Derivs - People and Markets

South Africa’s Standard Bank is preparing to offer total return swaps and reverse convertibles in Zimbabwe and Mauritius.

Regulations issued by the Bank of Thailand earlier this month have cleared up questions over what hedging and speculative transactions are allowed by Thai banks and investors, particularly when the trades reference foreign assets or are done with a foreign counterparty.

Gary Gensler, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, has pushed back on certain points of the Obama administration’s draft Over-the-Counter Derivatives Markets Act of 2009, a consolidation of previously voiced positions on the market.

Union Bank is plotting an expansion in fx derivatives, which will see a broader array of derivatives traded for end users.

Lighthouse Financial Group, a full-service broker-dealer in New York, wants to add a pair of corporate bond and credit default swap brokers at the v.p. level—specifically with index as well as single name experience. Tom Novellino, a v.p. from the corporate bond team at Rafferty Capital Markets in Garden City, N.Y., recently joined the desk.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch has hired Chris Bae, managing director in equity derivatives trading at Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong—a possibility reported earlier by Derivatives Week (DW Online, 8/3); and Thomas Gillie, a senior fx options trader from Credit Suisse in Singapore, who left last month (DW Online, 7/9).

Gilliat Financial Solutions, the structured products arm of Arbuthnot Banking Group headed by Adrian Neave, the former corporate development manager at Keydata Investment Services, is planning to debut its first structure next month.

London hedge-fund manager Man Group sold its remaining 18.6% stake in broker MF Global last week via a three- to four-year variable forward sale agreement with Nomura.

Pension funds and insurers have been buying three- to five-year total return swaps over the past week and selling short dated hedges on the Investment Property Databank All Property index, following better-than-expected U.K. data released by the IPD, and second quarter results released by commercial property firms CB Richard Ellis and British Land.

Three directors in credit default swaps trading at HSBC in London—Karanvir Anand, Pritesh Tank and Nick Gray—left last week.

Citigroup has hired Charles Leung to head private banking structured product sales in Hong Kong. His role will encompass selling equity structures, such as accumulators and equity-linked notes.

Deutsche Bank recently tapped Grace Wong, executive director of credit sales from Morgan Stanley, for a similar sales role within the German firm.