Derivs - Equity

Royal Bank of Scotland strategists are pitching three-month out-of-the money best of puts on baskets of Asian indices with a quanto payout in U.S. dollars for cheap protection, given the macro bearish sentiment in the market.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch has sold USD32 million in notes linked to Caterpillar that pay out a quarterly coupon and contain the potential for a step-up payment at maturity.

BNP Paribas is pitching outperformance options pitting U.S. banks against the Euro Stoxx Banks index in the expectation that the exposure of most European banks to Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Greece will lead to index depreciation.

Since the beginning of May 2011, the Eurostoxx50 has collapsed breaching key levels from 3000, a key level that had not been breached post Lehman Brothers, towards 2700, a key technical support level for 2011, with growing concern for the fate of the Eurozone as the sovereign debt crisis on periphery Europe escalated.

Wing Hang Bank has launched an equity-linked deposit program in Hong Kong, the first structured retail platform to launch since new laws took effect May 13.

Susan Chan, the former head of equity and fund structured markets at Barclays Capital in Hong Kong, has joined Deutsche Bank as a managing director and head of the equities structuring group for Asia, according to a memo from the firm.

The board of directors of corporates will become responsible for risk management oversight, which typically covers derivative use, as opposed to the audit committee, under a Monetary Authority of Singapore proposal in a new consultation paper.

Ninety of the 120 warrant holders took a buyback deal offered by Goldman Sachs for warrants it issued that contained a typographical error that caused pricing errors.

Before The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, loan credit default swaps and loan total return swaps were outside the ambit of each of the Commodity Exchange Act, the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

Since early 2010 and when the term “PIIG” entered the daily financial language, there has been significant interest in the debt exposure of the major banks to the ongoing European periphery concerns.

Eurex Clearing is about to offer segregated accounts for clients of clearinghouse members for over-the-counter derivatives, the first central counterparty to do so.

Trading in purchase contracts which originated as components of Citigroup’s Dec. 2009 mandatorily convertible preferred securities has spiked over the last week, driven by investors who believe the contracts are a better value than listed options on Citi stock.