Derivs - Credit

France and Germany have always been at the core of the eurozone, and the European Union project as a whole.

Regulating market indices in the same way as interest rate benchmarks would result in additional costs for providers, which would ultimately be passed onto end-users and potentially raise barriers to entry into the indexing business, according to buyside firms.

The aggressive re-leveraging of corporate America balance sheets via leveraged buyouts and M&A has opened up the opportunity to play the underperformance of the iTraxx non-financials index against the CDX IG via credit default swaps.

The Australian Securities Exchange is planning to offer futures referencing its volatility index, known as the S&P/ ASX 200 VIX, in the second half of 2013, with options referencing the futures to follow.

ICAP has launched i-Swap, its electronic interest rate derivatives platform in the U.S. for trading U.S. dollar interest rate swaps.

Brevan Howard has continued its interest rates hiring push with the appointment of Mark Deniston from Goldman Sachs in London.

The turnover of structured products traded on European stock exchanges in Q4 of 2012 declined by 13.4% versus Q3 2012 and 21.9% year-on-year, according to the latest quarterly report from the European Structured Investment Products Association.

The International Swaps and Derivatives Association has called on the Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems and the International Organization of Securities Commissions to create and publish a list of Qualifying Central Counterparties or compliant regimes.

Some market participants are refraining from doing business with counterparties in particular jurisdictions and some banks are shifting operations back to their domestic markets due to a lack of regulatory certainty and global harmonization.

The pension scheme for staff at minerals group Imerys is planning to investigate investing in derivatives once its ongoing asset/liability matching study concludes.

Strategists at JPMorgan are advising investors to buy EUR500 million in the CDX.IG and sell EUR500 million in the iTraxx Non-Financials, as the firm believes non-financial spreads look too wide and will tighten relative to the CDX.IG.

The European Securities and Markets Authority should clarify that the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive is not intended to apply to structured issues, according to the Joint Associations Committee on Retail Structured Products.