Derivs - Equity

Investors are keeping tabs on the outcome of this Thursday’s European Central Bank’s policy meeting, which could see Mario Draghi, ECB president, spell out details of state intervention in the region’s troubled bond markets.

South Korea’s Financial Services Commission is looking to stimulate its exchange-traded fund business by relaxing regulations on index-tracking funds, according to China’s Xinhua News Agency.

Fears that Australia’s resources boom is finally coming to a close drove credit default swap prices on the nation’s biggest miners to rise sharply within the last week.

The European Parliament has set an indicative date of Oct. 23 for a plenary discussion on legislative proposals for the amended Markets in Financial Instruments Regulation (MiFIR) and Markets in Financial Instruments Directove (MiFID).

Chinese authorities have been meeting with industry officials to investigate the possibility of launching an onshore equity derivative market.

Hedge fund investors in Asia are switching to stock selection via outperformance and options and are also playing dispersion through correlation trades.

Local securities houses in South Korea are undercutting international investment firms and grabbing market share in the country’s lucrative equity-linked structured product market.

Dealers are looking at writing equity-linked structured products and warrants referencing the new raft of China A-share physical exchange-traded funds, which have recently started trading in Hong Kong.

Thomas Batt, director in the equity-linked origination and structuring division at UBS in Hong Kong, has moved to Nomura.

Innovation in product development, open access and full margin transparency for buysiders and sellsiders were some of the attributes that set CME Clearing apart from its competitors over the last year, according to market participants. That helped the firm land the 2012 Clearinghouse Of The Year award from the editors of Derivatives Week/Derivatives Intelligence.

Sean Cai, executive director, global equities structuring at UBS in Hong Kong, has moved to HSBC.

Citigroup is to set up a listed options business in Australia and will soon start market making operations for warrants, single stock and index options in the country. The firm is also planning a similar listed options business to begin operations in Hong Kong in October, with Singapore expected to start later in the year.