Derivs - People and Markets

Fitch Ratings has made a tweak to its ratings criteria for swap counterparties in structured finance transactions.

Standardized documents for Shariah-compliant credit default swaps are not close for the simple reason that the underlying derivatives don’t pass muster in their current form with Islamic scholars.

Ex-Royal Bank of Scotland saleswoman, Jacqueline Tan, is widely tipped to head up corporate structuring solutions at Barclays Capital for the Asia Pacific region.

Executive compensation was another big talking point at the conference, in the wake of the U.S. pay czar Kenneth Feinberg announcing sweeping caps at firms bailed out by the government.

Amid plans for a systemic risk regulator in the U.S., panelists at this morning’s Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association conference in New York rehashed some well-trod ground: who was to blame for the crisis and what role derivatives played.

Citadel Securities has added three more credit traders in New York.

Structured product providers have played down the significance of changes proposed in a review published today by the U.K. Financial Services Authority, following the watchdog's investigation into Lehman Brothers-backed products.

Clariden Leu, the structured products subsidiary of Credit Suisse, is marketing three-year notes that offer the possibility of a 160% return, but change their structure and payoff profile if one of the underlying stocks breaches a set barrier.

Mary Schapiro, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, told Derivatives Week this morning she believes a derivatives reform bill could be on President Barack Obama's desk before year-end.

Calyon has hired Steve Chan to head up the firm’s foreign exchange options trading in Asia.

UBS has hired William Ortner, head of structured finance at Structured Investment Management, as its co-head of structured equity capital markets for the Americas.

Call overwriting on both the S&P 500 index and individual U.S. equities has been picking up lately, as institutional investors hunt for more yield.