Saxo adds futures trading with Refco

Danish investment bank Saxo Bank has added futures coverage to SaxoTrader, its online trading platform, as part of a partnership with Refco Overseas, the European arm of New York-based Refco Group.

The deal also brings Refco a white-labelled version of SaxoTrader, which it calls Refco Market Access, to market to small UK institutional clients.

Both SaxoTrader and Refco Market Access now offer trading for foreign exchange - spot, forwards and options - equities, contracts-for-difference and futures. Saxo has also offered to add futures to the platform it has white-labelled to 24 other partners.

Futures trading on SaxoTrader and Refco Market Access is limited to market and limit orders due to the limitations of exchanges to accept other order types electronically, said Lars Christensen, Saxo's co-chief executive officer in Copenhagen. But Saxo is building its own order management system that will allow users to pass other order types, such as good-till-cancel, to Saxo Bank, which will then input the order to the exchange manually, he said.

Saxo Bank provides its platform to Refco Overseas without any licence, upgrade or hosting fees, but takes an undisclosed share of the revenue based on trading volumes. Refco provides distribution and customer service.