Derivs - Credit

UBS has hired Ranjit Sikka, a correlation trader at Deutsche Bank in London, as a managing director and global head of credit index tranche trading.

The balance of market participants buying and selling volatility through options on credit indices became more even this week after a month of more players selling volatility.

European regulatory authorities will be given powers to summon firms or financial services individuals to provide explanations and supporting documents setting out the purpose and the underlying risks to their credit default swap trading activities, according to a European Commission draft bill for naked short selling obtained by Derivatives Week.

Crédit Agricole CIB has named Frédéric Lainé as head of the firm’s financial institutions group for international client coverage in Asia ex-Japan.

Holger Oesterle, a flow credit salesman at UBS in Frankfurt, has left the firm and is headed to BNP Paribas in the same city, reportedly to run flow credit sales in Germany.

The planned retirement of Financial Accounting Standards Board Chairman Robert Herz has thrown proposed changes to derivatives accounting into question, as the exposure draft only passed the board by a 3-2 vote, with Herz in favor.

UBS is bulking up its European credit trading operations with the hires of Vassilis Paschopoulos and Robert Purvis to trade European corporate credit default swaps in London.

BNY Mellon Clearing in New York is looking into clearing memberships with major clearinghouses to give clients access to over-the-counter interest rate swap and credit default swap clearing, Sanjay Kannambadi, ceo, told Derivatives Week.

A coalition of industry groups, including the Association for Financial Markets in Europe and the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, has expressed concerns about a single reporting regime for both transaction and position reporting on over-the-counter derivatives based on reporting through trade repositories.

Jason Kastner, vice chairman of the Swaps and Derivatives Markets Association, spent most of today’s market roundtable in Washington, D.C., playing devil’s advocate, arguing against other market participants for open access to clearing, ownership limits on clearinghouses and a separation of clearing and execution.

BNP Paribas has hired Alan Pierce as head of European corporate credit trading, both cash and synthetic.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating how registered funds make alternative investment decisions.