Derivs - Equity

London-based broker Execution is building out its equity options and white-labelled structured notes business.

Citigroup has sold in excess of USD1 billion of products linked to a hedge fund replicator index since this time last year, with demand from institutional investors looking to mitigate their fund exposures.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission are holding meetings today and tomorrow to get feedback on their plan to divvy up regulation of the financial markets, including over-the-counter derivatives.

Scotia Capital is in the midst of building out its New York equity derivatives desk. The Canadian bank told Derivatives Week the timing is predicated on a desire to capitalize while others are pulling back and on it having resources to spare since it avoided the worst of the financial crisis.

CME Group and the Options Clearing Corp. are separately considering clearing over-the-counter equity derivatives. The initiatives follow the Obama administration’s plan to have more OTC derivatives centrally cleared or traded on exchange.

Stephen Einchcomb, the ex-head of equity derivatives strategy at JPMorgan in London, joined Royal Bank of Scotland last week.

The EU Commission’s derivatives group is still waiting on responses from some of the “bigger, important investment banks,” on proposals to standardize the over-the-counter derivatives market, Sebastijan Hrovatin, secretary to the group in Brussels, told Derivatives Week today.

Jaroslav Daniska, a former director in equity derivatives marketing to hedge funds in Eastern Europe at Merrill Lynch in London, has joined Nomura in a new role.

Chicago-based equity options broker dealer Liquid Capital Securities has made several senior hires for its New York office, which is slated to open Sept. 1, and is looking to add more salespeople.

Anders Eggen, formerly a director in global proprietary trading at Credit Suisse, has joined Deutsche Bank in New York in equity trading.

GLG Partners has launched three listed long/short UCITS III funds focused on the emerging markets and plans to roll out a fourth imminently. The firm will use the new funds to tap into the onshore European retail market.

With the dividend swaps market pricing in a drop in European oil company dividends, Barclays Capital is recommending investors buy dividend swaps on Total.