Maechler New GFXC Chair; Global Index Updated to Include Disclosures

Andréa Maechler has been named as the new chair of the Global Foreign Exchange Committee (GFXC), taking over from Guy Debelle, deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, who is stepping down at the end of his term. Maechler is member of the governing Board of the Swiss National Bank with particular responsibility for financial markets and will take the chair for two years.

For the same term, Stefanie Holtze-Jen, CIO Asia-Pacific for Deutsche Bank – Private Bank, has been selected as co-vice chair. She replaces Neill Penney, global head of foreign exchange at LSEG’s Refinitiv, who is also at the end of his term of office, and will serve together with the other co-vice chair, Richard de Roos, group head of foreign exchange for Standard Bank Group, who was elected in 2020.

Maechler is also a member of the BIS Markets Committee and most recently led the work on FX execution algorithms and market functioning, a report that provided input in one of the areas where the FX Global Code was recently updated following the latest three year review. “Structural changes in the foreign exchange market make the establishment of common standards and greater transparency ever more relevant,” says Maechler. “The revised Code and the tools made available duly reflect this. I thank my predecessor, Guy Debelle, outgoing co-vice chair Neill Penney and all GFXC members for successfully completing the review earlier this year. I am grateful for the trust placed in me to further embed the Code in the market and pave the way for the GFXC’s future work.”

Holtze-Jen adds, “I look forward to contributing to the GFXC’s mission, in particular sharing my insights from a buy-side market participant perspective in the GFXC leadership team.”

The appointments were confirmed at a virtual GFXC meeting on 9 December, at which the functionality of the GFXC’s Public Registers and the Global Index of Public Registers was updated to incorporate information on the availability of the completed Disclosure Cover Sheets.

The new functionality allows liquidity providers and FX platforms to share a link to their Cover Sheets onto registers alongside their Statements of Commitment. The GFXC says a first wave of market participants, including some of the largest liquidity providers and FX platforms, have already completed their Disclosure Cover Sheets that are now viewable on the Global Index. In terms of those links to Cover Sheets that are available, on the platform side EBS and Euronext FX have posted, in terms of market participants those of Citadel Securities, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, NAB, NatWest Markets, Standard Bank of South Africa, UBS and XTX Markets are available.

The GFXC says it will continue to encourage and support liquidity providers and FX platforms in producing their Cover Sheets as the rollout continues in the coming months, adding a key focus for the Committee going forward will be to monitor the adoption and effectiveness of these sheets, to help it evaluate whether they are achieving their objectives.

At its meeting, the GFXC also reviewed conditions in the foreign exchange market and began discussing its work programme, which will cover the interim period before the next Code review. To this end, the GFXC says it intends to solicit further input from local foreign exchange committees.

In addition, and to continue its work on expanding the Code’s reach to the buy-side, GFXC says it is establishing a working group, led by de Roos – it is unclear how this group’s work will differ from the previous buy side outreach working group, the GFXC established some years ago, however at a previous meeting, a draft mandate for a buy side liaison group was discussed.