Derivs - People and Markets

Barclays Capital continued the expansion of its U.S. fx sales team in New York this week with the hires of Mike Testa as head of real money fx sales for the Americas and Marlena Demenus as a director in sales focusing on banks and commodity trading advisors, with plans for additional hires throughout the year.

Wade Newmark, the former head of derivatives at ABN AMRO and Abbey National, has joined StormHarbour Partners in a new role.

UBS has structured a number of equity-linked retail structures bound for the Taiwanese market, according to market observers.

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.

The International Swaps and Derivatives Association is in the process of updating documents related to its governance structure. The additions are expected to be released next month.

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.

Carl Mason, head of equity derivatives strategy in the Americas at BNP Paribas in New York, has left the firm.

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.

Marilyn Ramplin, an ex-executive director in prime brokerage and equity derivatives strategy to hedge funds, funds of funds and asset managers at JPMorgan in London, has set up a UCITS (Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities) advisory shop.

The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority has begun looking at whether the over-the-counter derivatives market should be regulated.

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

Strategists at Morgan Stanley are pitching out-of-the-money put option trades on a number of Asian financials, foreseeing increased funding pressure on firms more dependent on wholesale funding amidst continuing sovereign credit concerns in Europe that are seeping into Asia.