Derivs - People and Markets

Derivatives desks are scoping growth areas across asset classes for this year, but they’re targeting specific slices within the major underlyings.

An International Swaps and Derivatives Association service allowing buysiders and sellsiders to amend and share ISDA Master Agreements to be in compliance with Dodd-Frank business conduct rules is seeing a pick-up from buysiders, Robert Pickel, ceo, told DI in an extensive interview.

Nomura has made three senior additions to its structured credit business with the hire of Gavin O’Neill as a managing director, Alex Mahler as an executive director and Pradeep Kanwar as a v.p., all in structured credit trading.

Jeff Ross, ex-principal in derivatives and fixed income sales and head of repo sales at Bank of America, has joined London-based debt capital markets trading and research brokerage Yorvik Partners as a partner in London.

On Nov. 16 the Department of the Treasury issued a determination that foreign exchange swaps and fx forwards should not be regulated under the Commodity Exchange Act and therefore should be exempted from the definition of swap under the CEA as amended by the Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The Determination is a wholesale adoption of the proposed determination issued by the Treasury last year and took effect immediately.

The European Securities and Markets Authorities has published guidelines stating that a national competent authority should assess and ensure that a central counterparty has put in place a framework to identify, monitor and manage potential risks arising from interoperability arrangements.

The Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission is looking at creating an equity-linked derivative to ensure continued foreign investment in the country.

Tradeweb has hired Helia Sobreira as a credit default swap product manager in London in a new role.

The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority has ordered UBS to improve processes and controls for the submission of interest rates data for benchmarks. This comes after UBS was fined approximately USD1.5 billion by U.S., U.K., and Swiss regulators for attempting to manipulate the London interbank lending rate and other interest rate benchmarks.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has released regulatory guidance for domestic and overseas clearing and settlement providers wanting to operate within the domestic Australian market.

Alan Zhang, managing director and head of Greater China securities at Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong, has retired from the firm.

Paul Ellis, managing director in yen interest rates trading at Credit Suisse in Tokyo, has joined Brevan Howard in a similar role.