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Mark Gold, managing director and portfolio manager at Trust Company of the West, will be leaving the firm in early March to set up his own shop.

More hedge funds are playing in the second-lien loan market with the hope of owning the loans rather than selling them in the secondary market, said participants at Institutional Investor Events' U.S. Turaround Management & Distressed Investment Forum last week.

--David DeMuro, director of global compliance and regulation at Lehman Brothers, speaking at The Bond Market Association-sponsored legal and compliance conference about NASD investigations into firms' fixed-income transaction disclosures.

Time to Make the Donuts...

JPMorgan was looking to capitalize on the increased growth of hedge funds and public accounts in the loan market by moving its loan trading group from the private to the public side of the informational wall.

William Larkin, portfolio manager of around $350 million at Salem, Mass.-based Cabot Money Management, is looking to enhance his portfolio by investing in short-duration corporates and agencies.

Chris Ricciardi, the global head of structured credit products at Merrill Lynch, has reportedly left the firm to take a position at Cohen Bros., a Philadelphia-based collateralized debt obligation manager.

The following charts show the top five advancers and decliners in terms of % moves in the loan, bond and credit default swap markets for the previous week. Data provided by Markit Group.

This chart, provided by Citigroup Global Markets, tracks bid-ask prices for par credit facilities that trade in the secondary market.

Banque AIG has hired Maria Levanti, a former structured products marketer at TD Securities in London, to sell into Greece and Portugal.

David Ballois, v.p. in credit derivatives trading at Credit Suisse in London, has left the firm.

An upswing in interest for synthetic emerging market collateralized debt obligations fueled an estimated EUR700 million in rated deals issued in the second half of last year, said officials at Moody's Investors Service's European Structured Finance Conference two weeks ago.