e-Forex talks with Michelle Neal, Global Head of electronic markets at The Royal Bank of Scotland about the consolidation of the banks' electronic platforms and the continuing development of its best of breed FX e-commerce solutions and e-trading tools.

Social networking has now come of age in the consumer market, with the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Bebo and LinkedIn all attracting record numbers of members. Heather McLean explores how this maturing technology has now given rise to increasing interest in social networking for retail FX users, with added trading tools, charts, news feeds and forums to maximise the benefits for end users.

The recent disasters in the global banking system and the ensuing fallout in the derivatives markets fundamentally changed the way market participants use FX derivatives. The crippling widespread disappearance of liquidity and leverage as well as the over-regulation that many doom sayers predicted has not materialised; instead, market participants are refocusing on the core uses of derivatives that built the industry. Concurrently, there are greatly increased efforts at addressing systematic problems with efficiency and operational risk. In addition, regulators are preparing sweeping reforms to the OTC derivatives markets on both sides of the Atlantic and FX derivatives are in danger of being caught up in these reforms.

Service, innovation and security are the three key areas for winning the hearts and minds of retail traders. But what do these smaller traders really want from their platform providers? Heather McLean sets out to explore what brokers are doing to improve the FX experience for the armies of retail traders spilling out of the woodwork across the globe.

The world's futures exchanges continue to make in-roads into the biggest OTC market in the world and with recent regulatory discussions on the need for greater use of centrally cleared products, currency trading innovation continues to gather pace within the exchanges.

Jim Nuzum CEO of GCC Markets, (www.gcc-markets.com) explores why there is growing demand for Shari'ah compliant FX trading solutions and how the latest FX e-commerce technologies can help address the needs of Islamic traders and investors.

The global financial crisis has revived the discussion on a financial transaction tax as a means of discouraging international currency speculation, help shrink 'a swollen financial sector' and perhaps simply to raise funds as an international (or national) source of revenue.

Mark Biezup, FX product Manager - SunGard Sierra, outlines why recent and projected regulatory changes along with a focus on risk management will have significant implications for FX brokers.

With the passing of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA) in December 2000, the Commodities and Futures Trade Commission (CFTC) became officially responsible for regulating the retail FX market, thereby legitimizing the existence of the burgeoning retail market. Today, the retail FX market is booming with strong adoption across all major financial centers.

The Capital Markets landscape consists of a complete multi-asset, multi-partnered and multi-regional infrastructure in order to be profitable in today's market conditions. Trading execution venues, their participants and technology vendors must now all be at the front of technology advancements. However, the need to be in as many markets and to communicate to as many clients and partners as possible has made connectivity to market access a "mine field" of obstacles. In the second in our series on high frequency FX trading, Joe Hilt, VP of Sales, North America, Hibernia Atlantic, outlines some of the key issues facing FX trading firms who are planning how best to link their trading infrastructures to trading venues and what lessons they can take from latency, networking and trading connectivity developments in other markets.