Derivs - Interest Rate

The Royal Bank of Scotland has begun marketing so-called three-year floored floating notes separately linked to the Australian and New Zealand bank bill reference rates, as European retail and institutional investors look for yield outside of the E.U., whose states are struggling with fiscal deficits.

Nomura has scalped two executives from Royal Bank of Scotland into senior interest rates roles, appointing Steve Ashley as its global head of rates, and Chris Fleming as its global head of rates sales.

Over-the-counter equity derivatives are the least suitable for standardization and exchange trading, and OTC fx swaps are the least likely to be cleared, according to a survey of market participants done by BNY Mellon and analyzed by the TABB Group. This discrepancy highlights the fact that standardization does not necessarily imply clearing and vice versa.

Nomura has hired Chan Eng Chien into a newly-devised corporates sales and risk structuring role in Hong Kong.

With the U.S. Senate bill finalized, players throughout the industry say their final hopes for less draconian rules depend on the conference to merge the bill with the House version, and on federal regulators charged with implementation.

RBC Capital Markets is working to build out its equity derivatives business, particularly in the U.S. This week the firm announced a string of new hires and the appointment of Donald Dye, a fixed-income veteran, as U.S. head of retail and high-net-worth sales.

European hedge funds and asset managers want to use derivatives more this year to access liquidity, but they want to do it on exchange rather than over the counter, according to a recent study by the TABB Group.

End-users are hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst. Over the next week they will be pushing harder than ever for a stronger exemption from clearing and margin requirements, focusing their efforts on the clarification of vague definitions in the current Senate bill, slated for a vote next week.

Clearinghouses will be required to set up a dedicated subsidiary in Japan in order to conduct credit default swap clearing business onshore with a Japanese counterparty under new regulation passed last week by the Japanese parliament.

James Lee, head of Nomura’s Asia risk structuring group in Hong Kong, has left and is taking a senior commodities structuring role at JPMorgan.

David Ruder, former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman and a key panelist on the newly formed SEC/Commodity Futures Trading Commission committee on harmonizing emerging regulations, wants to see more transparency, but without forcing the derivatives business offshore.

Macquarie Securities Group has hired Todd Steinberg as global head of delta one in New York.