Derivs - Equity

The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index (VIX) traded as low as 20.98 today, a level not touched since last September. But even as the Dow Jones Industrial Average has climbed to near 10,000, some are wondering whether vol is about to spike back up.

The revised over-the-counter derivatives bill passed by the U.S. House Financial Services Committee yesterday could be a boon for interdealer brokers as it requires trades between dealers to go on exchange or so-called swap execution facilities.

A Basel Committee on Banking Supervision study released today estimates that pending changes to bank capital requirements will have the effect of requiring trading book reserves to be increased by two or three times. It doesn’t cover the impact of the changes on correlation trading portfolios, which will have an even larger impact on banks.

Korea's financial regulators have all but rejected the International Swaps and Derivatives Association’s call for the country to rethink its planned mandatory approval process for new instruments.

BNP Paribas has hired Damir Tanovic, formerly a v.p. in structured equity origination at Credit Suisse, as a director in corporate equity derivatives—a new role.

The Austrian government is set to grant its Financial Market Authority greater power to police illegal trading activities, such as insider trading and miss-marking positions, and to review the systems firms have in place to monitor their exposures.

Morgan Stanley has hired three equity derivatives traders in Hong Kong and Japan.

Royal Bank of Scotland has hired Ted Tsao, the former head of equity derivatives sales at Citigroup in Asia, to oversee institutional equity derivatives sales in the region.

The over-the-counter derivatives bill by Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) is closer to the Obama administration’s earlier proposal, in what one derivatives lawyer called “a step backwards.” It may also have pressured Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) to tighten up his proposal, which was seen as relatively favorable to the industry.

Yevgeniy Ivanko, a former single stock derivatives trader at Citigroup, has joined Deutsche Bank.

HSBC has structured an offering of S&P 500-linked notes which return four times the depreciation of the index, going against the trend of equity upside plays.

Property and pension funds are increasingly buying one-year total return swaps on the Investment Property Databank France annual property index due to the lack of volatility in U.K. property prices.