Standard Chartered opens regional trading hub at DIFC

Dubai: Standard Chartered Bank on Monday opened their regional trading hub for the Middle East and Africa at the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC).

The new trading floor hosts 200 seats and is the largest such facility in the region. "It strengthens the operations of our regional headquarters for Middle East and Africa. Apart from being a regional hub, it will also function as one of our key global trading hubs and will be in the league of similar facilities in London and New York," said Shayne Nelson, Regional CEO for Middle East and North Africa.

As one of the bank's global hubs, this facility will include specialist global roles focusing on key product areas such as risk management advisory, structuring, interest rates derivatives, foreign exchange, ecommerce, credit trading and capital markets related trading with a wide spectrum of products covering fixed income, syndications, asset-backed securities, credit derivatives and convertible bonds.

The newly-established trading platform at the DIFC was previously hosted from London.

Besides this platform, Standard Chartered has two other trading rooms in the UAE and individual trading rooms for each of the countries it operates in the region.

Closer

"The idea behind hosting a trading platform of this scale in Dubai is to be near to our customers. With our regional headquarters based in Dubai, it makes more sense for us to host our trading platform from here," said Boon Huat Lee, Managing Director and Regional Head of Global Markets, Middle East and North Africa.

"Standard Chartered's new trading room sets fresh benchmarks in the region for state-of-the-art facilities that help customers conduct trading activities," Dr Omar Bin Sulaiman, Governor of DIFC, who officially opened the facility.

Sanctions: Iran office to be shut

Standard Chartered Bank, which has a representative office in Iran is closing down the office as part for adhering to the US sanctions against Iran.

"We are in the process of shutting down our representative office in Iran. We do care about the US and United Nations sanctions," said Shayne Nelson, Regional CEO for Middle East and North Africa told Gulf News on Monday.

The British bank, that has had banking relations with, Iran for the past several decades said on Monday that it is not doing any business in that country.