WM owner State Street says no decision on FX fix changes

LONDON, March 21 (Reuters) - State Street (Frankfurt: ZYA.F - news) said on Friday it had no formal plans to overhaul the WM/Reuters foreign exchange fixing, the benchmark rate which is at the centre of a global investigation by regulators into possible manipulation.

The Financial Times reported earlier on Friday that WM, owned by State Street, and Thomson Reuters (Frankfurt: TOC.F - news) , its partner in producing the daily fixing data, planned to overhaul the foreign exchange fix and was looking at a range of sweeping proposals including the widening of the one-minute time window in which the snapshot of transactions is taken.

The FT report was in line with a broad discussion going on in the industry about how to change the way the fixing is conducted, or whether to do away with it in its current form.

"We've always said to the market that we are considering all options but there is certainly no formal plan for an overhaul as it says in the FT article," a spokesman for State Street said.

"The words 'planning' and 'overhaul' are wrong. It makes it sound like there is something imminent happening and there is not."

Thomson Reuters is the parent company of Reuters News, which plays no role in the fixing.

A spokesperson for Thomson Reuters declined to comment. (Reporting by Patrick Graham; Editing by Jamie McGeever/Jeremy Gaunt)