Derivs - Interest Rate

A provision in the recently released Senate Agriculture Committee bill would impose a fiduciary duty on swap dealers transacting with municipalities and pension plans, and many industry players say this could destroy the already shaky market.

Ian Phung, a senior emerging markets interest rates trader at HSBC in Hong Kong, left the bank two weeks ago.

BNP Paribas has added Vasilis Koutsaftis from JPMorgan as a director in its fx and interest rates structuring group in New York.

Hotly anticipated over-the-counter derivatives legislation from Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) has just been released, and judging by the commercial end-user exemption to an otherwise mandatory clearing requirement, it looks as if end-user lobbyists had an impact in the final hours before its release.

The newly formed Swaps and Derivatives Markets Association, which is lobbying for equal access to central counterparty clearing platforms where bulge-bracket dealers have a virtual monopoly, were in Washington, D.C., this week making their case to legislators.

Derivatives officials say the idea being floated in some circles of spinning off swaps desks isn’t feasible and jars with other expected provisions of the forthcoming Senate Agriculture Committee bill.

The Senate Agriculture Committee’s proposals for regulating the over-the-counter derivatives market, which Chairman Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) said would be released today, will now come out Friday at the earliest because the legislative language is not yet finished, according to a Committee spokeswoman.

Stakeholders in a clearinghouse operating in Japan will require direct approval from the Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama if they wish to seek ownership of more than 20%, under proposals submitted by the Japanese Financial Services Authority.

U.S. Senator Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) said earlier today that the final sticking points in an agreement on over-the-counter derivatives reform between himself and Senator Jack Reed (D-R.I.) center on end-user exemptions from clearing and the amount of OTC trades that should go on exchange

A collapse in the 10-year U.S. swap spread to -2 basis points at yesterday’s close from +2.75bp on Monday caught several dealers off guard, according to a New York trader.

Société Générale is planning to hire an additional 500 people to its markets unit globally over the next 18 months.

Tradeweb has completed what participants believe is the first centrally cleared, electronically traded, dealer-to-customer OTC interest rates swap executed on a multi-dealer platform. Deutsche Bank was the dealer counterparty.