Derivs - FX

Morgan Stanley has hired five executives in New York covering fx derivatives and cash sales. “We see the market pulling back around us and we want to be on our front foot and opportunistic, adding where others are scaling back,” Tom Haskins, managing director and head of fx and emerging markets sales in the Americas, said.

UBS has lost a handful of fixed income sales staffers from its Hong Kong office within the last week.

Tom Gillie, a senior fx options trader at Credit Suisse in Singapore, left the firm last week and is expected to resurface at an options trading desk in New York.

Hedge funds were buying short-term calls on the euro against the sterling this morning, anticipating the Bank of England would buy an extra GBP25 billion (USD40.6 billion) of government bonds, putting downward pressure on the pound by increasing fiscal debt and printing more money.

Banco Espírito Santo de Investimento, the investment banking arm of Portugal’s Banco Espírito Santo, has hired a head of credit trading in the Americas and is looking for a senior fx hire to round out its Latin American derivatives coverage in the region.

FX Concepts, a currency trading firm with around USD8.2 billion under management, is about to launch its first UCITS-approved offering—a Luxembourg fund investing in its flagship Global Currency Program.

MFX Solutions, a new company serving U.S. and European funds lending to microfinance banks in emerging markets, has inked an investment with Dutch government-sponsored development bank TCX, enabling it to offer currency hedging to those firms.

The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce has hired two fx managing directors: Christopher Dunning, managing director and global head of emerging markets at UniCredit in London, and Eric Ohayon, head of fx structuring at Bank of America, also in London.

Hedge funds and corporates have been buying short-term euro calls against the Swedish krona this afternoon in anticipation that Sweden’s central bank, the Riksbank, will not cut interest rates tomorrow or announce quantitative easing measures that would take the country out of its deep recession.

Keith Yanowitz, director in emerging markets fx at UniCredit in New York, has left the firm and joined trading shop First New York Securities.

Strategists at Standard Chartered are advising investors to take advantage of a forecasted appreciating Indian rupee against the U.S. dollar via a seagull option strategy.

Founders of the Parker BlackTree Currency Index expect investors will access the performance of the index through over-the-counter plays, including: total return swaps, option strategies or fully-funded notes.