Today, there are more than 90 futures and futures options exchanges and these include the London International Financial Futures Exchange (now Euronext.liffe), Deutsche Terminbörse (now Eurex) and the Tokyo Commodity Exchange (TOCOM). With the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates, deregulation, and the advent of new technologies, the environment, in which banks and other financial intermediaries evolved, changed drastically.
They responded by developing financial risk  2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  management products designed to better control exchange risk. They started with simple foreign exchange forwards that obligated one counterparty to buy, and the other to sell, a fixed amount of currency at an agreed date in the future.