Derivs - Credit

All of the assets underpinning the defaulted Keops portfolio loan securitized in Barclays Capital’s synthetic commercial mortgage-backed deal, Eclipse 2007-2 (Juno) have now been sold, recouping a total of SEK4.1 billion ($646.8 million).

Observers are raising questions about a little discussed part of Hong Kong’s over-the-counter derivatives reform plan: small automated trading systems will be allowed to act as designated central clearing counterparties.

The sovereign market, indeed all financial markets, were in limbo while Europe’s leaders procrastinated over their solution to the debt crisis.

Hong Kong’s proposed version of a local trade repository with links to a larger global repository is the most efficient solution for future over-the-counter derivative data management in smaller Asian markets.

Central clearing houses in Asia will scramble against each other to secure cash from near defaulting counterparites if fragmentation and extra-territoriality issues are not settled among the region's regulators, according to Stephen O'Connor, chairman at the International Swaps and Derivatives Association.

Credit Suisse has made a slew of redundancies in its fixed income business over recent days.

Ferruccio Ferrara, the former head of rates sales for Europe, Middle East and Africa and Asia at Bank of America, and Giuseppe Galimberti, the former deputy general manager at Banca IMI, have launched a hedge fund company. The firm, called Negentropy Capital Partners, received regulatory approval from the U.K. Financial Services Authority two weeks ago.

Sovereign entities will find it harder to fund themselves at low rates following the agreement to ban so-called naked credit default swap trading on sovereign debt, according to market officials.

The China Banking and Regulatory Commission is making marketing and selling financial products aimed at wealthy private individuals harder.

Against a backdrop of rising long end yields on the U.S. curve, even following the beginning of Operation Twist, the much anticipated Federal Open Market Committee minutes were released this week.

Perhaps the last two weeks in the credit markets can be characterized as a triumph of hope over expectation.

UBS is marketing three-year structured notes linked to the credit risk and shares of Telefonica to high-net-worth individuals and family offices in Switzerland.