Investment management firms

Investment management firms.use the foreign exchange market to facilitate transactions in
foreign securities. For example, an investment manager bearing an international equity
portfolio needs to purchase and sell several pairs of foreign currencies to pay for foreign
securities purchases.
Some investment management firms also have more speculative specialist currency overlay
operations, which manage clients' currency exposures with the aim of generating profits as
well as limiting risk. Whilst the number of this type of specialist firms is quite small, many
have a large value of assets under management , and hence can generate large trades.