Derivs - Equity

Kimberly McGarry, ex-senior vp and chief accounting officer at First Midwest Bank, has joined the Options Clearing Corporation as senior vp president and chief financial officer.

One institutional investor was seen picking up a sizeable put spread on AT&T following increased options activity in telecoms last week.

The mutual exchange offering between Hong Kong and Shanghai stock exchanges will drive Chinese and Hong Kong equity product trading, innovative derivatives strategies and growth in other Southeast Asian markets.

The growth scare of October has given way to a relatively sanguine outlook for equities into the year’s end, based on the cost of tail risk around the world. While option premiums remain high in some markets, investors have quickly reduced their demand for short-term protection in U.S. and Chinese stocks and in Treasuries.

MSCI has announced record levels of listed futures and options based on its indices in 2014, noting that changes in the market including global equities, passive management and increased regulation of over-the-counter instruments have brought with them new users.

Institutional investors such as asset managers and some pension funds looking to track benchmarks are switching out of futures and into exchange traded funds (ETFs), which are increasingly offering better liquidity and lower trading costs, as banking regulation increases the cost of trading futures contracts.

Anup Gupta, ex-Asia Pacific distribution head for Barclay’s structured products e-trading platform, has joined Vontobel as regional head Asia Pacific for the firm's structured products multi-issuer platform, deritrade, based in Singapore.

There has been a surge in investor interest to structure cheap VIX-based tail risk trades to hedge against a sharp rise in volatility.

Kokou Agbo-Bloua, the ex-head of European equity and derivative strategy at BNP Paribas in London, has joined Société Générale as managing director, global head of engineering and strategy, also based in London.

Javelin boss to run BGC's SEF - Deutsche appoints UK corp fin head - McGuire out of StanChart loans - Cornelius quits Jefferies

The Hong Kong Exchange has extended its After Hours Futures Trading (AHFT) session by 45 minutes for its Hang Seng Index futures, H-Shares Index futures, Mini HIS futures, Mini HHI futures and renminbi currency futures. The close of the after hours futures trading clearing session will also be extended.

BTIG has said it will offer its European clients equity derivatives trading beginning in 2015 as part of a massive expansion to European business, including the hire of three sales traders.