Reuters’ opening of its new product development centre in Beijing marks the completion of its plan to establish three major development and data operations centres in the region.

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Markit Group has opened an office in Singapore. The pricing, valuations and risk management data company has already opened an office in Tokyo. The Singapore office will be headed by David Crammond, and will be responsible for business development in the Asia/Pacific region outside of Japan. Crammond joins from ABN Amro, where he was head structured asset sales.

Trading Systems Associates has announced plans to open an office in Singapore. The London-based consulting firm, whose principals Nick Dutton and Henry Young have recently completed a trip to the financial centre, reckons Asia/Pacific will be “the place to be over the next decade.”

London-based Logicscope Realisations has forged a strategic alliance with Velocity Systems International, based in Adelaide, Australia, to bid for business together on a revenue-share basis and combine resources for 24-hour system support. Logicscope’s main products are TradeSTP, a post-deal notification system that delivers deal data from the FX trading environment to the counterparty’s back office. Velocity’s expertise is in trading systems development for the international treasury markets and related support services.

The People’s Bank of China’s China Foreign Exchange Trade System has gone live with a multi-bank portal built with Reuters. The platform, operated by the only entity licensed to trade foreign exchange in China, will be supported by 10 market-makers: ABN Amro, Bank of China, Bank of Montreal, Citic Industrial Bank, Citibank, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, ING and Royal Bank of Scotland. The system will start trading eight currency pairs: U.S. dollar against the euro, yen, Hong Kong dollar, sterling, Swiss franc, Australian dollar and Canadian dollar and euro against the yen. The system is based on Reuters’ Electronic Trading (RET) platform.

Markit Group is opening an office in Tokyo. The office will be headed by Katsumi Mizutani, who will also lead business development. He joins Markit from TD Securities, where he was managing director and head of credit derivatives structuring and customized solutions, based in Tokyo.