Derivs - Equity

Yohann Freoa, a senior equity derivatives trader at Goldman Sachs in London, is set to join BlueCrest Capital Management in a similar role.

Investors are increasingly considering fx overlays when buying equity call options on developed market indices to cheapen their long positions.

Pension funds do not have the cash needed to provide margins to central counterparties, and therefore the temporary exemption from the clearing obligation under the European Market Infrastructure Regulation is warranted, according to Steven Maijoor, chair of the European Securities and Markets Authority.

Paul Thind, the ex-head of custom indices for Asia Pacific at the Royal Bank of Scotland in Hong Kong, has launched a financial boutique based in Zurich that will create custom financial indices.

Charles Chiang, former director and head of equity derivative flow trading at Citigroup in Hong Kong, has rejoined JPMorgan to work in a senior delta 1 trading position, also in Hong Kong.

Yasuhiro Fujiwara, former co-head of global markets and head of equities Asia Pacific at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, has joined Nomura as a managing director and head of equities, Asia ex-Japan and head of equity derivatives trading, Asia Pacific.

Société Générale is to expand asset classes, services and payoffs offers on its Alpha structured products platform.

The industry is concerned that product intervention rules will have a detrimental effect on innovation and may risk in firms limiting their offerings to vanilla products.

MarkitSERV has launched a pre-trade credit checking hub for over-the-counter derivatives transactions.

Average transaction volume on meta-platform Derivative.com, the Swiss multi-dealer structured product click and trade platform, increased from CHF684, 344 in the four weeks leading up to Jan. 10, to CHF765, 276 during the four weeks up until Feb. 7, according to the firm’s latest client alert.

Insurance companies and hedge funds in Asia are buying outperformance options or variance swaps on the Nikkei 225 against the Kospi 200 to position for the Japanese equity market to outperform the South Korean equity market in the near-term.

David Lam, managing director and head of structured product sales at Nomura in Hong Kong, left the firm Friday.