Derivs - Credit

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s first insider trading case involving credit-default swaps took a step forward this week when a New York judge ruled against the defendants’ motion to dismiss the case.

Nomura’s front-office fixed income team in the U.S. is shooting to add 10 more staffers by year-end to take its headcount to 250, according to Jeffrey Michaels and Charles Spero, co-heads of the business in New York.

Markit plans to launch a synthetic index of prime residential mortgage-backed securities in the first quarter. The index will tentatively be called ABX.PRIME, according to a statement from the company.

Five-year credit default swaps on U.K. sovereign debt gapped out today to their widest levels since June, after Alistair Darling, Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced in his pre-budget report that the U.K. economy will shrink by 4.75% this year.

Peter Santoro, head of institutional markets at Citadel Securities in New York, left the firm yesterday. The exit came after Patrik Edsparr, the newly promoted ceo of the unit, transferred two executives from the hedge fund side to the investment bank and trading arm.

Svante Horn, a former senior credit salesman at Morgan Stanley, has joined Nomura as a flow credit salesman responsible for Scandinavia.

Calyon has hired Jeffrey Ferrell as its head of loan syndications sales and trading in the Americas.

Sovereign credit default swap spreads mounted a recovery as the panic created by the Dubai World restructuring moves subsided last week.

CME Group is planning to start a pre-launch program for its credit default swaps clearing platform by Dec. 15, a self-imposed deadline the firm set itself earlier this year.

Investors who were paid out four cents on every dollar of short-dated credit default swaps when French media company Thomson had a restructuring credit event auction last month could have been better served by holding on.

Brian Jensen, a former v.p. in credit default swaps trading at ING in Amsterdam, has joined boutique derivatives and securities dealer Conduit Capital Markets as a senior trader in London.

London boutique StormHarbour Partners has hired Oliver Borek, who most recently headed up structured products marketing for Germany and Austria at Banque AIG, as a director in client solutions.