CLS/ICAP joint venture launches CLS Aggregation service for global FX markets

London/New York, January 26, 2010 - CLS Group and Traiana, an ICAP company (IAP.L), today announced that the joint venture (CLSAS) to provide trade aggregation services to participants active in the over-the-counter FX market has gone live, heralding a new chapter in operational risk reduction and banking industry collaboration.

The service will reduce operational risk, lower post trade costs and rationalise and consolidate legacy post-trade processes throughout the global FX markets. Only aggregated trades will need to be processed and settled in CLS, providing settlement risk elimination whilst alleviating the processing burdens on participating banks by 90+% . Operating within the CLS regulatory framework, the supporting technology for the system is provided by market-standard Traiana Harmony.

The FX market has undergone dramatic growth in terms of volumes traded and the expansion of its community which now includes hedge funds, algorithmic traders, and retail and institutional participants, many of whom are prime brokerage clients of the banks. The joint venture demonstrates continued innovation and forward thinking and further strengthens the FX market's global infrastructure.

The founding eight banks who have already committed to the joint venture are; Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), Credit Suisse (NYSE:CS), Citigroup (NYSE:C), Deutsche Bank (XETRA: DBKGn.DE / NYSE: DB), Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS), J.P. Morgan (NYSE:JPM), Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS.L).

Rob Close, Chief Executive Officer of CLSAS (as well as CEO of CLS Group and President and CEO of CLS Bank International) said: "Since the announcement in April, there has been widespread support for the service which is endorsed by the eight founding financial institutions. This marks one of a number of steps from CLS Bank to further provide high quality risk reduction and processing efficiency solutions for the FX community. The joint venture with Traiana leverages essential core competences of both institutions and we look forward to a very successful partnership."

Gil Mandelzis, Traiana's Chief Executive Officer said: "Today marks a significant landmark in the post-trade landscape. The CLS Aggregation service has the potential to unlock dramatically greater capacity across the industry, which will open up new trading opportunities for retail and institutional investors. We are grateful for the strong support from our founding banks and now turn our focus to growing volumes and increasing participation."

-Ends-

For further information please contact:

CLS Group:
Jonathan Butterfield, Director of Communications
CLS Group
Tel: +44 (0)20 7971 5709
Email: corpcom@cls-group.com

Caroline Parker
FD
Tel: +44 (0)20 7269 7295
Email: Caroline.Parker@FD.com

Traiana:
Nick Solinger
Andrew Marshall
Fishburn Hedges
Tel: +44 (0)20 7544 3065

ICAP:
Mike Sheard
Director of Corporate Affairs
ICAP
Tel: +44 (0)20 7050 7103

Candice Adam, Corporate Communications
ICAP
Tel: +44 (0)20 7050 7104

Notes to editors:

About CLS

CLS Bank provides the largest multi-currency cash settlement system, eliminating settlement risk for over half the world's foreign exchange payment instructions.

Owned by the foreign exchange community, CLS delivers greater operational efficiency when settling payment instructions related to trades executed in six traded financial instruments and in 17 major currencies (US Dollar, euro, UK Pound, Japanese Yen, Swiss Franc, Canadian Dollar, Australian Dollar, Swedish Krona, Danish Krone, Norwegian Krone, Singapore Dollar, Hong Kong Dollar, New Zealand Dollar, Korean Won, South African Rand, Israeli Shekel and Mexican Peso).

CLS Settlement is the only means by which settlement risk can be eliminated with finality using a unique combination of payment versus payment in central bank funds, multilateral payment netting and a standard legal framework, supported by a robust and resilient infrastructure.

CLS Bank is based in New York and is an Edge Corporation bank supervised by the Federal Reserve.
For further information, please visit the CLS website at www.cls-group.com
® CLS and the CLS logo are registered trademarks of CLS UK Intermediate Holdings Ltd.

About Traiana, Inc.

Traiana Inc. (www.traiana.com), an ICAP company, provides global banks, broker/dealers, buy-side firms and e-trading platforms with solutions to automate post trade processing of financial transactions. Traiana's Harmony network is used by over 50 of the world's leading financial market participants and has become the market standard for post-trade processing of foreign exchange transactions. Traiana is headquartered in New York City with offices in London and Tel Aviv.

About ICAP

ICAP is the world's premier interdealer broker and provider of post trade services. The Group matches buyers and sellers in the wholesale markets in interest rates, credit, commodities, foreign exchange, emerging markets, equities and equity derivatives through voice and electronic networks. ICAP is also the source of global market information and research for professionals in the international financial markets. ICAP plc was added to the FTSE 100 Index on 30 June 2006. For more information go to www.icap.com.