"It could chill the market."--Craig Goldblatt, a partner with Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr in Washington, D.C., explaining the possible impact if a pending court decision about equity swaps comes out in favor of Enron (DW, 1/7).
"There seems to be a widespread tendency to perceive the world as a relatively un-risky place."--Justin Kennedy, managing director in Asia-Pacific equity derivatives at Citigroup in Hong Kong, commenting on record low levels of implied equity volatility (DW, 1/28).
"CPPI could be a transforming product for the credit markets."--Aditya Rana, executive director at Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong, singing the praises of constant proportion portfolio insurance (DW, 3/11).
"Do not ever wait for the train to derail."--Gay Huey Evans, director of the markets division at U.K. regulator the Financial Services Authority, sounding a broad warning to derivatives dealers about the dangers of unsigned confirmations (DW, 3/18).
"It seems to me the market doesn't know what it wants yet."--James Rothman, a managing director and head of the structured credit group with ACA Capital in New York, commenting on whether dealers will opt for pay-as-you-go or physical settlement when creating a standard single-name ABS credit derivative template (DW, 4/1).
"It's a bit like Betamax...There are early prototypes out there, but they tend to be expensive for what they achieve--we don't yet have the DVD."--Dawid Konotey-Ahulu, managing director and head of the pension fund group for Europe at Merrill Lynch in London, on the current state of mortality-related derivatives (DW, 4/8).
"The rules of the club are occasionally in favor of the poor members, but the general trend is always in favor of the rich ones."--Simon Gleeson, partner at Allen & Overy in London, talking in the wake of TD Securities' decision to close its exotics business because of rising regulatory costs for smaller derivatives houses (DW, 4/29).
"The concern is whether you are going to end up receiving a shipment of pork bellies."--Karen Anderberg, partner with Dechert in London, explaining the Committee of European Securities Regulators' argument for prohibiting mutual funds from investing in commodity derivatives (DW, 6/24).
"It took us a while to prepare--over eight months and 8,000 pages of documents."--Steve Park, managing director and branch manager of Credit Suisse First Boston in Seoul, on the process of setting up onshore in Korea (DW, 7/1).
"If we can't handle the CDS stuff I can't see how we can handle options."--Costas Katsileros, credit options trader at ABN AMRO in London, on the difficulties of processing growing volumes of credit-default swaps and credit options (DW, 8/5).
"The market passed the test when it came under stressed liquidity." --Pierre Mathieu, European head of credit flow trading atBNP Paribas, on the market's recovery following the downgrade of U.S. automakers in May (DW, 9/23).
"There's always ways to make money."--Eric Slighton, head of Asia-Pacific credit derivatives atBarclays Capital in Hong Kong, explaining the firm's decision to build out its Japanese structured credit business, in spite of strong competition and the tight spread environment (DW, 10/7).
