Derivs - Equity

David Herzberg, managing partner and head of international equity trading at BTG Pactual in London, who recently joined the firm from JPMorgan, is set to launch an international equity multi-strategy trading operation at the Brazilian investment bank that will use equity derivatives amongst other instruments.

As concern continues to grow for outlook of economies, the pricing of longer dated skew continues to trade at historically elevated levels and this has made risk-reversals appear expensive, especially in the S&P500.

The Royal Bank of Canada has hired Sandeep Bidani as managing director and U.S. head of institutional sales in the global equity-linked products business in New York.

­Société Générale sold USD250 million in one-month put butterfly spreads on the S&P 500 exchange-traded fund, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF, in the U.S. on Tuesday.

Baring Asset Management is considering using total return swaps to get exposure to equities indices in its new Baring Dynamic Emerging Markets Fund.

Barclays Capital has shuffled its equity derivatives teams with a number of senior staffers exiting in the reorganization.

Chan Ahn, director and head of equity derivatives structuring at Credit Suisse in New York, left the firm last Friday.

Doug Smith, director of Latin American equity derivatives at Barclays Capital in New York, is set to join Citigroup in mid-September as a trader in the LatAm equity derivatives trading group in New York.

Nomura has lost four senior equity derivative traders over the last few weeks: Anice Lajnef, Naren Karanam, Mark Azoulay and Christian Raubenheimer.

Thomas Jarck, ex-head of flow index trading at Citigroup, is set to join Deutsche Bank in September as head of U.S. index flow trading in global equity derivatives in New York.

The Greek sovereign debt crisis is essentially a European problem as 90% of Greek government bonds are held within Europe.

Stephen Kendall, head of European equities at Cantor Fitzgerald in London, has resigned from the firm.