Derivs - Credit

The International Accounting Standards Board has scrapped a project to converge the offsetting of financial instruments, especially derivatives, under U.S. generally accepted accounting principles and International Financial Reporting Standards.

Investment-grade credit trader David Ballois has left HSBC in London.

Mutual fund firms that trade in derivatives should create separate derivatives committees, have a mechanism for identifying the risk of a particular derivative instrument and have regular educational meetings with the fund’s board of directors, according to senior legal and compliance officials at Franklin Templeton Investments and T. Rowe Price Associates.

Derivatives dealers are eyeing automated global collateral tracking and transformation systems as a means of differentiating themselves in post Dodd-Frank markets.

Goldman Sachs has hired Thomas Hollenberg to trade euro and sterling interest rate options.

A recent discussion paper from the European Securities and Markets Authority on Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities exchange-traded funds and structured UCITS had investment managers asking what the regulator is trying to accomplish.

Varden Pacific, a new hedge fund launched in San Francisco in April, has bought USD4 million of a tranche of a legacy synthetic collateralized debt obligation created in 2005 maturing in 2013. The deal references credit default swaps on corporate debt.

BNP Paribas Corporate and Investment Banking has hired Fred Fiddle to head its strategic equity and convertible origination business in the Americas.

HSBC has hired Hussein Dbouk as head of sovereign credit default swap trading in London.

The Polish presidency of the European Council narrowed the scope of the European Market Infrastructure Regulation to over-the-counter derivatives instead of all derivatives in its first stab at revising the legislation, in contrast to the last text from the Hungarian presidency.

The European Commission will be more specific in its exemption of financial contracts from a European Union Contract Law while also allaying fears that those contracts classed as sales contracts that have a derivative element to them will not be included, a senior official involved in the legislate process has told Derivatives Intelligence.

Morgan Stanley has jumped ahead of Goldman Sachs in both investment-banking and fixed-income trading for the first time.