Derivs - People and Markets

Credit default swaps on CIT Group gapped out to 34.5 points upfront today, according to broker Phoenix Partners, after independent research firm CreditSights downgraded the firm to ‘underweight’ from ‘marketweight.’

The U.K. Treasury backs calls for risk-determined capital charges for derivatives that cannot be centrally cleared. In a report today it also revealed it supports U.S. and European Union efforts to require those trades to be reported to a central repository.

Standard & Poor’s has expanded its custom index services from equities to incorporate commodities and fixed income.

Legal & General has launched a FTSE 100-linked capital protected product that offers limited upside and will select five counterparties by the plan’s Sept. 9 strike date.

Dealers have agreed to standardize credit default swap contracts in Japan, according to a person who attended the first meeting of the Japan CDS Standardization Working Group earlier today.

Barclays Wealth has launched the July version of its Protected FTSE Plan, a five-year investment vehicle with returns linked to the performance of the FTSE 100, using Barclays Bank as the counterparty.

Larry Chi, head of Credit Suisse’s China institutional sales team in Hong Kong, is tipped for a move to Morgan Stanley along with a number of his team.

FX Concepts, a currency trading firm with around USD8.2 billion under management, is about to launch its first UCITS-approved offering—a Luxembourg fund investing in its flagship Global Currency Program.

U.S. Bancorp, parent of U.S. Bank, the sixth largest commercial bank in the U.S., is starting up an investment-grade trading desk covering bonds and credit default swaps.

MFX Solutions, a new company serving U.S. and European funds lending to microfinance banks in emerging markets, has inked an investment with Dutch government-sponsored development bank TCX, enabling it to offer currency hedging to those firms.

Matthew Miller has set up his own headhunting shop, Homewood, to cover the Asia Pacific derivatives and capital market based in Tokyo, notably fixed-income and equity.

Off-shore sellsiders are continuing to lobby against the latest proposals from Taiwan’s Financial Supervisory Commission, which would stipulate that all products sold in the country by foreign banks are 100% capital protected.