Derivs - Credit

David Ruder, former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman and a key panelist on the newly formed SEC/Commodity Futures Trading Commission committee on harmonizing emerging regulations, wants to see more transparency, but without forcing the derivatives business offshore.

Société Générale Corporate & Investment Banking has hired George Skelton as a director in its cross-asset solutions group selling structured credit products to institutional accounts.

The Bank for International Settlements is advising trade repositories to report data from participants in real-time when possible, with a minimum lag of one business day.

The Bank for International Settlements today recommended over-the-counter derivatives CCPs regularly check their procedures for coping with the failure of a member firm.

Nomura has hired James Land from Westpac Banking Corp. to head up all of fixed income for Australia, a new role for the firm.

The front-end of the credit default swap spread curve on Goldman Sachs became inverted late last week for the first time since mid-2009, meaning the cost of buying protection on the firm became more expensive over the shorter term than the long term. Traders are attributing the move to jump-to-default risk—essentially the fear that negative headlines and regulatory pressure on the firm could ultimately cause it to fail.

UBS has hired Glenn Hall and Kevin Ecclesine, a pair of senior credit salesmen from broker-dealer CRT Capital Group, as managing directors in U.S. high-grade flow sales.

Five-year credit default swaps on Greece pulled in this morning by 375 basis points, after the E.U. announced a EUR750 billion (USD969 billion) lifeline and the European Central Bank pledged to purchase European government bonds in an attempt to stem contagion in the region.

Sajid Javid, a former head of global credit trading for Asia ex-Japan at Deutsche Bank, has become a Member of Parliament in Britain after winning the seat of Bromsgrove near Birminham as the Conservative party candidate.

Five-year credit default swaps on U.K. government debt gapped out nearly 10 basis points this morning, on the country’s general election resulting in a hung parliament with no political party gaining a majority of the votes.

A more than 30% intraday widening in the on-the-run series of Markit’s CDX North American Investment Grade credit derivatives index on Thursday had hedge funds licking their chops and dealers running for cover as bid/offer spreads widened as much as 1000% at one point.

Chatter about a potential restructuring of Greek debt in recent weeks had sent markets into a tizzy, but many traders still believe the E.U. will do whatever it takes to avoid a triggering of credit default swaps referencing the nation’s debt. That’s why the CDS are still trading on a running basis, rather than upfront.