The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and South Sudan have completed a major prisoner exchange following a recent diplomatic meeting. The border town of the Aru territory in the DRC serves as a haven for numerous South Sudanese refugees escaping the civil conflict in their homeland.
In August 2025, the French humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reported that over 33,000 South Sudanese refugees had been documented on the Congolese side of the border.
The DRC government said the bilateral meeting was held to reinforce security cooperation and the permanent exchange of intelligence between the two countries. The two delegations agreed to exchange detainees as a strong gesture of peace.
“There have been problems: a South Sudanese soldier entered our country through Aguruba, and finally, he was bogged down in mud and got lost. His colleagues came to search for him, and that is when his colleagues, before returning, took hostage a soldier of the Republican Guard and a policeman. Before that, they had already taken a village chief hostage. Fortunately, the chief of the chiefdom has spoken with the commissioner and the village chief was returned,” Richard Mbambi, the police administrator of the Aru territory, revealed.
“But the soldiers, on leaving, I think they received orders from their superiors, took an element of the Republican guard and an element of the police, and that is what made us agree with the commissioner that we should meet in order to resolve the problem. We brought the soldier who was held in detention and another South Sudanese who had been arrested. We have just returned them to the commissioner, who has also returned the soldier and policeman who were taken on that day,” he added.
The South Sudanese delegation, led by the commissioner of Morobo district, emphasised that the meeting was significant to strengthening coexistence and peace between the neighbouring countries.
“Today, we have met with your authorities to resolve the situation which is going on between us. We must resolve our differences, we must put in efforts so that we no longer return to situations that have already taken place,” said Charles Dhata, the South Sudanese commissioner.
The security situation at the border between the two countries in the Aru territory remains bleak, as many refugees are fleeing the civil war atrocities in South Sudan. Various sources have reported instances of looting in several local communities within Congolese territory, carried out by rogue elements of the South Sudanese security forces and some individuals disguised as refugees. Discussions during the meeting addressed these concerns.
In December 2025, more than 40,000 South Sudanese refugees were relocated to sites with potable water, schools, and health facilities, with the support of the National Commission for Refugees of the MSF and local authorities.
Police administrator Richard stressed the importance of exchanging intelligence between the two countries. This exchange aims to address differences and enhance security in two regions.
“The recommendations that we have made are notably that we must meet from time to time, at least every quarter, so that there are exchanges between the authorities of the territory,” he said.
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and South Sudan carried out a significant prisoner exchange following a diplomatic meeting aimed at enhancing security cooperation and intelligence sharing between the two countries.
The exchange involved resolving incidents of soldier detentions at the border town of Aru, a refuge for many South Sudanese fleeing civil conflict.
The meeting addressed the security challenges posed by the civil war in South Sudan, including looting incidents in Congolese communities by rogue South Sudanese forces. Refugee support efforts have seen over 40,000 South Sudanese relocated to camps with basic facilities, facilitated by Médecins Sans Frontières and local authorities.
Regular bilateral meetings are recommended to further reinforce peace and security.
Beyond The Treasurer’s Desk: Record volatility has moved FX-risk management to the center of corporate strategy.
The building blocks of the global FX market were shifting in 2025.
Between President Donald Trump’s erratic trade policies, which weighed on the US dollar; a Bank of Japan rate hike in January that pushed policy rates to a 17-year-high; and extreme uncertainty over rate expectations across both developing and G7 currencies, trading volumes and risks were arguably at their highest in decades. According to data from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), global FX volumes reached an all-time high of $9.6 trillion per day last April, coinciding with Trump’s “Liberation Day” global tariff announcements.
During that same period, interest rate derivatives surged even more dramatically, rising 59% to $7.9 trillion per day.
For corporates and treasurers, the volatility left no room for argument. Those looking to succeed in today’s macroeconomic environment need tailored solutions and higher technological capabilities that allow quicker, more-precise settlements.
Hedging Takes The Spotlight
More than four out of five companies (81%) now hedge at least part of their FX exposure, and a majority expect to either increase the proportion they hedge or extend their hedge horizons, a 2025 MillTechFX study of 750 senior finance leaders across North America, the UK, and Europe found.
“With currency volatility looking like it’s here to stay, corporate treasurers are under pressure to protect bottom lines from swings and dips in the currency market,” says Eric Huttman, CEO of MillTechFX. FX swaps—still the primary hedging and funding instrument for corporates—reached a record of around $4 trillion in daily turnover in April.
The jump in rate uncertainty also spilled into derivatives. Euro-denominated interest-rate contracts climbed to roughly $3 trillion per day, while sterling and yen contracts increased to $939 billion and $411 billion, respectively.
Those moves underscored how quickly treasurers need to adjust hedge timing and tenor as policy paths in Europe, the UK, and Japan became more volatile.
“Hedging currency risk is no longer seen as a nice-to-have but as essential for protecting companies’ bottom lines,” says Huttman. “Four in five corporates experienced rising hedging costs in the last year.”
FX Volatility Forces A Rethink Of Hedging Strategy
Against this backdrop, many companies are tightening their governance frameworks, emphasizing clearer decision-making around exposure measurement, hedge ratios, and hedge-accounting alignment. A growing number of corporates are also prioritizing cash-flow matching, adjusting hedge maturities to better track the timing of underlying receivables and payables: an approach that is becoming more important as policy surprises trigger abrupt forward-curve shifts.
Uncertainty around global trade is directly shaping hedging behavior, says Stephanie Larivière, managing director and global head of fixed income, currencies, and commodities sales at Scotiabank: “The outlook for exports into the US remains no less murky moving forward. As a result, client demand for structured FX solutions has only increased.”
The new environment is pushing companies to rethink not only how they hedge but also why, she adds. “Clients are focusing on cost management and incorporating flexibility into hedging programs via options-based solutions.”
Currency Demands Shift, But Dollar Remains King
Corporates are also progressively seeking more-comprehensive coverage across emerging-market and commodity-linked currencies. Over the three-year period from April 2022 to April 2025, BIS Triennial Central Bank Survey shows, turnover in South African rand contracts rose 176% to $86 billion per day, Thai baht activity climbed 134% to $114 billion, and Brazilian real contracts increased fivefold to $9.2 billion.
The appetite for emerging-market exposure reflects both shifting supply chains and sharper currency cycles in developing markets, particularly as the US dollar proves more volatile, says Marc Chandler, chief market strategist at Bannockburn Capital Markets.
“When the dollar was in an uptrend, many foreign companies would willingly accept dollars,” he notes. “However, the pronounced downtrend, especially in the first half of 2025, spurred exporters to the US to begin requesting payment in local currencies.”
Is The Dollar’s Role Beginning To Shift?
Rate volatility in advanced economies drove even larger moves in G7-linked derivatives. BIS reports that euro-denominated interest-rate contracts reached $3 trillion per day last April while sterling- and yen-denominated derivatives hit records of $939 billion and $411 billion, respectively.
“Foreigners have been buying long-dated Japanese government bonds at the fastest pace in 20 years and swapping the yen for dollars to earn better than US Treasuries,” Chandler says.
The increasing appetite for nondollar pairs has sparked debate as to whether the US dollar could see continued decline in demand.
Li Zhen, head of Foreign Exchange and Digital Assets, Global Financial Markets, at DBS Bank, anticipates “a more multipolar currency landscape as Asian economies deepen their capital markets and regional trade and investment links.” That does not imply “the end of dollar dominance, but it does point to a larger role for Asian currencies in trade invoicing, funding, and investment.”
Chandler agrees. “The dollar’s role in the world economy may be more a function of its store of value than as a means of exchange,” he suggests. In April, the dollar was on one side of 89% of all global FX transactions, and dollar-linked interest-rate derivatives reached $2.4 trillion per day, even as the share of overall dollar-denominated OTC rate activity declined, according to the BIS report.
Banks Rush to Meet Changing Client Demand
In an environment of relentlessly shifting client needs, banks spent the past year modernizing their FX architectures and technology infrastructure to narrow the gap between corporate expectations and demand. Strengthening automation, improving data accuracy, and removing long-standing operational friction that often slows hedging processes were focal points. Improving real-time digital FX platforms that enable corporates to stream prices, execute trades, and settle payments with greater precision was a significant part of this process.
Banks also stepped up their game in audit-ready reporting; hedge-performance dashboard clarity; and tools that support policy-driven execution, leveraging AI capabilities to deliver solutions via direct integration with treasury and ERP systems through APIs.
The scope of bank coverage also continued to expand, meeting demand for best-in-class offerings beyond the G7 bucket—particularly in nondeliverable forward and swap markets, which saw the highest liquidity demand. “Client demand for structured FX solutions has only increased,” says Larivière. “Clients have focused on cost management and incorporating flexibility into hedging programs via options-based solutions.”
Risks Soar Even Higher
Despite the improvements on the offering side, treasurers still face a more challenging hedging environment. Wider interest-rate differentials and elevated volatility are pushing the cost of protection higher than in recent years. Even so, many companies accept the added expense in exchange for greater budgeting stability.
That being the case, the focus is shifting to prioritization: identifying which exposures carry the highest earnings risk, determining the most efficient tenors, and sequencing hedges to mitigate market-timing risk. Rather than scaling back, corporates are becoming more selective and analytical, concentrating resources on targeted, scenario-based strategies designed to limit unexpected shocks.
As advanced FX risk management becomes essential rather than simply a competitive advantage, 2025 showed that banks are responding quickly, overhauling their operational frameworks to meet the surge in demand.
Methodology
Global Finance selects its award winners based on objective factors such as transaction volume, market share, breadth of offerings, and global coverage, as detailed in public company documents and media reports.
We also include subjective factors such as reputation, thought leadership, customer service, and technological innovation. We use input from industry analysts, surveys, corporate executives, and others. Although entries are not required in order to win, submissions that provide additional insight may inform decision-making.
GW Platt Foreign Exchange Bank Awards 2026: Global Winners
GW Platt Foreign Exchange Bank Awards 2026: FX Tech Global Winners
BTG Pactual delivers best-in-class FX execution across Latin America, driving volume growth through automation, platform upgrades, and regional expansion.
Latin America’s FX markets are shaped by persistent volatility, commodity-driven cycles, and complex cross-border flows, making execution quality and speed essential for corporates and investors.
Against this backdrop, certain firms have emerged as regional FX leaders, delivering best-in-class execution across Latin America.
Amid shifting market conditions, Global Finance’s regional winner has prioritized platform efficiency, regional connectivity, and automation to meet rising client demands. These investments strengthen its position as a key FX provider for corporates navigating Latin America’s complex and volatile markets.
Best FX Bank In Latin America
BTG Pactual
Supported by a surge in client activity and an expanding regional footprint, BTG Pactual continues to provide best-in-class FX execution for corporate clients across Latin America.
In the first half of last year, even as total FX volumes contracted in its home market of Brazil, BTG increased traded volume by 5.5% and more than doubled its transaction count, achieving 103% growth channels, including institutional, corporate, wealth, retail, and small and midsize enterprises (SMEs).
The bank responded to this surge by increasing FX-desk allocation to $15 million—a 25% YoY increase—directing resources to automation, execution quality, and platform modernization.
In July, BTG announced its intention to expand its regional network with the acquisition of HSBC’s operations in Uruguay, adding 50,000 clients and roughly 7% market share in a strategically important market for South America’s Southern Cone and offshore flows.
On the tech side, BTG’s rebuilt FX interface, released early last year, made onboarding noticeably faster and simplified the regulatory steps clients face before trading. The firm also rolled out an automated approval engine that now signs off on roughly 30% of FX transactions instantly, cutting processing time and removing a large share of routine manual checks.
Separately, the recent introduction of BTG’s OneSettlement platform marked a step forward for cross-border payments in Latin America. The system gives clients immediate local-currency credit on inbound US dollar flows, a feature that helped push settlement times down from more than 1,100 minutes to under 500.
Russian officials indicated in 2019 that the Kremlin would be willing to back off from its support for Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela in exchange for a free hand in Ukraine, according to Fiona Hill, an advisor to President Trump at the time.
The Russians repeatedly floated the idea of a “very strange swap arrangement between Venezuela and Ukraine,” Hill said during a congressional hearing in 2019. Her comments surfaced again this week and were shared on social media after the U.S. stealth operation to capture Maduro.
Hill said Russia pushed the idea through articles in Russian media that referenced the Monroe Doctrine — a 19th-century principle in which the U.S. opposed European meddling in the Western Hemisphere and, in return, agreed to stay out of European affairs. It was invoked by Trump to justify the U.S. intervention in Venezuela.
Even though Russian officials never made a formal offer, Moscow’s then-ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, hinted many times to her that Russia was willing to allow the United States to act as it wished in Venezuela if the U.S. did the same for Russia in Europe, Hill told the Associated Press this week.
“Before there was a ‘hint hint, nudge nudge, wink wink, how about doing a deal?’ But nobody [in the U.S.] was interested then,” Hill said.
Trump dispatched Hill — then his senior advisor on Russia and Europe — to Moscow in April 2019 to deliver that message. She said she told Russian officials “Ukraine and Venezuela are not related to each other.”
At that time, she said, the White House was aligned with allies in recognizing Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country’s interim president.
But fast forward seven years and the situation is different.
After ousting Maduro, the U.S. has said it will now “run” Venezuela policy. Trump also has renewed his threat to take over Greenland — a self-governing territory of Denmark and part of the NATO military alliance — and threatened to take military action against Colombia for facilitating the global sale of cocaine.
The Kremlin will be “thrilled” with the idea that large countries — such as Russia, the United States and China — get spheres of influence because it proves “might makes right,” Hill said.
Trump’s actions in Venezuela make it harder for Kyiv’s allies to condemn Russia’s designs on Ukraine as “illegitimate” because “we’ve just had a situation where the U.S. has taken over — or at least decapitated the government of another country — using fiction,” Hill told AP.
The Trump administration has described its raid in Venezuela as a law enforcement operation and has insisted that capturing Maduro was legal.
The Russian Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Hill’s account.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has not commented on the military operation to oust Maduro but the Foreign Ministry issued statements condemning U.S. “aggression.”
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — President Trump and top Iranian officials exchanged dueling threats Friday as widening protests swept across parts of the Islamic Republic, further escalating tensions between the countries after America bombed Iranian nuclear sites in June.
At least seven people have been killed so far in violence surrounding the demonstrations, which were sparked in part by the collapse of Iran’s rial currency but have increasingly seen crowds chanting anti-government slogans.
The protests, now in their sixth day, have become the biggest in Iran since 2022, when the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody triggered nationwide demonstrations. However, the demonstrations have yet to be countrywide and have not been as intense as those surrounding the death of Amini, who was detained over not wearing her hijab, or headscarf, to the liking of authorities.
Trump post sparks quick Iranian response
Trump initially wrote on his Truth Social platform, warning Iran that if it “violently kills peaceful protesters,” the United States “will come to their rescue.”
“We are locked and loaded and ready to go,” Trump wrote, without elaborating.
Shortly after, Ali Larijani, a former parliament speaker who serves as the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, alleged on the social platform X that Israel and the U.S. were stoking the demonstrations. He offered no evidence to support the allegation, which Iranian officials have repeatedly made during years of protests sweeping the country.
“Trump should know that intervention by the U.S. in the domestic problem corresponds to chaos in the entire region and the destruction of the U.S. interests,” Larijani wrote on X, which the Iranian government blocks. “The people of the U.S. should know that Trump began the adventurism. They should take care of their own soldiers.”
Larijani’s remarks likely referenced America’s wide military footprint in the region. Iran in June attacked Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar after the U.S. strikes on three nuclear sites during Israel’s 12-day war on the Islamic Republic. No one was injured though a missile did hit a radome there.
Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who previously was the council’s secretary for years, separately warned that “any interventionist hand that gets too close to the security of Iran will be cut.”
“The people of Iran properly know the experience of ‘being rescued’ by Americans: from Iraq and Afghanistan to Gaza,” he added on X.
Iran’s hard-liner parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf also threatened that all American bases and forces would be “legitimate targets.”
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei also responded, citing a list of Tehran’s longtime grievances against the U.S., including a CIA-backed coup in 1953, the downing of a passenger jet in 1988 and taking part in the June war.
The Iranian response came as the protests shake what has been a common refrain from officials in the theocracy — that the country broadly backed its government after the war.
Trump’s online message marked a direct sign of support for the demonstrators, something that other American presidents have avoided out of concern that activists would be accused of working with the West. During Iran’s 2009 Green Movement demonstrations, President Barack Obama held back from publicly backing the protests — something he said in 2022 “was a mistake.”
But such White House support still carries a risk.
“Though the grievances that fuel these and past protests are due to the Iranian government’s own policies, they are likely to use President Trump’s statement as proof that the unrest is driven by external actors,” said Naysan Rafati, an analyst at the International Crisis Group.
“But using that as a justification to crack down more violently risks inviting the very U.S. involvement Trump has hinted at,” he added.
Protests continue Friday
Demonstrators took to the streets Friday in Zahedan in Iran’s restive Sistan and Baluchestan province on the border with Pakistan. The burials of several demonstrators killed in the protests also took place, sparking marches.
Online video purported to show mourners chasing off security force members who attended the funeral of 21-year-old Amirhessam Khodayari. He was killed Wednesday in Kouhdasht, over 250 miles southwest of Tehran in Iran’s Lorestan province.
Video also showed Khodayari’s father denying his son served in the all-volunteer Basij force of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, as authorities claimed. The semiofficial Fars news agency later reported that there were now questions about the government’s claims that he served.
Iran’s civilian government under reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian has been trying to signal it wants to negotiate with protesters. However, Pezeshkian has acknowledged there is not much he can do as Iran’s rial has rapidly depreciated, with $1 now costing some 1.4 million rials. That sparked the initial protests.
The protests, taking root in economic issues, have heard demonstrators chant against Iran’s theocracy as well. Tehran has had little luck in propping up its economy in the months since the June war.
Iran recently said it was no longer enriching uranium at any site in the country, trying to signal to the West that it remains open to potential negotiations over its atomic program to ease sanctions. However, those talks have yet to happen as Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have warned Tehran against reconstituting its atomic program.
