Financial Regulatory Forum

    BUDAPEST, April 22 (Reuters) – Hungary’s financial market regulator PSZAF has fined Deutsche Bank London 90 million forints ($458,100) for high volume spot forint foreign exchange transactions on Oct. 15, 2008 which weakened the exchange rate, the watchdog said on Thursday. (more…)

By Vivianne Rodrigues and Ana Nicolaci da Costa

NEW YORK, March 5 (Reuters) – Brazil’s central bank is studying measures to modernize the country’s foreign exchange trading, central bank chief Henrique Meirelles said on Friday.

The measures, mostly technical, seek to make the Brazilian foreign exchange markets more “efficient,” which could also result in an increase in overall flows, Meirelles told journalists.

He said the central bank has recently resumed work on an overhaul of its currency laws, which were set up in the 1930′s when hard currencies were scarce.

By Ana Nicolaci da Costa and Isabel Versiani

BRASILIA, Feb 4 (Reuters)- Brazil’s government is mulling changes in the foreign exchange rules as part of a long-term plan to make the real a fully convertible currency, though market demand will be the key driver for those changes, a top finance ministry official told Reuters on Thursday.

A stable and growing economy has boosted demand for the Brazilian currency, which will naturally lead to steps aiming to make it fully convertible — meaning it could be freely traded and exchanged anywhere into other major currencies — said Luiz Eduardo Melin, secretary of fiscal and economic reforms at the finance ministry.

The government has no specific plan of action but is looking to implement a law allowing nonresident foreigners to hold bank accounts in Brazil, which has already been approved by Congress.

   By Sumeet Desai
ST ANDREWS, Scotland, Nov 6 (Reuters) – The Group of 20 leading nations will agree this weekend it is too early to pull the plug on emergency support for the global economy and launch a new system of checks to help rebalance world growth and prevent future crises.

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    By Surojit Gupta and Lesley Wroughton
MUMBAI/WASHINGTON, Nov 3 (Reuters) – The International Monetary Fund has sold 200 tonnes of gold to the Reserve Bank of India for $6.7 billion, quietly executing half of a long-planned bullion sale. The deal fuelled speculation that other governments — including China — may be ready to diversify their reserves even at near-record gold prices.

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TORONTO, Nov 2 (Reuters) – The G20 finance ministers and central bankers meeting this weekend will discuss foreign exchange rates and the perils of designating some banks as “too big to fail,” Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said on Monday.

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ISTANBUL/BUDAPEST, Oct 4 (Reuters) – Hungary’s central bank has proposed regulations to limit foreign currency lending to cut the country’s vulnerability in a financial crisis.

Governor Andras Simor said on Sunday at the International Monetary Fund/World Bank meeting in Istanbul that the central bank, the NBH, had asked the government for extra powers to discourage Hungarians from taking on foreign currency loans in order to lessen the economic impact of any future financial crises.

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By Niklas Pollard and Adam Cox
STOCKHOLM, July 31 (Reuters) – Iceland’s central bank on Friday outlined plans to lift capital controls in the next few months to get the economy functioning more normally, roughly 10 months after the island country’s financial system tottered amid fallout from the global financial crisis.
Also on Friday, the International Monetary Fund and Iceland reached an agreement on economic policy measures under the country’s IMF loan programme.

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By Zhou Xin and Simon Rabinovitch
BEIJING, July 17 (Reuters) – China’s $2 trillion stockpile of foreign exchange reserves, the world’s largest, is diversified despite the vast amount held in U.S. Treasuries, the Chinese central bank chief said on Friday.
Zhou Xiaochuan’s apparent satisfaction with China’s current dollar-heavy investment portfolio contrasted with calls he has made this year for a new super-sovereign currency to end the greenback’s dominance. (more…)

   By Randy Fabi
   ABUJA, July 7 (Reuters) – Nigeria’s new central bank chief surprised markets by slashing interest rates by 2 percentage points on Tuesday, as he also set about reforming the banking sector and lifted foreign exchange controls. (more…)