Jeremy Vogelmann, Lehman Brothers' loan-only credit default swap trader, left the firm last week to head to the New York desk of Barclays Capital. Vogelmann, along with Doug Grossberg at Credit Suisse, is widely seen as one of the founding fathers in the nascent market. Lehman won the best in LCDS category at Credit Investment News' Annual Best Trading Desk Awards this year. He did not return calls to his cell phone.
Vogelmann, Grossberg and a handful of other dealers and buysiders, including Jeff Kushner of BlueMountain Capital Management, began working on a standard form for LCDS back in November. The work of the "BlueMountain Group" resulted in the International Swaps and Derivatives Association approving a confirm for the product and the Loan Syndications and Trading Association approving a physical settlement rider that goes hand-in-hand with the confirm this Spring (CIN, 6/9, 6/23). The dealer working group, which hosted its first meeting at Lehman Brothers in May, is currently in the process of putting together an LCDS index, dubbed LCDX (7/26).
At Barclays, Vogelmann will be joining his former Lehman colleague, Jason Moynihan, who is head of U.S. par loan trading. Moynihan reports to Rick Van Zigjl, co-head of U.S. leveraged finance (4/10). Barclays has been building up its desk since it hired Van Zigjl and Joe McGrath, co-head of U.S. leveraged finance, from Goldman Sachs last Fall, and had planned to hire an LCDS trader this year (7/10). A Lehman spokeswoman did not return calls.