Bank will be able to benefit from SwapAgent’s offering including centralised trade processing and optimisation.

“Joining SwapAgent as a member is crucial for us to be able to offer our own clients an enhanced service that improves standardisation and efficiency in the cross-currency swap market, as well as reduces operational and credit risk. We look forward to unlocking these capabilities through SwapAgent,” said Kenichiro Kobayashi, head of Europe Treasury department, operating officer at Mizuho.

SwapAgent offers solutions targeting improved standardisation, efficiency and simplicity in the non-cleared derivatives market.

In February, TD Securities joined LCH SwapAgent as first Canadian bank member. Today, 47 dealer entities from 15 countries are currently live at SwapAgent, LCH confirmed.

“As financial institutions across Asia and Japan increasingly seek to benefit more from robust risk management and capital efficiencies, we remain committed to offering our members the processing, margining and settlement benefits that SwapAgent brings,” said Nathan Ondyak, head of SwapAgent at LCH.

The post Mizuho becomes latest member to join LCH SwapAgent appeared first on The TRADE.

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said in a statement that the Japanese bank engaged in multiple acts of spoofing – whereby traders bid and offer with the intent to cancel before execution – on the CME and Cboe exchanges.

A trader accessed the futures markets through a trading platform from Mizuho’s Singapore office, placing large buy and sell orders for futures contracts and then cancelling them in order to test the market’s reaction to his spoof orders.

“Spoofing is an unlawful trade practice that undermines the integrity of the market, because it injects false information into the market—information on which market participants may rely,” said James McDonald, the CFTC’s director of enforcement.

“That’s true whether the bad actor is motivated by a desire to manipulate the market for profit, or, as was the case here, to test the market’s reaction to certain types of orders.  This case shows the Commission’s commitment to root out spoofing in all of its forms.  This case also shows that true cooperation—like that of Mizuho here—will be rewarded with a substantially reduced monetary penalty.”

According to the CFTC, Mizuho Bank has since launched an overhaul of its systems and controls for the detection and prevention of similar misconduct in the future.  As a result, the financial penalty of $250,000 was significantly reduced.

In August last year, Japanese institution the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ also settled spoofing charges with the CFTC with a $600,000 fine, after it told authorities that one of its traders had carried out the misconduct in Treasury and Eurodollar futures markets.

Once the Bank of Tokyo became aware of the activities, the trader was suspended and then reported to the CFTC’s division of enforcement.

The post Mizuho Bank fined $250,000 for spoofing futures markets appeared first on The TRADE.

Mizuho Bank has completed a project with Nomura Research Institute using artificial intelligence to eliminate certain derivative contract procedures.

Nomura was approached by Mizuho to develop the project and examine the realistic applications of AI, as the standard derivative contract procedure has traditionally included various manual and archiving processes.

The proof-of-concept found optional character recognition can digitise contracts from ISDA and the system can define, extract and archive the data into a format that is more easily accessible.

Both firms said as a result, the time it takes analysts to register ISDA contract information into the system was ‘significantly decreased’.

Masahiro Ueki, SVP of legal and compliance and global markets coordination at Mizuho, also expects the system to maintain a high-level of understanding of ISDA contract operations.

Hiroyuki Nakayama, general manager of financial business planning at Nomura Research Institute, added: “We continue to learn new and exciting applications for the technology that we are seeking to implement further through strong partnerships.”

Mizuho Bank intends to continue working with Nomura to develop a fully-fledged system service for all derivative contract operations.

The post Mizuho Bank deploys AI for derivative contracts process appeared first on The TRADE.

Mizuho Bank in Japan has adopted Thomson Reuters’ next generation FX trading desktop into its trading business.

The FX Trading service combines all of Thomson Reuters’ FX venues onto an end-to-end platform and one point of access to its FX liquidity pool.

Thomson Reuters claims users have access to the world’s largest professional FX community, with 14,000 dealing counterparties, 1,500 FXall buy-side liquidity takers and over 300,000 Eikon Messenger contacts.

FX Trading also provides compliance tools, settlement, straight through processing and trade history reports.

Michael Go, head of FX market development, Asia Pacific at Thomson Reuters, explained market volatility, regulatory scrutiny and decreased risk appetite have impacted FX market liquidity.

“FX Trading allows users to easily access maximum liquidity while complying with stringent regulatory standards,” he added.

Yosuke Takahashi, foreign markets team 1 at the international foreign exchange department at Mizuho Bank, added the biggest advantage of Thomson Reuters FX platform is the availability of more ordering methods.

“The diversification of ordering methods leads to the improvement of operating functions and also translates into more opportunities for trading profits,” Takahashi said.

The Bank of International Settlement’s latest survey on FX and OTC derivatives markets found Japan was one of the top five financial centres in 2016, accounting for 77% of global FX trading.

The post Mizuho Bank integrates Thomson Reuters’ FX trading appeared first on The TRADE.