Derivs - People and Markets

A clutch of ex-Lehman Brothers staffers in London are preparing to launch an interdealer broker boutique in January. The shop will be headed by Elton James, Daniel Hawkins and Sebastien Krol and called Mariana Capital.

Rahan Qureshi, a senior emerging markets fx options trader at Calyon in London, has left the firm two months after joining.

The International Swaps and Derivatives Association is preparing to lobby the Malaysian government to re-word its stamp duty laws to prevent derivatives users being slapped with hefty tax bills.

Barclays Capital and Standard Chartered are working toward signing the new interbank master agreement with China’s big four banks.

The International Swaps and Derivatives Association has finalized its post-trade governance model, detailing where decision-making among buy- and sellsiders lies for issues pertaining to each asset class and who is responsible for liaising with regulators on different matters.

Investors who were paid out four cents on every dollar of short-dated credit default swaps when French media company Thomson had a restructuring credit event auction last month could have been better served by holding on.

Barclays Capital has begun marketing two-year notes that offer the potential for a 60% return dependant on an appreciation in the London gold fixing price.

Broker-dealer Knight Capital Group has hired Daniel Braun, the former director of environmental finance at hedge fund Stark Investments, to head a new carbon trading desk.

Deutsche Bank has appointed Gautam Hazarika as managing director and head of fx corporate flow sales for Asia ex-Japan in Singapore.

Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc.’s decision to seek bankruptcy court approval to pay a potential USD50 million in performance bonuses to its derivatives staffers—an average of USD200,000 per employee—is an attempt to incentivize them to fight aggressively counterparty claims and collect on in-the-money contracts.

Legal arguments in the first potential credit event to require expert testimony from outside the International Swaps and Derivatives Association were filed shortly before the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday.

Brian Jensen, a former v.p. in credit default swaps trading at ING in Amsterdam, has joined boutique derivatives and securities dealer Conduit Capital Markets as a senior trader in London.