The Governors of the Global Economy Meeting welcome the publication of the FX Global Code, a single global code for the wholesale foreign exchange market, as well as the establishment of the Global Foreign Exchange Committee to maintain the Code in the future.

Liquidnet, the global institutional trading network, today announced the appointment of Stephen Grady as Non-Executive Director of Liquidnet Europe. Stephen will bring more than twenty years of experience in managing trading functions.  

Commenting on Grady’s appointment, Mark Pumfrey, Head of Liquidnet EMEA, said: “We are looking forward to Stephen joining as Non-Executive Director and providing strategic counsel to Liquidnet as it continues to expand its business across the EMEA region, with an overall focus on augmenting global membership.”

Recently appointed as Head of Market Structure and Strategy at Ipreo, Stephen was global head of trading of Legal & General's investment management arm since 2012. Prior to that he was Head of Global Dealing at Barclays Wealth, responsible for buy-side trading team for the active asset management division and sales trading for small institutions and individual clients. Previously, Stephen was based in Paris with Fortis Investments as Head of Global Dealing. Stephen graduated from the University of New South Wales and holds a BA degree in economics and economic history.

“I am excited to be joining Liquidnet at a time when markets are facing far-reaching changes and I’m looking forward to contributing to Liquidnet's continued success in innovating and improving liquidity for its members and, ultimately, the whole marketplace,” commented Grady.

On May 19, the Czech capital hosted the largest conference on digital currencies and blockchain – Blockchain & Bitcoin Conference Prague. 15 speakers from 8 countries (300 participants in total) discussed the development of cryptocurrencies, blockchain projects in Fintech and Govtech, as well as legislative challenges.

Business & community

Open blockchain systems for business were discussed during the report of the CEO and founder of Waves Platform, Sasha Ivanov (Russia). The presented service is designed for digital values emission, assets trading using blockchain, and crowdfunding. The speaker covered such issues as network scaling, optimization of a block size and improvement of the whole system efficiency.

Ronny Boesing (Denmark), the CEO at decentralized conglomerate Openledger, talked about trading, investment and crowdfunding on the basis of this platform.

The challenges of the business community were covered by the owner of Euro Tech Startups and co-founder of Adel, Gabriel Dusil (Czech Republic). He reported about the formation of a professional community and blockchain ecosystem.

The issues related to the development of digital currencies in the banking sector and regulatory policy of the European Union were revealed by the independent expert, specialist in e-payments in the Single Europe Payment Area (SEPA), Ugo Bechis (Italy).

Blockchain in employment sector

Alternative application of the blockchain, in recruiting and job searching was covered by the head of BitWage, Forbes columnist, Jonathan Chester (USA). The company, which he heads, is the international service for searching remote work and employees that also allows employers to pay salaries in bitcoins without complex technological innovations.

The audience learned how blockchain helps to verify the resume and check applicant's reputation, as well as how to avoid unnecessary transaction costs when paying salaries to remote employees.

Data protection

The report of the Crypviser representative, Sergey Sidorov (Germany) was dedicated to the protection of information and confidentiality. He talked about the weaknesses of communication channels, the main ways of interception of data and the ways to automate information transfer with the help of blockchain.

Mining

A separate topic of the conference was mining of crypto-currencies. This section featured the reports of such experts as the representative of Genesis Mining, Rodrigo Balam (Germany), who presented a comparative analysis of home and industrial mining, and the participant of Bitcoin Foundation Ukraine, Andriy Dubetsky (Ukraine). Andriy spoke about the profitability of today's mining and the variety of mining hardware.

Blockchain in energy sector

Decentralization of the energy infrastructure was covered in the presentations of the co-founder of MyBit.io, Ian Warrall (Czech Republic) and one of the founders of SolarChange Assaf ben Or (Germany). The audience learned about the development of renewable energy systems and shifting to the new types of energy with the help of blockchain.

Ian Worrall also focused on the interaction of blockchain and artificial intelligence, as well as on the advantages of decentralization.

Blockchain against corruption

The independent developer Oleg Kudrenko (Ukraine) spoke about the anti-corruption potential of the blockchain technology. He gave arguments for the fact that corrupt officials must be replaced by the decentralized services.

Demo zone

Together with the conference, there was an exhibition of crypto equipment, software and related services.

The products were presented by HashCoins, the hardware manufacturer, Waves Platform, the service for holding crowdfunding campaigns, Solvena, the crypto-currency broker, Crypviser, the encryption system developer, Polybius Bank. the innovative bank, and several other brands.

Organizer of the event is Smile-Expo, the company that holds blockchain conferences in five countries: the Czech Republic, Estonia, Sweden, Russia and Ukraine. The next events for decentralized economy supporters will be held in St. Petersburg on June 22 and Stockholm on September 7.

Nasdaq, Inc. and Depósito Central de Valores (DCV)  today announced a new landmark agreement to bolster the technological infrastructure of Chile's central securities depository (CSD).

"We are very satisfied with our thorough, year-long vendor partnership process in selecting the Nasdaq platform, which will replace the core system of the DCV," said Fernando Yáñez, CEO of DCV. "We believe with the implementation of this new system, we will have more opportunities for growth and diversification in our current services, as well as strengthening our day-to-day operations."

Under the agreement with DCV, Nasdaq will deliver its CSD Solution, which will allow for:

• Seamless trade and instruction management, settlement, custody, corporate event management and registry capabilities;
• Full coverage for all types of securities and multi-currencies (including UF, i.e. inflation indexed non-deliverable currency);
• Support for smooth, fault-free settlement with optimization algos, as well as potentially provide facilities to securities lending and borrowing accounting;
• Enabling full STP and based on global standards and market practices, while reducing operational complexity.

"As a partner with the DCV on transforming their technology to a next-generation platform, the Nasdaq Financial Framework's open nature will support the future growth and demand of their business, as well as requirements from partners and regulators," said Lars Ottersgård, Executive Vice President and Head of Market Technology, Nasdaq. "By leveraging the Nasdaq Financial Framework, DCV's new technology will allow for standardized, unified operations, messaging and data infrastructure coupled with unparalleled flexibility and cost efficiency. DCV can also integrate its own business functionality, as well as other third-party offerings, helping to meet their own unique needs."

Nasdaq's exchange technology, including trading, clearing, CSD and market surveillance systems, is in operation in over 89 marketplaces across the Americas, Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean.

Intellect Design Arena Limited, a digital technology product provider across Banking, Financial Services and Insurance, has signed a 10 year deal with one of Australia’s “Big Four”, to implement its integrated trade finance, treasury and retail remittance solution for the Bank’s corporate and retail customers in one of its offshore regions.

The solution encompasses a modular, SOA enabled, web-based and platform-independent architecture that will replace a legacy system which is more than two decades old. This will streamline the Bank’s back-office processes to facilitate straight-through processing across all the business divisions. The solution is expected to be able to provide 360 degrees of visibility around workflow for the Bank’s separate teams in trade finance, retail remittance, and treasury, where operations often intersect. Crucially, the Bank will be able to pass these efficiencies onto its customers.

The Bank has also entrusted Intellect with the solution’s maintenance and technical support – beginning a 10-year relationship between the two firms.

Anil Verma, Executive Director of Intellect, says: “This landmark deal with one of Australia’s leading banks to implement our digital solution covering a large functional arena of Trade Finance, Treasury, and Retail Remittance is a testament to our architectural ability and product design. We look forward to a long and successful partnership.”

Concurrent, a global leader in storage, protection, transformation, and delivery of visual assets, today announced the deployment of its Aquari Storage system at Leucom Stafag AG, a Switzerland-based telecommunications provider of high performance broadband access for 30 thousand customers in the Frauenfeld area of northeast Switzerland.

Leucom delivers phone, internet and TV services to both private and business customers. To provide an enhanced subscriber experience, Leucom has developed an OTT / multiscreen offering that enables 7-day "Catchup TV", VOD and nPVR services for their premium users.

"Our high-quality service, which includes the best German-speaking premium movies and more than 250 live channels, will be delivered on the new OTT / multiscreen platform beginning in 2017," said Markus Schlatter, CEO and President of the board of Leucom AG. "We chose to partner with Concurrent to supply our high-performance storage because their technology ensures the security and reliability of our premium content."

Concurrent Aquari Storage is a modern, intelligent storage system that features simultaneous support for multiple file- or object-based workloads. Built on a true scale-out architecture, Aquari Storage seamlessly and independently scales throughput and capacity. This translates into increased flexibility and scalability to better manage growing visual media assets and the applications that process them. 
                        
"For modern operators like Leucom, it is essential that their premium content across all customer devices is stored in a way that is simple to deploy, fast to integrate and effortless to scale," said Clay McCreery, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales and Service at Concurrent. "We are pleased that Aquari is trusted by Leucom to ensure a consistent, high-quality experience for their customers."