Derivs - Equity

Deutsche Bank Asset Management has hired Albert Lau, former executive director-equity derivatives institutional investor sales at JPMorgan in Hong Kong.

The volume of structured products trading on European exchanges was up 19.97% to EUR24.9 billion in the first quarter, according to a quarterly report published by the European Structured Investment Products Association.

Dimitrios Nikolakopoulos, managing director and co-head of equity exotics and hybrids trading, at JPMorgan in London, has left the firm.

Tommy Morris, index derivatives trader at Barclays in New York, is joining UBS in a similar role, also in New York.

Mainland Chinese corporates are unwilling to provide credit support annex documents when entering cross-border derivative contracts, making it difficult for foreign dealers to sell hedging products, such as fx forwards and options, to their Chinese corporate clients.

Nancy Davis, the former head of trading for OTC, derivatives and credit at Goldman Sachs prop in New York, is to launch a discretionary global macro firm.

Since its inception, the non-FX/equity OTC derivative market was largely self-regulated. As the market grew from the late 1990s to mid-2005, this model worked well. New dealers were entering the OTC derivative market and competition amongst this group was fierce. However, as the participating dealer base peaked around 2005, so too did conditions of free money and leverage. These conditions helped fuel the financial crisis that would soon follow and completely reshape the OTC derivative and financial markets.

The Royal Bank of Canada Capital Markets has launched express reverse convertible structured products in Switzerland on a basket of Japanese stocks.

The first structured product referencing an Algoam propriety index linked to the FTSE 100 is set to launch within the next three months.

Ajay Gupta, managing director and head of equity derivative trading at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch in Hong Kong, has left the firm.

A spike in volume in long-dated calls on the Eurostoxx 50 to position for a rebound in European equities is driving a fall in medium- and long-term equity repo rates. This is because, as call volumes increase from investors, dealers are forced to increasingly hedge their exposures through Eurostoxx 50 forwards.

Laurent Ichard, co-head of equities distribution at JPMorgan in London, and Ramon Baljé, head of sales for the Netherlands and Nordics, also in London, have left the firm.