Electronic Broking Services (EBS) is a wholesale electronic trading platform used to trade foreign exchange (FX) with market making banks. It was originally created as a partnership by a number of the worlds largest banks and is now part of the ICAP (company).
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EBS was created by a partnership of the world's largest foreign exchange (FX) market making banks in 1990 to challenge Reuters' threatened monopoly in interbank spot foreign exchange and provide effective competition. By 2007, approximately USD 164 billion in spot foreign exchange transaction, 0.3 million oz in gold and 1 million oz in silver as well as 200,000 ounces of Platinum and Pladium were traded every day over the EBS Spot Dealing System.
EBS's closest competitor was Reuters Dealing 3000 Spot Matching (aka D2 or D3). The decision by an FX trader whether to use EBS or Reuters D2 is driven largely by currency pair. In practice, EBS is the primary trading venue for EUR/USD, USD/JPY, EUR/JPY, USD/CHF and EUR/CHF, and Reuters D2 is the primary trading venue for all other interbank currency pairs. It's worth noting that the currency pairs traded on EBS account for the bulk of the spot interbank market.
EBS was the first organisation to facilitate orderly black box or algorithmic trading in spot FX, through an application programming interface (API). By 2007 this accounted for 60% of all EBS flow.
EBS was acquired by ICAP, the world’s largest interdealer broker, in June 2006. ICAP said that the acquisition would combine EBS’ strengths in electronic spot foreign exchange with ICAP’s Electronic Broking business to create a single global multi-product business with further growth potential and significant economies of scale. It went on to say that would provide customers with more efficient electronic trade execution, reduced integration costs and give access to broad liquidity across a wide product range.[1]
The EBS solutions portfolio includes: