Derivs - People and Markets

Landesbank Baden-Württemberg has hired Paul Murphy and Andy Briggs as financial credit traders in London, covering cash and credit default swaps.

Credit default swaps trader Dimitris Melios has left Citigroup in London.

Melbourne-based Antipodean Capital Management, which manages the Antipodean Capital Global Currency Fund, has been buying short-term puts on the Australian dollar/U.S. dollar and Australian dollar/Canadian dollar over the last month.

HSBC has recently begun offering volatility swaps and dispersion trading to hedge fund clients in Asia Pacific.

Shyamala Gopinath, deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India, has said that the central bank would be open to ideas on allowing offshore parties to hedge rupee exposure onshore, but spurned the notion of opening an onshore non-deliverable forward market.

Jonathan Slater, global head of structured credit trading at JPMorgan, has left the firm to join corporate finance advisory TradeRisks as co-chief executive.

Financial credit default swaps trader Nikhil Sethi has left Morgan Stanley.

A recently proposed rule by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission regarding the time allotted for the public dissemination of confirmation agreements after a trade is executed will likely spur a rise in the cost of operations for swap participants, according to lawyers in New York.

Firms may begin making arbitrage plays on the various renminbi options markets this year as the Hong Kong-based CNH options market continues to develop.

Kazuma Naito, head of equity derivative flow sales to hedge funds for Asia at Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong has, left the firm.

Banks who already hold a derivatives license in China will automatically be granted an ordinary license under new rules, according to a Chinese-language question and answer released by the China Banking Regulatory Commission.

Swaps counterparties would be blocked from using updated and improved valuation methods, under a proposal by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. They’d also get locked in to prices on the swaps that reflect the mid-market point, not actual traded prices, say lawyers and advisors in New York.