Derivs - Equity

Spencer Cross, equity volatility trader at Citigroup in New York, is joining Deutsche Bank in a similar role, also in New York.

Bank Vontobel has launched tracker certificates linked to its China Policy Performance Index, which tracks stocks and sectors expected to benefit most from government economic policy.

An amendment that would have reviewed a rule in the U.S. that requires investments firms to request a quote to buy or sell derivatives from three dealers—an automatic increase from two dealers—has been rejected by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Retail investors in South Korea are buying hybrid structured products with one-to-three-year tenors that offer exposure to an equity-linked index and a commodity, typically gold or the WTI and Brent oil benchmarks.

Iain Flockhart, head of delta 1 trading for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Barclays in London, has left the firm.

The planned financial transaction tax could lead to direct costs as high as EUR40 million if those corporates are defined as financial institutions under the terms of the tax, according the European Association of Corporate Treasurers.

Retail high-net worth investors in Japan are increasingly shifting their focus to single stock selection from the using the Nikkei as underlyings for privately placed structured products and options.

UBS has tapped Val Mihan, a one-time head of Americas derivatives trading at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, as global head of equity trading in New York.

Mark Valentine, Europe, Middle East and Africa head of the packaging group within Citigroup’s multi-asset structuring business in London, has left the firm after less than a year.

The European Commission has instructed the European Securities and Markets Authority to produce draft regulatory standards on the cross-border application of the European Market Infrastructure Regulation by Sept. 25, 2013.

Mainland Chinese securities firms are not using the recently released Securities Association of China master agreement, opting instead to use the National Association of Financial Market Institutional Investors contract due to regulatory uncertainty, according to officials.

John McCormick, ceo of markets and international banking, Asia Pacific, at the Royal Bank of Scotland in Hong Kong, has left the firm.