Derivs - Equity

Fund of funds and corporations looking for tail risk hedges have been showing increasing interest in a tail hedge index and a carry-based index from Credit Suisse.

Paul Marchington, co-head of delta one at Nomura, and Thorsten Fröehlich, head of equities for Germany and Austria, have left the firm.

Barclays Capital has hired Mohamed Ali Bacha, the ex-head of equity derivatives trading at Nomura in London, to the same position covering Europe, also based in London.

Longer-dated implied volatilities on the Euro Stoxx 50 are set to spike and investors should go long a volatility spread on the index versus the S&P 500 over a two-year maturity, according to strategists at Barclays Capital.

European investors are moving away from derivative-backed exchange traded funds, showing a greater preference for physically-backed ETFs, according to strategists at BlackRock.

The Royal Bank of Scotland is to launch delta-one structured products in Korea on a bespoke index that is based on futures on the KOSPI 200 and three-year Korean government bonds.

The Royal Bank of Canada has hired Amy Wu in New York to its global equity linked products division to focus on equity derivatives and cross-asset strategies.

Citigroup has hired Martin Stackler, a financial engineer in structuring and pricing at Société Générale, to head up exotic equity derivative structuring in Hong Kong.

The Royal Bank of Scotland has hired Gary Hawkins, the ex-global head of emerging market trading at Société Générale, as head of Central Europe, Middle East and Africa sales and trading in London.

Structured products that allow investors to profit from the depreciation of developed currencies against gold, as well as the direction of the underlyings within the product, have spiked in recent weeks according to asset managers.

End users have been buying short-dated tail-risk protection trades aggressively in over-the-counter S&P 500 options as well as exchange-traded VIX strategies.

Société Générale and Credit Agricole Corporate Investment Bank are not doing business with GFI because the interdealer broker is in the process of hiring around 40 officials from the derivative and securities brokerage Newedge.