Derivs - People and Markets

Gilles Schlutig, the former head of single stock exotics at Credit Suisse in London, has joined boutique derivatives and securities dealer Conduit Capital Markets as head of equity derivatives trading, a new role.

Pension funds in the U.S. and Europe are becoming increasingly interested in longevity derivatives because of the high returns associated with the asset class, but they are wading in slowly, according to attendees at IQPC’s Life Settlements & Longevity Summit in New York.

Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission plans to give investors first rights to collateral proceeds over swap counterparties in the event a retail structured product is terminated.

Buysiders have begun looking selectively at negative basis trades again on account of the basis between credit default swaps and cash bonds having widened about 20 basis points over the past month. While the move is slight, it’s prompted some hedge funds to put on trades after unwinding many of their positions last year.

Goldman Sachs landed a pair of GBP200 million, six-month sterling calls against the euro earlier this week, with in-the-money strikes of EUR1.175.

Georges Gedeon, a former executive director in M&A and corporate finance at Goldman Sachs in London, and Jean-Luc Biamonti, the ex-European head of retail investment banking, have set up a hedge fund focusing on credit and merger arbitrage.

London-based Insparo Asset Management has hired Mahan Namin as assistant portfolio manager.

Global Credit Advisers, a New York-based credit hedge fund firm, likes the healthcare sector and is holding long positions in acute care, hospital and physician services companies.

JPMorgan launched its warrants business in South Korea last week, initially offering six instruments tied to a range of stocks and indices—the Korea Composite Stock Price Index, Samsung Electronics and Hynix.

A trio of headhunters has launched a new recruiting firm, CharlesChase Group, with offices in Southport, Conn., Boston and New York. Two of the founders, CharlesChase Group, are from Rhodes Associates and the third, Elizabeth Komachi, is from Heidrick & Struggles.

Charlie Shah, an investment-grade bond and credit default swaps trader at RBS Securities in Stamford, Conn., has left to join Bank of America in New York.

Credit Suisse this week began marketing Europe’s first ever Drop-Back Certificate—a two-year note linked to the performance of the S&P 500 that allocates a slug of principal away from cash and into the index when it is falling, in the hope of making money from a sudden rebound.