Derivs - People and Markets

Giles Scott has been appointed to head up HSBC Private Bank’s investment advisory business in Hong Kong.

In the wake of U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s call last week to introduce sweeping regulations on over-the-counter derivatives, market participants are concerned about the lack of clarity over which agency will lead the charge.

Corporate boards, especially chief financial officers and treasurers, are shying away from accelerated share repurchasing programs using embedded forwards amid looming regulation of over-the-counter derivatives.

The notional amount of over-the-counter derivative trades outstanding at the end of December was USD592 trillion, according to the Bank for International Settlements, 13.4% down from the USD683.7 trillion reported six months earlier.

JonesTrading, a Westlake, Calif.-based brokerage, has added a derivatives trading and sales group.

Hector Chan, head of fx and interest rate derivatives structuring in Asia for BNP Paribas, has left and market officials say he is expected to join Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong in a similar role.

Pension funds are protecting themselves with put spread collars to hedge equities.

The International Derivatives Clearing Group, an independent subsidiary of The Nasdaq OMX Group, will expand the coverage of its central counterparty clearing platform to currencies outside the U.S.

The defense against the first U.S. credit default swaps insider trading case will hinge on three points: that the CDS reference entities were not issued in the U.S. so the Securities and Exchange Commission cannot bring the case; the alleged “material non-public information” was public; and that there was no fiduciary agreement in place limiting the use of information provided to the purchase of bonds and not CDS.

New York investment bank Lighthouse Financial has launched a derivatives operation focusing on equity and credit. It may expand into commodities and potentially currencies downstream.

Grupo Santander has hired Gerold Wiring, a director in flow credit distribution at Merrill Lynch in London, to head up the Spanish bank’s distribution of flow credit products into Germany.

Barclays Capital lost USD105,000 in about three minutes yesterday on a callable bull/bear contract on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Warrants officials in the region told Derivatives Week that, while the amount was not huge, the speed was notable and perhaps symptomatic of the firm being new to the market.