US banking giant Citi has teamed with Danish online investment bank Saxo to develop and launch CitiFX Pro, an online foreign exchange (FX) trading platform designed for individual investors and smaller institutional traders.
In a statement, the two firms say they have come together to pool their capabilities to give individuals and smaller institutional dealers access to the same level of data and trading technology as institutional traders.
"Private traders will now be able to take full advantage of Citi's global presence, authority and reliability and Saxo Bank's technology to trade FX virtually anytime. This will provide better products, prices and services to a growing audience of globally oriented investors and traders," says Kim Fournais, co-CEO and co-founder of Saxo Bank.
"Providing FX execution service to sophisticated individual traders and small institutions using state-of-the-art online tools is a natural extension of our global FX product suite," adds Jeff Feig, Citi's global head of G10 foreign exchange.
Saxo says CitiFX Pro has been developed specifically for Citi and is based on the bank's specifications.
The service will offer trading in 150 currency crosses in a market with a daily turnover of $3 trillion, says Saxo, citing the Bank for International Settlements.
The trading platform is still subject to regulatory and other approvals, but it is expected to begin operating shortly in the US market and will be rolled out to selected countries around the world in 2008.