I work for a UK company which is now owned by a US company and we thus have a share options scheme which allows us to buy shares in the US company. This is all operated via the on-line brokers E-Trade.
As far as I can see the only sensible way to use E-Trade is if I have a US Dollar account of some sort.
Can anyone recommend a good account for this sort of use? I will probably only want to do one or two transactions per year and they won't be particularly large (I'm not rich!), of the order of a few thousand dollars at the most.
I've looked at both HSBC and Nationwide (where we have current accounts) and they both look rather expensive for the amounts involved.
Citibank's "Foreign Currency Deposit Accounts" would seem to be a reasonable option, no minimum balance and (as far as I can see) no cost for keeping the account open. Does anyone have any experience of this account or any recommendation for anything else which might be better?