Australian Foreign Exchange Committee Meeting Minutes

Sydney – 2 December 2020
Conducted via teleconference

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Attendees

Christopher Kent, RBA (Chair); Guy Debelle, RBA (GFXC Chair); Chris Howlett, ACI Australia; Mark McCarthy, AFMA; Andrew Scott, AMP; Luke Marriott, ANZ; Winnie Tan, Bank of China; David Hatzidis, CBA; Aaron Ng, Citigroup; Lee Merchant, Deutsche Bank; Catherine Rich, Goldman Sachs; Andy Lukas, HSBC; Will Richardson, Macquarie Bank; Mark Lawler, National Australia Bank; Simon Watkin, NEX; Stuart Simmons, QIC; Gary Latner, Refinitiv; Simon Sukhaseume, SSGA; Jeremy Carr, Suncorp; Vanessa Bailey, Westpac; Chris Knight, XTX Markets

Apologies

Deirdre Williams, BHP Billiton

Secretariat

Matthew Boge, RBA (Secretary); Jason Griffin, RBA

1. Competition Guidelines

The Chair reminded attendees that the meeting would be conducted in line with the RBA's Competition Law Guidance.

2. Global Foreign Exchange Committee (GFXC) Work Agenda

AFXC members reviewed several draft papers that had been prepared by the GFXC's working groups. These papers related to the focus areas of the GFXC's review of the FX Global Code. Members first discussed three topics – FX disclosures, anonymous trading, and riskless principal – where the papers suggested that the Code may benefit from small modifications. There was broad support from the AFXC members for measures which support greater transparency.

Members also discussed initial drafts of papers on last look and pre-hedging that the GFXC's working groups had written as guidance material for market participants. AFXC members supported further guidance on these topics and discussed how this could be best presented. In particular, for pre-hedging, members' preference was for the guidance material to cover a variety of order types, transacted both electronically and via voice. It was also noted that the guidance would need to be carefully drafted to reflect both clients' and liquidity providers' perspectives.

A summary of the AFXC members' views would be passed on to the GFXC working groups. The Chair encouraged members to email any more detailed views on the papers to the AFXC Secretariat by 11 December, with this feedback also to be passed on to the GFXC.

3. Next meeting

The next AFXC meeting is expected to be held in mid-March 2021.