Free content

Calyon and Bank of America have teamed up to structure a synthetic collateralized debt obligation.

Market players were snapping up euro puts last week despite slight euro appreciation against the U.S. dollar.

Commerzbank Corporates & Markets is looking to build its equity derivatives and fund-linked business in Europe. Roberto Vila, head of equity derivatives in London, said the firm will hire a head of fund-linked trading and several equity derivative structurers in the next few months.

The constant maturity credit-default swaps market, which failed to take off as players predicted last year, may get a boost now that the International Swaps and Derivatives Association plans to create a CMCDS confirmation template.

Dutch pension funds have postponed billions of euros worth of swaps, triggering a huge spike in the 10-year/30-year swap curve.

This Learning Curve explains how the large amount of capital associated with structured products exaggerates movements in long-dated implied volatility.

Keydata, a U.K. investment product provider, has taken advantage of low implied volatility levels to offer investors 200% of the upside of the FTSE100 with capital protection.

The U.K.'s Prudential will consider hedging a capital-guaranteed offshoot of its multi-asset life fund, if it sees a sizeable jump in assets under management.

--Hugh McKee, savings and investments director at Prudential in Sterling, explaining why the fund manager is taking the risk of writing a capital guarantee on a multi-asset fund.

The Royal Bank of Scotland has hired two senior equity sales officials to cover structured product sales in Europe.

Hedge funds and prop desks have inflated the price of Italian credit-default protection by snapping up illiquid CDS on the sovereign in the wake of poor economic news from Italy.