Derivs - Credit

BlueMountain Capital Management has hired a quartet of credit analysts to seek out relative value opportunities across the capital structure.

South Korean regulators working to bring about central clearing of over-the-counter trades are initially targeting credit default swaps and interest rate swaps. They are hoping to run draft legislation by the national assembly early next year.

Arang Varadhachary and Jock Jones have been named co-heads of credit trading in the Americas at Nomura Securities International.

Eurex Credit Clear has cleared the first single name credit default swap contract globally, with Nomura and UniCredit—the platform’s only two members so far—behind the contract.

Citadel Securities has made a raft of additional hires to its credit trading platform, which as first reported by DW Online on Monday is being expanded. Coming on board in October is Igor Pavlov, an executive director and senior trader in high-yield cash and derivatives trading from Morgan Stanley (DW Online, 8/24).

A new interdealer broker called Elevation is being formed, according to credit derivatives professionals in New York. The shop is headed by a former UBS O’Connor executive.

Alaric Lau, managing director and head of China fixed income sales at Nomura, has left the firm. Based in Hong Kong, he was responsible for selling flow credit, fx and rates derivatives to Chinese banks and state-owned entities for hedging purposes.

Credit Suisse has hired Richard Cohen as a director and head of credit trading in Hong Kong. He joins from Morgan Stanley, where he had a similar role covering Asia and Japan until he left in June (DW Online, 6/29).

The European credit default swaps market is more liquid than in the Americas, according to Fitch Solutions, because uncertainty over the European basic materials and healthcare sectors is driving increasing protection selling and buying activity.

Citadel Securities, the investment banking and multi-asset-class market-making arm of Citadel Investment Group, is set to unveil an expanded credit trading platform next month and has tapped a handful of professionals with credit derivatives backgrounds for the launch.

Société Générale has added several staffers in credit trading in London recently and continues to look for more. “We’re trying to expand and to keep our European credit trading facility at the highest level, while developing our New York credit platform,” François Popon, global co-head of credit trading, told Derivatives Week.

A dealer reportedly started marketing a lightly structured synthetic trade earlier today, leading some to speculate that the dearth of protection sellers might not continue too long and the CDS-bond basis might start to become more negative again.