Derivs - FX

Corporates, hedge funds and banks have been rushing to buy six-month to one-year puts on the cable this week, with the trend expected to continue until early next week.

Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and a number of other firms were snapping up puts on the euro against the U.S. dollar on Tuesday, according to traders in London and New York.

Nasir Afaf, the former head of fx cash and options trading at Calyon in London, is preparing to launch a hedge fund 70% focused on currencies and the balance in stocks, indices, commodities and rates.

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.

Standard Chartered this afternoon announced a series of global markets hires under Mohammed Grimeh, head of global markets in the Americas. Among them, John Chua, a trader from ING, joins within a week or two as a director in credit trading.

Caylon is recommending investors take advantage of an expected appreciation in the Korean won against the U.S. dollar through non-deliverable forwards.

Nomura has hired a pair of former Lehman Brothers executives, Charles Spero and Jeffrey Michaels, to oversee fixed-income sales, trading, research and structuring in the Americas.

BNP Paribas has hired Stephen Chiang, formerly a v.p. at Barclays Capital, as a v.p. in corporate derivatives and fx marketing in New York.

Société Générale bought a USD250 million, 11-month sterling put against the U.S. dollar this week, with an out-of-the-money strike at USD1.25.

BNY Mellon plans to move its Asia derivatives trading business from Tokyo to Hong Kong and expand its sales force in the country, said a person with knowledge of the matter.

Senior members of the European Parliament Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee are supporting calls for corporations to be exempted from over-the-counter derivatives regulation.

Private investors in Hong Kong and China are taking up hybrid structured products, requiring both a currency pair and an equity index to move in a pre-agreed direction in order to capture the upside.